“Nothing scares him.” I take the roti from Shafiq and toss it on a pan to warm it up. “Not even dying of cirrhosis.”

  There. I’ve said it. To my surprise, I feel better.

  Shafiq might be disgusted by Abu, or think we’re rubbish Muslims. But he’s here. He’s sitting down. He’s eating with me.

  I butter the rotis the way Ama used to, and we dig in. It’s a lamb karahi, soft chunks of meat falling off the bone into a cumin-scented sauce of tomatoes, onions, and garlic. It’s my first proper Pakistani meal since before the funeral. When I tell Shafiq, he smiles and gives me a second helping.

  “I couldn’t tell. So—Salahudin—”

  I sense he’s about to start asking me things responsible adults ask irresponsible kids. How’s school? Can you bring your abu to the masjid? Can you get him help?

  I head him off. “You’re an engineer, right?”

  “A structural engineer,” he says. “My dad worked double shifts driving a taxi my whole life, and it’s what he wanted. Fortunately, I enjoy it. But one day I’d like to just be an imam. I did that for a while when we lived in Los Angeles, and loved it.”

  “And Sister Khadija’s a lawyer,” I say. “Couldn’t you guys live anywhere? Why come to this shi—um, Juniper?”

  “The military offered me a job here. The pay is good. We both grew up in big cities with huge Muslim communities. DC’s Pakistani community for me. Atlanta’s Black Muslim community for Khadija.” When he laughs, I’m reminded how young he is. “We both wanted to try something different—quieter. I don’t think we’ll stay forever. But we’re not planning on leaving soon. What about you? Your ama told me you loved to write.”

  “Not much anymore.” My journal lurks untouched in the recesses of my sock drawer. “Pretty busy with—with other stuff.”

  “I guess it would be hard to leave Juniper, in any case. Your ama’s grave is here.”

  Guilt quashes my appetite. I should go to Ama’s grave. Pray there. She’d have wanted me to.

  But every time I start driving toward the cemetery, I turn around. I don’t want to see her name on that stone. I don’t want to see the inscription. Noor picked it after Imam Shafiq asked her—I don’t even know what it says.

  “Gotta get this place running again,” I say. “But I don’t mind. Noor’s the one who wants out.”

  “Is she . . . all right?” Shafiq mops up the last of his karahi. “She came to masjid last week.”

  If he doesn’t know about the colleges, I’m not about to tell him.

  “AP tests are coming up. And Noor’s an overachiever.”

  “Do you know her uncle at all?”

  “Riaz is an asshole. Shit—I didn’t mean—” Shafiq raises his eyebrows. Double shit. He’s an imam, Salahudin!

  “He’s uh . . . not nice,” I say. “He’s hates that Noor is religious. He makes her work at the liquor store, even though she barely has time to do homework. He doesn’t want her to go to college. He wants her to take over at the store so he can go to college.”

  “Do you know if Riaz has ever hit Noor?”

  For a long second I stare at him. I do not understand the question.

  “Hit—like—”

  “Struck.” Shafiq looks me straight in the eyes. He’s young, but if he’s run mosques before, people in the community must have come to him with their problems all the time. “Your ama was worried about Noor.”

  “If Riaz was hurting her, she’d have told me,” I say. “Noor—”

  Jumped when I touched her shoulder—out of pain, not surprise.

  Cried on the phone and wouldn’t tell me why.

  Has been wearing makeup in an inexplicable way off and on for the past couple months, even though she’s told me she hates makeup.

  Clammed up when I made a comment about Abu using his fists on me. Wow, Salahudin, you dumbass.

  “Goddamn Riaz—” That piece of shit. Someone should kick his face. Me. I’m the someone. I’m half out of my seat when Imam Shafiq raises a hand.

  “Sit down, Sal,” he says. “More violence isn’t going to help Noor. We’re not even sure if that’s what’s really going on.”

  “Should I—should I ask her about it?” I try to be practical, to tamp down my wrath. “Should we call the police? I don’t want to freak her out. She gets nervous around cops.”

  Shafiq considers. “We might need to get the police involved at some point. But right now, she should feel safe. Supported.”

  “Maybe the next time I talk to her, I can . . . let her know I’m worried,” I offer. “No accusations. No questions. I’ll see what she says.”

  “I’ll talk to Khadija in the meantime,” Shafiq says. “If you think Noor’s in any danger, get her away from Riaz. Then call me or Khadija—no matter what time of day.”

  His phone buzzes. “Khadija’s outside,” he says. “I’m sorry I missed your dad. I’ll come by over the weekend. See if I can’t get him to take a walk with me.”

  The shower is off, and something thumps in Abu’s room.

  “He wasn’t always like this.” I feel the need to explain. “He was a good dad. It’s just been hard for him. For—for us.”

  “This life is jihad—struggle,” Shafiq says. “Sometimes the struggle is more than any sane person can bear. I won’t judge your father for his jihad, Salahudin. How dare I, when I couldn’t begin to understand it?”

  When he’s gone, I obsess over what he said about Noor. Your ama was worried about Noor. But if Ama suspected Noor wasn’t safe, she would have done something.

  I open my texts.

  Hey—I need to talk to you—

  No. This has to be an in-person conversation. And it has to be about her—not me.

  You missed some really great karahi. Shafiq left it if you want some.

  Nothing close to what I want to say. But I send it anyway. Noor doesn’t respond.

  Another thump comes from Abu’s room, and as I’m about to investigate, his door opens. He’s clear-eyed, and when I ladle him a bowl of karahi, he actually sits down to eat it.

  “Shafiq said he’d come by on the weekend.”

  “He doesn’t need to,” Abu says.

  Just a few minutes ago, I’d have been so angry at his words that I’d have walked away. But I think of Riaz and Noor. Abu might be a drunk—but he’d never hit me.

  “Maybe it will be good for you to have someone to talk to, Abu.”

  As he eats, with me as stubborn company, the light in the house changes, turning a fiery tangerine as a Juniper sunset blazes over the distant mountains and through the front window. Ama’s bag of knitting still sits in a corner, her cookie tin sewing kit shoved atop it.

  “When I was a boy,” Abu speaks suddenly, “I went to live with my phopo.” His father’s sister. “She had a half dozen children of her own. But my own mother was a drunk and my father was trying to get her help.”

  I start. Abu’s never talked about his parents. As far as I knew, his life began when he was eighteen and moved to England to attend school.

  “My phopo loved me so much. Like I was her son. She and her husband were good people. But they were poor. Even with my father helping them, they struggled. My youngest cousin was my age. Samir.” Abu runs a hand through his thick hair, streaked now with white. “He was so chalak, Salahudin. He’d trick the bottle-wallah into giving us free RC Colas. Flatter the older girls who lived across the street so they’d buy him candy. I never laughed more than I did with him.

  “But after I lived with Phopo for a year, Samir was climbing a fence and he scraped his leg on a nail. He got tetanus. My father sent money but the doctor did not come on time. I stayed with him. It—it is a very bad way to die.”

  He looks down at his hands. “I couldn’t do anything,” he says. “Phopo stopped eating. I couldn’t save her, either. I went back to my parents. To my mother. But she wasn’t any better than when I left.”

  There’s an entire life in the silence that follows. One I’ll never know. I imagine my father as a boy. A thousand lonely, terrifying moments.

  Maybe if I hold his hands, he won’t feel alone. Maybe he won’t drink again tonight. Tomorrow I can call Janice, and persuade him to go to a meeting. Calm comes over me as I think through the plan. I reach my fingers out, open my mouth to tell him. But he stands so fast he tips back his chair.

  His plate clatters in the sink. A cupboard opens. A glass clinks. I smell it, that sharp stink I’ll never get used to, and his sigh of relief, as his memories slide away, a quiet, merciful forgetting.

  PART IV

  I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

  next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

  The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

  —Elizabeth Bishop,

  “One Art”

  chapter 28

  Misbah

  October, then

  From the kitchen window, the rain blurred the motel. The screaming fluorescent lights seemed quieter. The brassy room numbers became small orange fish, midswim.

  The rain was clean and sweet. It brought the smell of parched earth rising and drinking and dancing. I smelled the hope, the possibility.

  Also potato pakoras, stuffed with skinny green chilies and fresh from the fryer. Pakoras and green chutney were made for the rain.

  I popped one in my mouth just as the bell rang. The sound was a screech, but I was used to it. It reminded me of a monkey one of my uncles kept as a pet, displaying his displeasure to anyone who didn’t feed him swiftly enough.

  I unlocked the office door, grunting as I yanked it open.

  A small figure waited in the downpour, an even smaller one strapped across her chest. Her pale, thin hair clumped on her head like sad dead birds. A silver heart nestled at the hollow of her throat, a tiny red stone at the center of it.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “To bother you late.” She wiped her nose and eyes on her baby’s blanket. “I hope you don’t have kids.”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “I need your help. I got this sick baby and eleven dollars to my name. I don’t got credit cards or ID cause my wallet got stolen. Please, ma’am—my husband died and I’m living with his mama. She threw me out and the shelter is closed and—”

  “Your child’s grandmother threw you out?”

  The woman nodded, and I thought of my own grandmother, Bari Dadi, gnarled and smelling of garlic and pomegranate with a large, soft belly I would ram my head into.

  She raised a dozen grandchildren—all my many cousins. She changed nappies, calmed tantrums, even climbed trees.

  Grandmothers who threw their grandchildren out. What a strange country America was.

  I considered the woman. You chose to kick at that moment, Salahudin. Ama, you seemed to say, help her.

  Even then, you were trusting.

  I gave her the room we’d just renovated. We’d taken out the sagging bed and ripped furniture and replaced them with a comfortable mattress and freshly upholstered orange chairs. Toufiq fixed the broken TV. I found a yellowing National Geographic about Yosemite and framed the pictures from it to hang above the bed. The door was newly painted. It was a room I was proud of.

  “Here.” Our keys were old-fashioned, brass with oval number tags, but I thought they were charming. “Room one. To the right.”

  The woman looked up at me and her eyes filled. I patted her shoulder and she flinched.

  “Sorry.” The woman looked down. “I’m sorry.”

  That night, beside my sleeping husband, I prayed. I prayed that the woman’s baby felt better and that she slept well and that she wasn’t up all night.

  In the morning, when I went to clean the room, I knocked first. No answer. I took out the master key and entered.

  At first, I did not understand. I stepped back to check the room number. It was the correct room.

  But the room was empty. No repaired television. No fresh bedspreads. No reupholstered chairs, no new Formica table, no firm mattress. Everything was gone, stripped bare.

  On the floor, I saw a scrap of the side table Bible ripped out. I read the words at the top. Ecclesiastes. The handwriting in the margins was messy.

  “I’m sorry he made me do it.”

  I called Toufiq from the apartment. “Oh God, Toufiq,” I whispered. “So much money we put in. What will we do now? I am a fool!”

  “Kindness is not foolish, my heart.” He put his arm around me. “Anyway. At least they didn’t steal the pictures.”

  chapter 29

  Noor

  April, now

  Jamie Jensen announces she got into UCLA at the end of April. She’s the only other student at Juniper High who applied—that I know of, anyway. Decisions were late this year, but if she’s heard from them, then I should have as well.

  But I haven’t.

  “I’m going to Princeton, of course,” she says to Atticus, Grace, and Sophie at the end of Calculus. “But it’s nice to know I have an acceptable backup.”

  She looks at me when she says this. So do her friends. My face gets hot, and I focus on shoving my binder in my backpack. But I’m not careful, and a pile of my things falls out: a change of clothes, granola bars, my passport, my wallet, my phone.

  “Are you homeless or something?” Jamie laughs. “Why do you have all this shit in your backpack?”

  As I’m grabbing my phone, she picks up my passport. When she flips it open, my old green card shakes loose.

  “Awww, guys.” Jamie holds both up to her friends. “Look at baby Noor!” She’s smiling but her eyes are dead. “Why do you keep this stuff on you? So you don’t get deported or whatever?”

  I grab the passport, but she pulls the green card away. “Hang on a second.” She narrows her eyes. “This card has expired.”

  “Ms. Jensen,” Mr. Stevenson calls from the front of the class. “Enough.”

  “Mr. Stevenson.” Jamie holds up the card. “Noor’s green card has expired. She’s illegal.”

  “I am not.” I can barely get the words out. I’m so angry. “My uncle has my current green card.” I managed to sneak my old one out of his file, because I needed the number on it for my college applications. I don’t know why I kept it. I guess it made me feel safer. I grab for the card, but Jamie yanks it out of reach.

  “Give it back,” I say.

  “I think we should probably keep it for ICE, don’t you—”

  “Knock it off, Jamie,” Atticus says to her, strangely quiet. I vaguely remember a family report he did in eighth grade about a Cuban grandmother who was an asylum seeker. After glaring at Atticus, Jamie hands me my card.

  The bell rings, and I bolt. But even if I’m done with Jamie, she’s not done with me.

  “What game are you playing, Noor?” She runs to catch up. When I keep walking, she jumps in front of me like a horror movie jack-in-the-box. “Why don’t you ever talk? You know it’s illegal to apply to colleges if you don’t have a green card.”

  “Jamie.” I keep walking. “Get out of my face. I have to go to Econ.”

  “No,” she says. “This is wrong, Noor. Look, I know you’ve had it hard, but you can’t just come into a country—”

  “I’m not here illegally,” I hiss at her. She takes a step back. “Even if I was, it wouldn’t be a crime to apply to college. There are plenty of programs for undocumented kids—”

  “The only way you’d know that,” she says, “is if you’re undocumented.”

  “Why do you care?” I’m so tired. “High school is almost over. We’ll go our separate ways. You’ll never have to see me again.”

  “I care because I’m an actual citizen of this country and my parents pay taxes to keep people like you out.”

  “Who’s our congressional rep, Jamie?” At her silence, I answer. “It’s Abigail Wen. That’s a question on the citizenship test, by the way. You love this country. Shouldn’t you know the answer?”

  “You think you’re so much better than everyone, don’t you?”

  There’s a craziness to her. A hunger. I don’t believe in people who say they can see the future. Now is now, and the only thing we know is that we don’t know shit. But for a second, I see Jamie as an adult. Icy and thin-lipped. Bony wrists and a booming voice. Persuading gullible people that the wrong path is the right one.

  She gets so close to me that I can see her pores. I can smell the bacon she had for breakfast.

  “Say something, bitch!”

  “I have nothing to say to you.” I don’t raise my voice. “Never have.”

  When I moved to Juniper I didn’t speak a word of English. My parents didn’t know I would need it. Chachu was too high-and-mighty to speak Urdu or Punjabi. I’d listen to him at the liquor shop, then go into the bathroom and practice in the mirror.

  Hello, my name is Noor.

  I’m sorry, can you say that again?

  I’m sorry, I don’t understand.

  School sucked. Kids can be shitty. Salahudin was the only one who never made fun of me. Of course everyone else did. My accent. My clothes. My hair, which stuck out everywhere. I didn’t understand why they were so mean. But now I get it. It’s a tired old tale. I looked different. Talked different. It was easier to gang up on me than find flaws in themselves.

  “I know your little secret,” Jamie says suddenly. “Your other secret. And wherever you do end up going to college, Noor? I’m going to make sure they know, too.”

  “You—what do you mean?”

  She stares at me, triumphant. The weirdest feeling comes over me. Not fear, like before. Not anger.

  Relief.

  Finally. Someone knows. Your other secret.