The air was cool in the bathroom, the light dim, and for the first time in hours Layla was alone. Her face relaxed. Her cheeks hurt from smiling. She dabbed at her sari with tissues but the stain remained. She would have to wait. She massaged her face in the mirror, starting with her cheeks, then moving to the back of her neck, where she always suffered a dull pain. She wanted to find Rafiq and see if he was happy, wanted to say, Look what we have done together.
Rafiq had been so quiet when he came home from the hall earlier, Layla could not read him. And the small progress she had made with Amar, walking in the garden together, showing him the suit he would wear—it was all undone when Rafiq came home and Amar fell silent. The only men she had left in this world to love and neither of them knew how to be with one another. Just before they left for the wedding hall, Layla laid out her prayer rug upstairs, then Rafiq’s just a few steps in front of hers. It was the time of day she looked forward to most, and even though nothing passed between them there was still a sense of peace, a feeling of unity. She had been the one to teach her children how to pray. The girls had been easy, but Amar was different. He had copied her every movement, looked up at the way she cupped her hands to the sky and did the same, made whispering noises even though he had not memorized the surahs, and at the end she told him it was time to speak his wishes directly to God, and he asked for the lollipops that were green apple and dipped in caramel.
“That is all you want?” she asked him, and he nodded.
“But you can ask for anything,” she said, half hoping he would. She disliked those lollipops the most because the caramel got stuck in his teeth.
“If I ask for only one thing, then it is more likely to come true,” he said.
“God doesn’t work like that.”
“How do you know?”
She was amazed. She did not know. He was six or seven years old then and asking her a question she had not thought to ask all her life. Nor had Hadia or Huda ever questioned her. And Amar had been right without knowing it: the next day she went to the grocery store and bought the smallest bag she could find of those terrible lollipops, tucked them beneath his pillow. He had asked for something so easily granted, and she thought that maybe if she gave it to him at that impressionable age he would pray wholeheartedly. They were told not to question the way God worked, not to think too much into it. That it was a mystery. And she was happy to think of it as such. She pictured a dark sky with the fog in front of it, how her mother had once explained it to her: we don’t have to see past the fog to know there are stars.
She studied her reflection now. Her sari had dried as best as it would. She adjusted her hijab to hide the remaining stain, and reapplied some lipstick. When she returned to the hall, the hadith-e-kisa was being recited and soon it would be her favorite verse: that God had created the blue sky, and the changing landscapes, the bright moon and the burning sun, the rotating planets and flowing seas and the ships on them sailing—all out of love for the five beneath the blanket, the Prophet, his son-in-law Imam Ali, his daughter Bibi Fatima, and his grandsons, Hassan and Hussain.
She searched the crowd for Rafiq and found him at the other end of the hall, seated at a table, his head bowed in respect. He looked content. She would go to him once the recitation was complete. She would say: We did this. We created this. These children who are adults now. What is the use of all this living if we don’t stop once in a while to notice what is actually happening—our daughter on-stage, our son safe, and all our friends and family, who have traveled miles to gather in this hall, just to celebrate with us?
* * *
HE NEEDED TO feel the cool breeze on his face. To be away from anyone who might try to speak to him. Maybe a nice sky to look up at, if the haze of the streetlights didn’t dim the stars too much. Amira Ali was there. They had not made eye contact but he was certain she had seen him. How could she not have? All around him, the people were indistinguishable from one another—shades of blue, green, yellow—and then that jolt at the sight of her. But while everyone else’s face was turned to watch the bride enter, Amira had been facing the stage, looking, if he were to guess, at either his father or Tariq.
He had known there was a chance she would come, had told himself that he would get through the night with or without her possible presence. He drew a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. It had been the line of her neck, the curve of her cheek, her chin, the shock of her dark, dark hair. He had to remind himself to keep walking until they reached the stage, and then he had forced himself not to look back. Just waited until Hadia had taken her seat beside Tariq before slipping from the hall, looking only at the shine of his shoes.
When he was sitting with Hadia in her hotel room, it had occurred to him he knew nothing of the man she was about to marry. It felt too late to be concerned, or worse, like he had lost the right to feel concerned. But Hadia had not only invited him, she had also asked him to participate, to stand by her and Huda. He knew she didn’t have to do that. He had been so nervous when he went to her room, afraid she would ask a question he did not want to answer, but she had spared him any discomfort. The least he could do now was compose himself. He crushed the cigarette with his shoe and then lit another.
Earlier that morning, alone in his old room, he had locked the door behind him. He had opened his closet and parted his clothes—from what he could tell, all of them still there—and stepped into the recess. And there it was, behind extra comforters and unused suitcases, his black keepsake box, exactly as he had left it. For a moment he just touched the soft leather surface. He had always known he would come back one day, if only to reclaim it. He knew the combination of the lock by heart. The click of the lock unlatching. He sat and reacquainted himself with the mementos of his old life: journals, foolish poems he had written, poems he saved by others, photographs he stole from family albums, until he found in an envelope taped for extra security, the letters written in Amira’s delicate handwriting and the photographs of her looking back at him, or lifting her hand to hide her face. He could tell he had taken them, not only because he remembered every movement toward her and every movement away, but because it would be apparent to anyone who saw them that they were taken by someone who looked at her with love. He knew if he read the letters, his determination to attend would leave him, and so he had put them back still folded, carefully closed the lid, and snapped the lock shut.
His head throbbed. He had not come this far for nothing. The dua that had been about to start when he left the hall would end soon. He closed his eyes and saw redness, the swarming insides of his eyelids when he pressed his eyes with his thumb and index finger, the color of his sister’s kharra dupatta, the color that had risen to Amira’s cheeks when he had opened the door to her, long before they had begun talking, and he had complimented her for the first time, something small like I like your shoes and, as he would later learn, because she was unable to conceal anything, her face had burned.
* * *