Chapter Eight

Day Four: Delhi to Amritsar

This journey will take you from India’s capital city to Punjab, our ancestral state. Look out the windows and take in the landscape. Listen to the conversations around you. Watch people rejoicing as they rush to meet their relatives on the platforms of those smaller stops along the way. There’s no greater show of love and faith than traveling a long distance for somebody.

The journey from Delhi to Amritsar was supposed to start and end with food. This was how Mum had always described the train rides to Punjab, and although Jezmeen had never taken the trip herself, her memory had absorbed Mum’s stories so they became her own foggy recollections. She had images of an endless supply of pakoras and samosas, the paper cups of steaming-hot tea, and the flat squares of Indian sweets.

They were pulling out of the station now. She looked out the window as the train picked up pace. Beyond the tracks, the sun burned fiercely, its image wavering behind the train’s fumes. Mothers ushered their children ahead of them on a slow walk along the tracks. Mountains of garbage glittered behind clusters of boxy houses that appeared like Lego structures, extensions jammed together, jutting out. The train’s pace picked up as the landscape widened before them. Once they had moved beyond the outskirts of Delhi, the greenery became more consistent, the houses farther apart. Jezmeen stared at one, painted bright orange and with a satellite dish sitting on the rooftop like a trophy, and she had a longing to be inert, lazing the day away instead of hurtling toward their history.

What a relief it was to be leaving Delhi. Just the movement of the train made Jezmeen grateful that she was out of that jail cell, even though her time spent there had been mercifully short. Last night, she had hardly slept. She kept replaying the moment of her arrest over in her mind, still shocked at what had transpired. In the early hours of the morning, she went into the bathroom with the intention of taking a shower but the sight of the small space made her remember the cell crammed with bodies, and she returned to bed.

Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten breakfast—they had had to check out of the hotel too early to make their way to the train station, and although she had been tempted to stop at a roadside stall to get some fresh pani puris, a death glare from Rajni had silenced her. Jezmeen sneaked a look at her now. She was staring straight ahead and hadn’t said anything to Jezmeen since her release. Not a word. Don’t you want to know if I’m okay? Jezmeen was tempted to ask. She had felt very sorry for herself sitting in that jail cell, though she counted herself among the fortunate ones who hadn’t been hauled off for questioning. The police eventually realized that the cell was overcrowded even with those women taken away, and they began releasing the ones who hadn’t been directly involved in the organizing. Jezmeen was certain she would be there for ages but they let her go early. Her passport might have had something to do with it; also the fact that some of the women in the cell still thought she was Polly Mishra and kept referring to her as such, to the intrigue of passing officers. The women who learned Jezmeen’s real identity simply ignored her, their thoughts probably too occupied with their current crisis.

Rajni’s terse silence had followed them back to the hotel, where Jezmeen attempted to explain herself. “I didn’t—” She got that much out before Rajni raised her hand like a wall. “I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “Let’s just get the rest of this trip over with and then we can go back to our lives.” Her anger vibrated through her like an electric current and her fists were clenched at her sides.

The stretches of lush green land were becoming longer. Untamed stalks of grass rustled in the morning breeze, and on the dusty horizon, Jezmeen could see the sun hovering over a small hill of trees. The windows rattled as another train passed in the opposite direction. Cattle-class passengers clung to the railings in the open entrances. Jezmeen wondered what became of the other girls who had been arrested with her. Who could she ask? What could she do about it anyway? Her empty stomach made a mournful moan.

“Do you know if she booked our tickets with a meal service?” Jezmeen whispered to Shirina, careful that Rajni didn’t hear.

“I expect so,” Shirina said. “It’s an eight-hour journey.”

In the seat in front of Shirina, a toddler was standing and peering at them through sweeping black lashes. “What a cutie,” Jezmeen said with a smile. The toddler grinned back. Jezmeen waved with both her hands. The toddler clapped and disappeared behind her seat only to pop up again, this time trying to get Shirina’s attention.

“Hello, darling,” Rajni said from her seat near the window, but the toddler paid her no mind. “Didi,” she said to Shirina, addressing her as “sister.” Stretching out her arms, to touch Shirina. She appeared to be attracted to the bright pink tunic which brought out a glow in Shirina’s cheeks. “She likes you,” Jezmeen remarked.

Shirina looked up from her book only briefly before returning to it. Not a terrible strategy, Jezmeen decided. As cute as the little girl was, there was a limit to how much amusement she could reasonably provide for eight hours. She pulled a few funny faces and then ignored the little girl, who found another passenger to amuse her soon enough.

The smell of deep-fried onion bhajis drifted down the aisle and made Jezmeen’s mouth water. She craned her neck, expecting to see a food cart being pushed down the aisle, but the smell was coming from the seats ahead of them. Several generations of one family were traveling in the same carriage as them, and they had begun unpacking their snacks. A flask of tea was passed around. Somebody split open a samosa and the steam unfurled in the air, carrying the smell of spiced potatoes to Jezmeen’s nostrils.

She had a strong memory then, of being young and sitting on a kitchen stool while Mum bustled about. Mustard seeds popped and crackled in sizzling oil in the frying pan and the stove-top kettle whistled. Mum’s expression was far from the serene look of Indian housewives in the drama series—her eyes were pained and her skin taut with worry. Jezmeen had just asked her to take her and Shirina shopping. We need new socks, she’d said, snapping the loose elastic on her socks to prove her point. Your socks are fine, Mum had said, refusing to look at them. Jezmeen took a closer look at the family occupying all those rows ahead of them. The men were loud and their presence most obvious, standing in the aisles and hollering out to each other. The women talked while juggling their children, their conversation often interrupted by the laughs and calls of their husbands and brothers.

The meal service, when it finally arrived, was a disappointing contrast to the abundant home-cooked fare of the extended family—two soggy potato fritters and a Tetra-pack of lassi—but Jezmeen devoured it. Yesterday, fear had canceled her appetite. She believed that she might languish in an Indian jail cell forever.

Shirina hadn’t touched her meal. She looked a bit repulsed by it. The toddler was slowly rising again, this time with a floppy-eared stuffed bunny as an offering.

“Are you going to eat yours?” Jezmeen asked. Shirina shook her head and pushed the tray to Jezmeen. She tore through the meal gratefully.

One of the men in the family was telling a joke. Jezmeen didn’t catch the whole thing, but the punch line only elicited a few weak laughs. “Oh, come on,” he thundered. “Don’t you all get it?”

“We get it. It’s just a lame joke,” a woman replied. There was more laughter at this, and a few claps.

The man grinned. “Darling, when we were engaged, you always laughed at my jokes.”

A few members of the family began to hoot. “Calm down, we’re in a public place,” shouted another man, who didn’t seem to think that shouting in public was inappropriate.

“It’s a different thing, nah, being engaged and being married?” countered another woman. “After marriage, you hear the same jokes, over and over again. They stop being funny.”

“It’s a good thing we’re headed to the village, then,” called the first man. “I can always exchange you for another wife.”

The women’s scoffing and eye-rolling responses showed their disapproval but they said nothing and returned to their circle for conversation.

“Didi?” the little girl pleaded. She waved her bunny. Shirina folded the page of her book into a corner and shut it. With one hand, she tugged the bunny’s ears. The toddler giggled and yanked back her toy.

Jezmeen looked over at Rajni, who was staring out the window. Open fields and paddies came into view. The train crossed over a lake that ran like a bright vein through the yellow-green grassland. Jezmeen wished she had had the chance to come to India during her childhood. Imagine summers spent journeying with extended family members, sharing histories over pakoras while the train brought them to their origins. The carriage shuddered against the steel surface of the bridge and the family’s laughter exploded, amplifying the sisters’ own silence. The little girl giggled as her mother pulled her back into her seat. “You’ll fall, darling,” she said. “Don’t bother other people.” Through the gap between the seats, she flashed an apologetic smile at Shirina.

Jezmeen couldn’t take the quiet anymore. This was not how they did things. Rajni’s eyes were shut and she was taking deep, long breaths. As she let out a breath, she looked like a deflating balloon. Jezmeen reached out and jabbed her hard in the arm.

“OUCH. What the hell, Jezmeen?”

“I have a few things to say to you.”

Shirina, sandwiched between them, pressed her back against her chair.

“I’m busy at the moment,” Rajni said.

“Doing what? You’re sitting on a train, literally doing nothing. I can see you.”

“I’m practicing mindful breathing,” Rajni said. “Or I was, until you rudely interrupted me. Now I have to start again.”

“If you can’t multitask breathing with conversation, you’re doing something wrong,” Jezmeen informed Rajni.

“I’m not getting into another argument with you about mindfulness, the benefits of which are evidenced in multiple studies—OUCH. STOP PINCHING ME.”

“Shirina, exchange seats with me,” Jezmeen ordered. “Rajni and I have some things to sort out.”

“No, stay where you are,” Rajni said, pinning Shirina’s wrist to the armrest as if she might fly off otherwise. “Jezmeen, if you want to talk, I’m sorry, I’m just not ready yet.” She shut her eyes and went back to breathing in and out. Jezmeen could tell from the way her face was squeezed that her mind was certainly not clear of angry thoughts. She waited until Rajni let out a long exhalation.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Jezmeen said.

Rajni rolled her eyes. “Sure, it wasn’t.”

“The protest just happened. I was walking around Karol Bagh and I got on the Metro to join you two at India Gate—”

“You were supposed to be at India Gate with us from the beginning.”

“Sure, but that’s a different argument altogether,” Jezmeen said. And not one she was keen on having. Nobody needed to tell her that she overdid the drinking occasionally—she was aware of it and wasn’t that the first step? She was planning on taking more control over her impulses. Eventually, when she had the time, space, and wherewithal. A trip across India involved too many variables without adding a sobriety challenge to the mix.

“If we came here to find ourselves—” Jezmeen began, not quite knowing where her argument would end up. She wanted Rajni to know that being arrested had frightened her. Although she was acting nonchalant about the whole thing now, she hadn’t been able to sleep last night, and the thought of that cell still made her stomach turn. But that didn’t mean she had been wrong to go to the women’s march in the first place.

“We came here to remember Mum and to do service,” Rajni said.

“Isn’t protesting a service? Fighting for women’s rights? Did you know that there are women in the villages whose husbands share them with their brothers because female infanticide has resulted in an alarmingly low ratio of women to men?”

This got Shirina’s attention. She looked up at Jezmeen, alarmed. “It’s true,” Jezmeen continued. “It’s something like six men to one woman in some of the poorer states here. It’s disgraceful.”

Annoyance twitched across Rajni’s features. “Trouble just seems to find you, doesn’t it? Since the day we started this trip, you’ve been sabotaging it.”

“I have not.”

“You have. You’ve been contrary from the beginning. Even Shirina agrees with me.”

Jezmeen stared at Shirina. “Is this true?” she demanded. Shirina squirmed in her seat. “Is it?” Jezmeen asked.

“I think you could have avoided drinking that much if you knew it was going to make it difficult for you to wake up the next day, that’s all. I made a passing remark to Rajni on our way to the temple. I didn’t say ‘contrary,’ ” Shirina said defensively.

“Well, nobody says ‘contrary’ unless they’re over seventy,” Jezmeen said. To Rajni’s credit, she let the comment slide. “But I don’t understand why you think I’m sabotaging the trip. Shirina’s the one who’s not even coming along to the last half of it. Somehow that’s acceptable? While we’re making an arduous trek up a mountain and sleeping on straw mats, she’s going to be eating sweets and receiving newlywed gifts from her in-laws’ extended family in the village. She’ll probably even have Wi-Fi access. That’s not very fair, Shirina.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Shirina said.

Jezmeen groaned. For once, it would be nice if Shirina didn’t defuse every argument. It was so unsatisfying. From the corner of her eye, she noticed the toddler’s head popping up again.

“Yes, darling? Yes?” Rajni cooed, beaming. “What’s that you’ve got there? Hmm?” The girl was dangling something else over the seat. It was a bright yellow Tupperware container plastered in Peppa Pig stickers. “Can I have this?” Rajni asked. The girl smiled and trained her eyes on Shirina. She shook the container at her.

Shirina didn’t acknowledge the girl. She looked down at her book, fiercely concentrating until the girl lost interest and disappeared into her seat again. It was strange—the sight of the girl seemed to really bother Shirina. Jezmeen noticed that Shirina hadn’t gone past the first page of her book.

Then Shirina turned to Jezmeen. “I never said you were trying to sabotage the trip, but when we went to your hotel room yesterday and you were drunk, I was very disappointed.” Her lips were a thin line. Jezmeen stared at Shirina, speechless. This voice coming from Shirina, it didn’t even sound like her. Even Rajni looked surprised. “What’s so difficult about stopping after a glass or two? Hmm? It’s what people do. Normal people have limits. They know how to behave.”

“Shirina—” Rajni began.

“Don’t drag me into your arguments when you want somebody to take your side,” Shirina continued. “I won’t be a part of that.”

“Okay, okay,” Rajni said.

“And I won’t be lectured about family obligations,” Shirina said. “Not by my two older sisters, who got into a fistfight at our mother’s deathbed. Does it ever occur to you that the last thing she witnessed before dying was the two of you bickering, as always? Maybe she died that night because she had nothing else to hang around for, if you couldn’t even put aside your differences for one day. Nothing changed, even after Mum died.”

Jezmeen was stunned. She looked at Rajni, whose expression matched hers. If this was what Shirina really thought, how long had she been holding on to her anger?

Had the train carriage gone quieter since their heated exchange began? It seemed that the family at the front had stopped talking. The air was taut with anticipation. Jezmeen shrank in her seat, worried that somebody might have had their mobile phone camera out. The last thing she needed was another YouTube upload: Jezmeen Shergill in row with sisters on a train in India!

The toddler popped up again but her mother quickly dragged her down, whispering urgently to her, “Leave them alone.” Immediately the little girl began to cry. “Didi,” she sobbed. “Didi!” Jezmeen was surprised by the tears that sprang into her own eyes.

When the train finally pulled into the station, Shirina was ready to get up and go. They had spent the remaining eight or so hours of the journey only exchanging cursory words, choosing to entertain themselves. For Shirina, this meant reading her book, although her mind didn’t absorb much and she ended up drifting off to sleep. She had fragmented dreams about Mum sitting up in her bed, alert to the scuffle between her two older daughters outside her room. In the dreams, Mum got out of bed and pleaded with them to stop. As a warning, she shook her jewelry case at them, but they ignored her. Shirina had never told anybody before that she blamed Rajni and Jezmeen for the way Mum’s final moments played out. Even Sehaj didn’t know what actually happened—he was just aware that Shirina was more eager than ever to start a family with him after she returned from London. When the test showed up negative a few weeks later, the disappointment felt unlike anything Shirina had experienced before—heavy and hollow at the same time. She was still grieving over Mum, so the hot tears that flooded down her cheeks didn’t surprise Sehaj. He reminded her that it could take a few tries, that they were still young and had plenty of time. But Shirina felt let down, and wished she could talk to somebody who knew this feeling. Ironically, Rajni was the only person who would understand but Shirina was still too upset about what happened at the hospital to confide in her sister.

Rajni stood up now and counted all of their suitcases. “We have six pieces in total,” she said. “Do we have all six pieces?” Shirina took some delight in ignoring her. Rajni frowned and picked up her bags. They shuffled down the aisle, past the family who had gone sluggish and sleepy after their feast but were now on their feet with renewed energy.

Porters stepped into their path, offering to carry bags, asking where they were going. It occurred to Shirina that she had no idea where their hotel was; Rajni had that information on her itinerary. Shirina waved the porter away and kept her head down as she moved along with the crowd from the sun-soaked platform to the sheltered station. Beggars slept here—not on the edges, but in the middle of the floor, so she had to step around them. Shirina met the pleading gaze of one woman sitting up on a folded piece of cardboard, a threadbare sari wrapped around her bony frame. Shirina took care not to tread on her fingers, which extended from her open palm, a silent request for money. Like the other passengers leaving the station, Shirina quickly learned the art of stepping gingerly around a person while also not looking at them.

They engaged the first rickshaw driver who called out to them. He took their bags and piled them in the back, turning and wedging them like pieces in a puzzle. Shirina hurried to get in first; she was conscious again of how awkward she looked when she had to hoist herself up (getting up the steep stairs into the train carriage had been more challenging than she’d anticipated). She didn’t want Rajni and Jezmeen seeing her struggling. Rajni was more concerned about the bags anyway; she kept frowning and counting them. “Six pieces,” she said again, nodding.

The auto-rickshaw’s engine rumbled beneath them and the smell of burning rubber filled Shirina’s nostrils. Jezmeen began to cough. Rajni grabbed the railing at the side of the car but the driver turned back and told her not to. She withdrew her hand just in time for a truck to clip past, narrowly missing the rickshaw.

The air was supposed to be fresher up north, but from the rickshaw, Amritsar and Delhi felt one and the same. The sweltering heat had already hit its peak for the day but the residual humidity clung to Shirina’s skin. On the road, the only difference Shirina noticed between the two cities was the spaces between the squat buildings here, where the green fields behind the main road were visible. They merged onto a major road, the rickshaw flanked on either side by large trucks and buses. All the clamor of the city overwhelmed Shirina’s senses. She shielded her eyes from the dust and grit that flew into the rickshaw and peppered her hair and skin. At one traffic light, she pulled her hand away momentarily to see a man teetering on top of a tall ladder, fixing a telephone wire. The ladder, made of bamboo, bent like a weak sapling against the wind. Shirina covered her eyes again.

The roads became narrower and turned into small lanes. Every time the rickshaw turned, Shirina feared a dangerous teetering and tipping and she wondered what would happen if they got into an accident here. If their bags popped free from the ropes that constrained them, their belongings mixing with the grime and dog droppings on the ground. Would anybody help them? It was unlikely. Traffic wouldn’t stop for them—it would continue running, flattening everything they had. Shirina thought briefly about the contents of her bag and realized she wouldn’t miss anything. Let it all tumble away, it would make her travels easier.

Her passport case was in her pocket, of course. She patted it frequently, made sure it didn’t fall out from all the jostling of the ride. More important than the passport at the moment was the card inside the case that Sehaj had given her at the airport.

They veered into a lane clogged with vehicles and shops jammed together. A young man on a rusty bicycle shot in front of them, making the rickshaw driver curse loudly. Their hotel, the Holy City Palace, was at the end of this lane; its sign stuck out like a friendly waving hand. They pulled up and got out, a frowning Rajni counting the bags again.

Two gilded mirrors on opposite walls of the hotel lobby made endless multiples of Shirina, Rajni, and Jezmeen. Behind the reception desk, there was a magnificent backlit portrait of the Golden Temple at night, its reflection melting across the calm holy waters. An elderly turbaned man stood behind the computer, nodding as they entered. Rajni handed him the booking sheet. He asked them to take a seat.

Shirina couldn’t believe she was willing to sit again after having spent the whole day sitting down, but she was relieved to rest once more. Rajni picked up a newspaper and became absorbed in an article. Jezmeen came and sat next to her, picking up a magazine from the table. “Ooh, that’s a nice dress,” she said, pointing to a lime-colored gown that clung to the model’s hips. “Imagine asking to get one of those tailored.”

“Especially around here,” Shirina said. Most of the women she’d seen so far were dressed in salwar-kameez out of respect for the holy city.

“Madam,” said the front-desk man. He gazed at all three of them, not sure who was in charge. Rajni responded to his summons. If they had husbands with them, it would be easier, Shirina thought. On the train, the conductors had come around asking all the sirs for their families’ tickets. She felt a pinch of longing for Sehaj. At the airport, he had carried her bags out of the car and placed his hand gently on the small of her back. The gesture made her feel protected.

“They want our passports,” Rajni called from the reception desk.

“Open up to the stamp page, please,” said the man.

“The stamp page?” Jezmeen asked.

“The place where your entry into India was stamped,” he replied. “We need to see it.”

“Oh,” Jezmeen said. She flipped open her passport. “Honestly, I can’t even remember them stamping it.”

“They must have,” Shirina said. She had already located hers, an inked box announcing her entry date.

“If no entry stamp, we have a problem,” the man said. “National security.” His gaze shifted from Rajni to Shirina to Jezmeen. “Amritsar is very close to Pakistan. We don’t want people coming in illegally from that side, causing trouble here.”

Shirina thought his eyes were lingering on hers for a second too long. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t here to cause trouble; if anything, she had made this trip to eliminate more trouble for herself. But she wondered if she looked jittery, or suspicious.

“Found it,” Jezmeen said, springing up from the sofa. “It’s very faded,” she explained to the man at the desk, who turned his look of suspicion onto her. Relief washed over Shirina. The heat of his stare was gone. She realized how tense she was, that any question, any suspicion or doubts about her intentions here made her feel as if she was being interrogated. In truth, it was nobody’s business. Sehaj had said the same thing to her when she told him she didn’t think she could maintain this lie while spending so much time with her sisters, in such close quarters. “They’re nosy,” she had told him. “They’ll know something’s up.” To her relief and disappointment, they hadn’t noticed what was going on with her.

The desk manager typed furiously into his computer. “This could take some time,” he said. “We’ll show you to your rooms and return your passports later.”

Rajni frowned. “We can probably wait,” she said.

“It could take an hour,” the desk manager said.

“An hour?” she asked. “Why do you need so much time?”

He sighed. “Madam, do I have to explain India’s security issues with Pakistan? Do I need to tell you about Partition? Amritsar has been a border city ever since Punjab was split into India and Pakistan,” he said with pride, as if he had overseen the splitting himself.

“You don’t need to give us a history lesson, our parents told us all about Partition when we were growing up,” Rajni said.

Did they? They must have been Dad’s stories and Shirina must have been too young to understand them. Everything she knew about Partition, she had seen on Hindi films that featured a lover on each side of the border, separated by cruel politics, their families unsympathetic to their plight as violence ravaged their communities. Those movies always made her cry.

“Then you’ll understand why I need to scrutinize these documents very carefully,” said the desk manager. “This is our policy for all guests. We can’t take any chances.”

“But we’ve got British passports. We clearly didn’t scramble across the border.”

“Let it go,” Jezmeen said. “What’s the big deal if they hold on to our passports for a bit? We’ll get them back.”

Rajni looked uneasy. She eyed the man. His expression did not change. “India’s national security first, madam. We are on the front lines here.” The way he talked, it was as if it was 1947 and the war was raging at his doorstep.

“Fine,” Rajni said.

A porter loaded their bags into a trolley and pushed it toward the service elevator, pointing Shirina, Rajni, and Jezmeen to a smaller lift. An instrumental Kenny G ballad floated over the speakers, completely incongruous with the lush palatial decor in the lobby and the reception staff’s militancy. The sisters’ rooms were next to each other, as if the hotel was aware of their birth order—301: Rajni, 302: Jezmeen, 303: Shirina.

As soon as she entered her room, Shirina collapsed into her bed. This fatigue was a nightmare—and even worse that she had to dismiss it as a side effect of traveling. She took her phone and checked the time. Sehaj would be finishing dinner now, maybe watching some television. They hadn’t actually spoken to each other since she arrived in India; just messages, the banal, perfunctory types to let each other know they were still alive. Today she needed to hear his voice. She entered the Wi-Fi password and found Sehaj’s number on her overseas calling app. He picked up on the third ring.

“Shirina?” he asked. The concern in his voice nearly melted her. “Are you okay?”

Of course he loves you. It was a thought that surprised Shirina. She didn’t realize that she’d doubted him until she heard him speak.

“I’m fine.” All of a sudden her voice was thick with tears.

“I can’t hear you, sweetheart,” he said tenderly. “Speak up.”

“I’m fine,” she said loudly. It sounded more convincing with more volume. “We just got to Amritsar.”

“How is it?”

“I haven’t seen much yet. We were just on a hair-raising rickshaw ride and then checked into our rooms.” She smiled, remembering the taxi driver picking them up from Istanbul airport and chattering away in Turkish, pointing to various landmarks as he wove through traffic and entered the Old City, where their hotel was. The sun had glinted off the Bosphorus river and everything seemed possible; she was giddy with the mysterious romance of the city and she even thought she understood the driver after a while, the cadences of his language and the odd Hindi word—subah, kitap—catching in her mind.

The memory softened Shirina and she could sense Sehaj was thinking about their honeymoon too. She wanted to tell him how she was really feeling. “I’m scared,” she said.

His voice overlapped with hers. “Work’s been really crazy.”

“Oh,” she said. The tears came up again. She listened as he told her about an unreasonable client, and the late hours he was spending at the office going through some contracts with a fine-toothed comb. The business was expanding to Europe, where tax regulations in certain countries were a nightmare to deal with from overseas. Her mind wandered as Sehaj spoke. Notes from the Kenny G elevator tune drifted in the back of her mind.

“. . . And I’m having to fix everybody’s mistakes for them. Not that I want to wish my days away, but I’m really looking forward to the next long weekend.”

“That’s months away,” Shirina murmured.

“Yeah, I know,” Sehaj said with a sigh, and then he said nothing. Ask me again if I’m okay, Shirina thought. Ask about the train journey. She wanted to tell him about the little girl on the train and how purposefully she had ignored her, even when she cried out and called Shirina “sister.”

“Sehaj, I’m scared,” she finally said again.

This time, he heard. The distinct silence on the other end wasn’t caused by a delay.

“Shirina . . .” he began.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t say it.”

“I’m not saying you have to do it.”

She wanted to throw the phone across the room. It was so unfair, being told the decision was hers to make, when it wasn’t, not completely. She wouldn’t be allowed to have regrets or doubts if she was the one who had come up with the plan.

“What if I don’t go through with it?” Shirina asked. “I really can’t come back?”

Another pause. “It’s something we need to discuss, then,” Sehaj said finally.

“We—you and me? Just the two of us?”

“And my mother.”

Shirina groaned. “How does she factor into this decision, Sehaj?”

“You married my family,” Sehaj said. “We talked about this. We make our decisions together, we sacrifice things for each other. This is what families do.”

Shirina couldn’t fault Sehaj for reminding her how families were supposed to behave—in the early days of getting to know each other, she had been so impressed with Sehaj’s family. They had big gatherings, and took holidays together. They did what families did.

“But she doesn’t have to be involved in every decision we make,” she insisted.

“She’s my mother.”

“I’m your wife,” Shirina reminded him.

“Shirina—” With his lips too close to the receiver, Sehaj’s sigh sounded like a roar. “You’re making this more complicated than it needs to be.”

“I’m allowed to say no, then?” she asked, emboldened by Sehaj’s softened tone. He didn’t want to fight; he just wanted the problem to go away. They had hardly the space to argue in his house, with his mother always in the shadows, but this long-distance phone call was allowing more privacy. “This isn’t a trivial thing like choosing curtains or—” She paused at the sound of shuffling in the background.

“Hang on,” Sehaj said. His voice became distant and then muffled because—of course, as if they conjured her just by speaking about her—his mother was now in the room. How did she manage to always do that?

Moments later, Sehaj came back to the phone. “Sorry about that,” he said, but his voice was already different. Shirina felt the shift. There was something businesslike in his tone; all the tenderness was gone.

The distance gave Shirina courage. In the silence and the emptiness of her hotel room, she shut her eyes. “Is she still there?”

Either Sehaj registered her steely tone and was taken aback, or the slight delay meant that it took him a second or two to hear her. Either way, Shirina felt emboldened. She opened her eyes.

“She just came up to get something,” Sehaj said.

“She came up, did she? All by herself? She must be well, then,” Shirina said. She heard a warning voice—Stop, stop it, you’re going too far—but she ignored it.

Again, the delay seemed to stretch. Shirina thought about the day she had handed in her resignation, saying that she had to stay at home to take care of her mother-in-law, who needed help climbing the stairs at home after her hip surgery. “There’s nobody else there,” Shirina explained. “It could be a long recovery.” The reluctance must have been apparent in her voice because her supervisor took her out for coffee that afternoon. “You have such potential,” she said. “Can’t you take some time off? Can’t you and your husband work out an arrangement? There are chair lifts if she can’t move.”

Chair lifts became the single image in Shirina’s mind every time she thought about the difference between Eastern and Western values. Indian daughters-in-law took care of their families. They made necessary sacrifices. They knew what it took to preserve the peace in their home. Westerners installed chair lifts.

“Shirina,” Sehaj said. And then he said nothing. There was more shuffling, more movement and voices. She recognized the sound of the door opening and shutting. He was leaving the room. “Sweetheart,” he said. The tenderness was restored in his voice. He had left his mother and found some privacy. “I know you’re upset, baby,” he said soothingly. “I know.”

It was all she wanted, or at least this was what she thought. An offer of understanding. She thought about the little girl on the train, holding her hand out to play. She hadn’t stopped thinking about her and she could still hear the girl calling her “sister,” so disappointed when Shirina refused to play along. Throughout the journey, during all the bickering between Rajni and Jezmeen, Shirina hadn’t flipped the page of her novel once. She had read the same line over and over again until the words lost their meaning.

Rajni needed the newspaper. She had left it in the lobby because the man at the reception desk was watching their every move, but an advertisement had caught her eye and the porter had whisked them away to their rooms before she could take down the information—discreetly of course, she didn’t need Jezmeen and Shirina knowing that she was considering hiring a private investigator. How would she explain that to them?

She stepped out of the room and entered the lift with the stealth of a thief, looking left and right. The lobby was empty. The desk manager caught her eye and nodded. “Just another few minutes,” he said, thinking she had come for the passport. She was pleased for the excuse. “I’ll just wait here if you don’t mind,” she said haughtily. Once his gaze returned to the screen, she took a seat on the plush lounge chair and pulled up the newspaper. There it was, the ad in the corner:

PRE-MATRIMONIAL INVESTIGATIONS
“Better pre-nup than post-nup”

Getting married? Want to know your future spouse’s history? We can do a thorough financial and moral check-up. Our experienced and highly skilled investigators are discreet and detail-oriented. They will not let you down! With a network of dedicated pre-matrimonial specialists spanning across India and the diaspora, we are now specializing in interstate and overseas marriages* and offering competitive rates. Call us now for a free consultation!

Next to the asterisk, there was a list in tiny print of territories where their detectives could reach. London, UK, was third after Toronto, Canada, and California, USA. Rajni glanced at the reception desk and pressed the newspaper to the table with her palm. Then she slowly ripped the ad out, careful not to make a sound. She had a feeling that even a small transgression like this could make the hotel owner revoke their right to stay in this holiest of cities.

Stuffing the torn piece of paper in her pocket, Rajni headed back to the lift. “Ma’am,” the desk manager called as she passed him. She felt her heart leap in her throat and then realized how silly she was being. Ripping a newspaper was hardly vandalism, although after the visit to the police station yesterday, she didn’t want to take any chances. Just the thought of getting into trouble made her break out in a sweat.

“Yes?” she replied, trying to sound casual.

“Your passport,” he said.

“I can take the others if you want,” Rajni said, feeling overly generous because now she felt bad about defacing his newspaper.

He paused to consider this and then handed all three to Rajni.

She returned to her room and read the ad again, considering what the detectives might do. What did she want them to uncover? She wasn’t certain, but she knew that it was worth having a look around. Judging from the way she and Kabir left their last conversation, she was certain that he wasn’t thinking the worst of Davina—that she could be a con artist. It would be ideal, Rajni thought as she dialed the number, her confidence building, if Davina was already married. Rajni didn’t want to devastate Anil. She certainly didn’t want the investigators to uncover something dangerous that might have an adverse effect on her son—like a serious STD or a violent criminal history (worse yet, if Davina’s husband was in jail for violent criminal behavior and was out on bail and could come after Anil). But she also welcomed the thought of handing over a dossier to her foolish, naive son and saying, “HAH!”

“WELCOME TO BHARAT INVESIGATORS,” blared a prerecorded message that gave Rajni a jolt. She held the phone half an arm’s length away from her ear to listen to the menu options. “PRESS ZERO TO SPEAK TO ONE OF OUR QUALIFIED PROFESSIONALS.” She pressed zero and waited again, this time through a staticky old Hindi song that she vaguely recognized—it was a classic about love.

“Hello, welcome to Bharat Investigators, how may I help you?”

The young male voice was a pleasant surprise. For some reason, she had pictured a matronly auntie type sitting at a cluttered desk serviced by a single fan that blew dust around the room. The detective’s worldwide networks would be no more sophisticated than a community of wives and sisters-in-law who were migrants in other Indian enclaves in multicultural cities, and the work would be a side hobby, no different from anything they were already doing, but now it earned them a bit of pocket money.

“Hello,” Rajni said. “I’m considering engaging an investigator to do a background check on a woman.”

“No problem, ma’am. Can I know how to address you, please?”

“My name is . . .” Here she hesitated. If the investigator had networks in London, how likely was he to blab to a friend who might tell another friend about her family secrets? There was no harm in giving a false name. “Meera,” she said.

“Ma’am, your real name, please,” the man responded.

“How did you—”

“Almost every woman who calls uses the name Meera,” he said.

She knew she should have picked a less common Indian name, or at least one that sounded authentic, like . . . . Rajni. It was like telling the detective that her name was Jane Doe and expecting not to raise any suspicions.

“I’m Rajni,” she said a bit sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“No problem.” The man was breezy. “We just need to be honest with each other in order to do this right, okay?”

“And your name?” she asked.

“Nikhil Ahuja,” he said. “We’re a pair of brothers running this company.” He prattled on for a while about the company’s history—started in 2003 when a new generation of young Indians abroad began demanding pre-matrimonial checks after hearing horror stories of friends being deceived. (Those marriages were the result of a boom in Indian matrimonial websites, which made Rajni think of Shirina. Did she ever consider getting somebody to look into Sehaj’s background? she wondered. But of course, why would she? There was nothing suspicious about Sehaj—it was as if Shirina had typed “perfect Indian male companion” into a machine and 3-D printed the ideal husband.)

“And we recently expanded to territories in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand,” Nikhil said.

“All right,” Rajni said. She was feeling a bit overwhelmed by Nikhil’s enthusiasm. “And you handle, uh, cases where people want to just check somebody out because they have suspicions?” In Rajni’s private opinion, a thirty-six-year-old woman getting pregnant by a young man half her age deserved a stronger description than “suspicious” but for brevity’s sake, she felt it was important to downplay it.

“Certainly,” Nikhil declared. There was that enthusiasm again. It made Rajni just the slightest bit queasy. “I’ll give you an example of a case we worked on recently—very successful, in fact it was even publicized. A young doctor in Singapore agreed to an arranged marriage to a woman in the Sikh community. Both boy and girl liked each other, decided to get engaged. However, the girl’s mother had some suspicions about the boy. Not really any evidence, but he was a doctor—you know, high income and handsome. Why was he still available? Her family told her not to be silly; she was being overly cautious, they said. Then the unthinkable happened!”

Nikhil had a flair for the dramatic, Rajni noted.

“It turned out that the mother was trying to draw everybody’s attention away from the daughter, who had a boyfriend in New Zealand, where she studied. Some pictures were beginning to surface. The boyfriend felt betrayed that after five years together, she was just leaving him for an arranged marriage. He had called the house several times to speak to the parents during the engagement. The doctor’s parents were aware of it—the New Zealander had managed to contact them somehow as well, Facebook, I think—and the mother-in-law was already considering rescinding the marriage offer.”

“So the marriage wasn’t going to go through, and the girl’s mother was preemptively spreading the rumor that it was the boy’s fault?” Rajni asked.

“Yes,” Nikhil said. “Turns out the girl was the one doing shameful things.”

Shameful things. But really, all she did was have a boyfriend outside the community, didn’t she? Rajni was uncomfortable with Nikhil’s moralizing. When he posed his next question, she found herself stumbling and considered hanging up because surely he knew what she was hiding:

“So can you let me know the nature of your case?” he asked.

“Uh . . . yes. See, my son—he’s going out with, he’s about to marry this woman,” Rajni said. It was not strictly the truth, but if she told Nikhil that Anil had got Davina pregnant, he might not be very sympathetic. Worse yet, he would wonder what kind of mother she was—a question that had been turning in her mind ever since she awoke from her fainting spell back in London.

“Okay,” Nikhil said. “And you have doubts? Some feelings that it is not right?”

“Yes,” Rajni said. That was putting it mildly. “She’s a bit older than him.”

“Okay,” Nikhil said. “How much older?”

Rajni had done the math as soon as Anil told her, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. “She’s in her thirties. My son is . . . he’s in his twenties.” Did it make a difference if she added a few years to his age? She decided not.

“Look, the thing I’m suspicious about is that he seems very . . . influenced by her. He had career plans that he’s suddenly putting on hold because of this woman.”

“Could she be pregnant?” Nikhil asked.

Dammit. “Yes,” Rajni said. “She could be.”

“Could be, or she is?”

“She . . . she is,” Rajni said. “They’re getting together in a bit of a rush because of this whole thing, but I’m wondering if she’s roped him into it.”

“It’s a bit difficult for us to determine the circumstances around a woman’s pregnancy,” Nikhil said after a pause. “He’s certain it’s his baby?”

Anil still had that annoying teenager habit of filling every minor pause with “uh” and “like.” Rajni could not imagine him being certain of anything.

“He is,” Rajni said. “But I think he’s being fooled.”

There was a pause again. Rajni heard Nikhil repeating the facts under his breath, and a keyboard clicking away.

“I’d like to know . . . other things about her as well,” Rajni said. “Her background. Any skeletons in the closet.”

“Of course,” Nikhil said. “A woman like that, she’s bound to have a few stories, or people who can tell us a few things.”

Once again, Rajni felt uneasy but she suppressed it. That’s not fair. She tried not to think of Mum and the family who abandoned her after rumors started circulating about Rajni.

Nikhil gave her a basic game plan: he would discuss the case with his partners in the UK and do a comprehensive background check on Davina. These things were perfectly legal, he assured Rajni with a chuckle that indicated there were less legal methods to follow. “If nothing comes up in the background check—no major debt, no current spouse, etc.—then I will assign somebody to follow her for a week. Details often emerge from this part of the investigation.”

“All right,” Rajni said.

“Mrs. Rajni, I have one more question,” Nikhil asked.

Here was where he was going to ask if she had been one hundred percent honest with him. Is there anything else I should know?

“Yes?” she squeaked.

“Will you pay your deposit by Visa, Bank Transfer, or Paytm?” Nikhil asked, his voice smooth as honey.

The tone in Cameron’s email sounded genuinely excited. “Have some roles that are perfect for you.” The word “perfect” had a line through it because Cameron had been so excited, he forgot how to underline.

“Jezmeen!” he answered the phone. “How are things? How’s India?”

How was India? She could not sum up her experience in an easy sentence. “It’s incredible,” she said. “Just like the advertisements.” And the consular guidelines, which I’ll take more seriously from now on, she thought.

“I backpacked through Uttar Pradesh myself, you know,” Cameron said with a hint of pride. “Twenty years ago.”

“Did you?” Jezmeen asked, not because it was her first time hearing it (it wasn’t) but because Cameron seemed to think that this was part of their connection somehow. He understood the Indian experience because he had stayed in a filthy flea motel on a mountain and got a parasite from a dodgy curry.

“Oh yes,” Cameron said. “Really went off the beaten path. Incredible country. Such lovely people. So warm and welcoming to travelers.”

Men who backpacked or did cycling tours around India often said this of their experience. Such a great place to travel. They had made their way around solo, reliant on the kindness of strangers who invited them into their homes to share a meal. Traveling as a woman in India was an entirely different thing. Even with her sisters at her side, Jezmeen felt vulnerable.

“So tell me about these roles,” she said.

Cameron drew in a breath. “Two possibilities, very strong ones—the first is for a new television series called The Disgraced.”

“I like the title,” Jezmeen said. She had an instant image in her mind of a strong female character, not unlike the one Polly played in The Boathouse, her backlit profile against the dark and mysterious waters of the Thames. “What’s the premise?”

Cameron cleared his throat. “A promising young British-Asian woman looking for a match online becomes slowly radicalized by her lover, who is a fundamentalist and a skilled recruiter for a global terror network.”

“Very interesting,” Jezmeen said. There was some promise there. She didn’t want to get too excited, and she hoped that the script would portray the woman as a universal, identifiable sort of character, not one of those “my fundamentalism has always been in me like some kind of genetic mutation which has now been activated!” people.

“I thought you’d be intrigued by that. I have to tell you, before we go any further; you won’t be considered for the main role.”

“Oh,” Jezmeen said, feeling a flutter of disappointment. “What’s the role, then?”

“It’s a smaller role,” Cameron said.

“Like a sister?” In a moment of sheer horror, Jezmeen thought he might offer her the role of this woman’s mother.

“Like a wife,” Cameron said.

“Oh,” Jezmeen said. “That’s not so bad. The wife of another character, then.”

“Yes,” Cameron said.

“Go on, then, tell me about her,” Jezmeen said.

Somebody was knocking on the door. As Jezmeen walked over and pressed the phone between her tipped head and a raised shoulder, she heard Cameron’s response but did not think she heard it correctly.

“Wife of Terrorist Number Seven,” Cameron said as Jezmeen threw open the door.

“WHAT?” she shrieked. The porter was at the door, holding a large silver tray.

“Ma’am, you ordered room service,” he protested.

“You want me to be the WIFE OF A TERRORIST?”

The porter looked very alarmed.

“Sorry,” Jezmeen said to him, opening the door wider to let him bring the food inside. It was a more elaborate meal than she thought she had paid for, and her mouth watered at the smell of the paneer masala and steamed rice. Still, she was not done with Cameron yet. Focus.

“Let me take a wild guess, Cameron. This character doesn’t have any lines, does she?”

“No,” Cameron admitted.

The porter was setting her meal carefully on the table and laying out the cutlery.

“And she probably wears a hijab the whole time? A burka? She’s basically a pair of simpering brown eyes?”

“I think you’ll need to discuss costumes later, but . . .”

“Oh, come on, Cameron,” Jezmeen said with exasperation. “I know what Terrorist Number Five’s role is—an angry brown man screaming things in incomprehensible Arabic and waving a giant rifle around, threatening the Western world when what he’s actually saying is closer to ‘Can I have fries with that?’ ”

“Seven,” Cameron corrected her. “He’s Terrorist Number Seven.”

“So he’s that low in the rankings. I can’t even be Terrorist Number One’s wife?” Once again, the porter looked dismayed. He glanced nervously at the door as if he might be taken hostage. Jezmeen tried to give him a reassuring smile and held her hand up to say, I’ll get your tip, as she crossed the room, but he backed away and—she was certain she wasn’t imagining this—edged closer to the butter knife.

“Would you consider that? A higher-ranking terrorist?”

“Is it a speaking role?” Jezmeen wasn’t sure if this was a serious conversation anymore.

“She might have a few lines, I suppose,” Cameron said. Jezmeen could picture him sitting at his desk in London, wiping the sweat off his brow and using one hand to type an email to the producers.

The porter was lingering at the door. “Hang on,” Jezmeen said to Cameron, reaching for her purse. She gave the porter a few rupee notes, which he touched to his forehead in a gesture of gratitude before backing out the door.

“So it’s a no, then?” Cameron asked when Jezmeen returned to the conversation. “You realize that your options are narrowing, right?”

“I don’t think Terrorist Number Six’s wife is going to be my big comeback role, Cameron,” Jezmeen retorted. “I’m sorry, but we’re just going to have to work harder on this.”

“Seven,” Cameron corrected her. Jezmeen wanted to reach through the phone and club him on the head.

“You mentioned a couple of roles,” Jezmeen said. “What are my other options?”

Cameron hesitated. With a sinking feeling, Jezmeen realized that Mrs. bin Laden was the good news.

“There’s a movie which is being shot in India,” Cameron said. “A sort of . . . train journey story.”

“Really?” Jezmeen asked, her interest piqued. Maybe Cameron had been trying to warm her up. “Tell me more.”

“A family goes on a trip across northern India to reconnect with their missing son,” Cameron said. “It’s a road-trip story with a bit of a twist.”

Jezmeen smiled. She could imagine the press junkets now: I was on a similar journey—both spiritual and physical—with my sisters, and I can tell you, there were lots of unexpected twists and turns, ha-ha.

“. . . it’s a cross-genre sort of thing,” Cameron said. “Quite unusual. Fitting for a niche audience but maybe not limited to them, if done right.”

“What’s the role?”

“Shruti,” Cameron said. “The family’s eldest daughter. Unmarried, a bit of a concern for the parents. Unbeknownst to her, they’re taking her to the village to meet a suitable man.”

“Right,” Jezmeen said. She could work with that. “Sounds like a good role, then.”

“She’s not in the story for very long,” Cameron said. That hesitation had returned to his voice. “But her character makes a real impact, you know? We think about the consequences of everybody’s actions long after.”

“What happens to her?” Jezmeen asked, already slightly involved and therefore grieving for Shruti.

“She catches a . . . uh, virus.”

“Okay,” Jezmeen said. “A tragic heroine?”

Cameron cleared his throat. “I suppose you could say that.”

“Cameron . . .” Jezmeen began.

“It’s a very physical role,” Cameron said.

“What, she’s leaping off buildings and rooftops in her condition?”

“She’s undead.”

“WHAT?”

“She has a virus which makes her . . . you know, dead but not quite—”

“She’s a zombie? You’re offering me a role in a Punjabi zombie film?”

“Yes,” Cameron said miserably.

“How far into the film does she die?” Jezmeen asked.

“About ten minutes.”

“What the hell, Cameron!”

“It’s a very physical death,” Cameron said brightly. “You know how zombies are—lots of spasms and buckling. You’d get to display a range of emotions, which could come in handy for something else.”

“For another Indian monster road-trip film?”

“I’m not the one who writes these scripts,” Cameron protested. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Who can I shoot, then?” Jezmeen asked. “Who wrote this movie?”

Cameron gave her a name that she hadn’t heard of. Jezmeen sighed. “It’s disappointing, Cameron,” she said.

“We’ve talked about this, Jezmeen. The lack of roles and your current reputation.”

“I know, I know,” she replied. “I’m disappointed in the scripting as well. The unmarried daughter is disposed of within ten minutes in what is—I’m guessing—a three-hour Bollywood spectacle with zombies, like some extended version of the ‘Thriller’ video. They can’t even keep Shruti alive to dance a little bit?”

Cameron clearly had no words. “Hmm,” he said, as if he was considering sexism and all its complexities when it was just as likely that he was using one hand to type into the Google search engine: “how to calm down angry brown actress.”

“Those are my two options, then?” Jezmeen asked.

“For the moment,” Cameron said. “I’m sorry, Jezmeen. You know that I’m advocating for you in every way that I can, but—”

“I know,” Jezmeen said. The pleading tone in Cameron’s voice made her feel guilty. She thought of Rajni sitting in the police station, surrounded by men and wringing her hands, and she felt a pang of regret for putting her through all of that. “Listen, I’ll think about it, all right?”

“You will?” Cameron asked brightly.

“Give me a day or two?” Jezmeen asked. “Send me the info.” Ever since the Arowana incident, she was aware that she couldn’t afford to be choosy, but these choices truly depressed her. Her thoughts flashed back to the makeup counter. Was it worth doing that gig until another breakthrough happened? She was going to go into arrears in her rent; the only thing that would tide her over for a little while was the bit of money Mum had left them from the sale of the house.

After hanging up, Jezmeen ate her dinner of paneer masala and basmati rice, scraping her spoon across the bottom of the bowl, and then using her fingers to wipe up the last traces. She hadn’t noticed how hungry she was until she started eating, but when she was done, she realized how quickly she had eaten. Immediately the sensation of fullness turned into queasiness. The room was filled with the smell of spices now; she called room service to ask them to take her tray. “Right away, madam,” the porter said, probably terrified that she’d orchestrate a militant ambush on his family if he didn’t obey her. The thought made her realize that she didn’t have her passport back yet. After the police station yesterday, she felt naked without her identification—although she had played it cool, she’d actually been uneasy when the man behind the reception desk took her passport as well. I’ll need that back, she had to refrain from saying because it sounded too much like something her haughty older sister would say.

“Could I come down to get my passport back, please?” she asked.

“Madam, we just returned all three of them to Mrs. Chadha,” the desk manager said.

“Thank you.”

She sighed and hung up. She supposed she’d better go over to Rajni’s room to talk to her anyway, try to clear the air. She wanted to be better at this pilgrimage thing—she did—but it was also occurring to her that she was going to need a lot more strength and patience to get through this leg of the journey. Amritsar was a holy city; alcohol was difficult to find here and she wasn’t keen to wander the outer edges of the city in search of a cold bottle of beer.

She went out into the hall and knocked on Rajni’s door. “It’s me,” she called. “Just wanted to get my passport back.”

The door opened. “Can I come in?” Jezmeen asked.

Rajni left the door ajar and turned her back to Jezmeen, busying herself with unpacking. Her suitcases were neatly lined along the wall and open, her clothes categorized in those packing cells that she had bought for Jezmeen and Shirina years ago after seeing them in a sale. “Your bras don’t go missing,” she’d said with amazement, as if this was the worst possible consequence of traveling. Because of all her meticulous organizing and contingency plans, it probably was.

The passports were sitting on the bedside table. “Raj, I’m really sorry,” Jezmeen said as she entered the room and shut the door behind her.

Rajni dismissed her apology with a wave, as if to say, “Too little, too late.”

“Listen, I feel terrible. I know I made a joke of it on the train, but I was actually really scared. I didn’t know what they might do to me in there.” She hesitated, because it was hard to talk about what could have happened. “Rajni, I’ve never felt fear like that before—my skin crawled with it. Every time a guard walked by the cell, I held my breath until he passed because I was terrified he’d come in and do something to me. I realized I had no idea what the law permits police officers to do here, and they’d already decided we were rioters. The men at India Gate, they looked like they were ready to pounce on us and rip us to shreds—then the police had us in little cages and could do the same.” Jezmeen stopped when she realized her voice was shaking.

“Think about how worried I was,” Rajni said, extracting her toiletries kit from a tight space between two neatly pressed pairs of trousers. “Me and Shirina. Why can’t you think about other people before you plunge yourself into stupid things?”

“Rajni, we’ve been over this. I wasn’t courting trouble out there. It just happened.”

“You and Anil,” Rajni said, shaking her head. “You don’t think about other people.”

“What does Anil have to do with this?” Jezmeen asked.

Rajni pursed her lips. “Nothing,” she said quickly. Her gaze flitted away from Jezmeen’s. “He’s just selfish sometimes, that’s all.”

“He’s just a teenager,” Jezmeen said. “He’s going to grow out of it.”

“What’s your excuse, then?” Rajni countered.

“I’m not self—” Jezmeen began, but she noticed the muscles tensing in Rajni’s jaw. There was no point arguing. This was how their problems at the hospital escalated. “I was really, really glad to see you,” Jezmeen tried again. “And more grateful than you’ll ever know.”

Rajni’s gaze softened. “Good,” she said quietly. She paused her unpacking and rose to her feet. Her knees snapped and she winced.

“Ouch,” Jezmeen said.

“It didn’t hurt,” Rajni said. “I just hate that sound.”

“I get it too sometimes, especially if I’ve been sitting all day.”

“It gets worse. More frequent. I spend all this time trying to outsmart these little signs of my body wearing down—stretch, eat more flaxseeds, get eight hours of sleep. But what can you really do?”

She sounded like Mum, lamenting that her years of balanced eating and recommended daily walks had taken her nowhere. “After Mum’s diagnosis, she started saying: ‘At least prayer is helpful,’ ” Jezmeen recalled.

“I don’t know where she got that idea from,” Rajni said.

“Have you ever tried it?” Jezmeen asked.

“What—praying?”

Jezmeen nodded.

“No,” Rajni said.

“Not even after—you know, when Mum told us about the jewelry pouch? You didn’t . . . I don’t know . . .” She struggled to find the words. “Check with God?”

“Did you?”

“No,” Jezmeen said quickly. She felt silly admitting now that after storming out of Mum’s room and thinking I need a drink, she had found the hospital chapel instead and decided it was as good as anyplace to get some answers. She remembered sitting in that quiet room, shivering as an icy wind blew through a crack in the stained-glass window.

“God, I can’t believe how much I wish she were here,” she whispered to Rajni.

Rajni took Jezmeen by the shoulders and guided her to sit down on the bed. “I know,” she said.

“I just feel so untethered now that she’s gone. Both our parents are dead. We’re orphans, did you realize that?”

“I know,” Rajni said again.

“And we’re next.”

“What?”

“I mean, we were children, we were that generation that was supposed to outlive the adults. Now that they’ve died, another entire group is going to outlive us. We’re the next to die.”

“That won’t happen for a long time,” Rajni said, stroking Jezmeen’s back. “It’s decades away.”

“It’s easy for you to say because you’ve got a legacy. You have a life established—your career, your home, your family. I’m still stuck where I was ten years ago. Virtually nothing’s changed.” A sob escaped Jezmeen’s throat. She saw her future in an endless list of insignificant roles, that woman who flashed across the screen in a rabid frenzy and perished from a zombie virus before the audience even knew her name.

“Shh,” Rajni said, holding her. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Jezmeen said. “Even Mum thought my life wasn’t headed anywhere.”

“She was just concerned about you,” Rajni said.

Jezmeen shook her head. “After the doctors told her the cancer was terminal, and she didn’t have much time left, she said, ‘How can I die knowing that you’re not settled?’ I thought she was referring to marriage, but it was other things too. She said I had no commitments. ‘You need to settle, Jezmeen,’ she kept saying. It just made me feel worse about my career and everything.”

“When was this?”

“A couple of weeks before she wrote that letter.” Jezmeen shut her eyes, remembering the way her voice and Mum’s had escalated. She had dropped in at the hospital to see Mum on her way home from an audition for a small speaking role on a two-part BBC drama series. “It went pretty well,” Jezmeen said hopefully. “I’ll know in the next couple of days.”

“How many of these things are you going to do, Jezmeen?” Mum asked impatiently, surprising her. Although Mum had never been an enthusiastic encourager of Jezmeen’s fledgling acting career, this outburst gave her the impression that Mum had been waiting a long time to tell her off. The ensuing lecture about settling down and being more responsible made Jezmeen feel even worse, and when the producers didn’t call her back by the end of the week, she cheered herself up by polishing off a bottle of wine on her own before Mark came over for dinner that Saturday.

A few weeks later, when Mum talked to all three of them about the pilgrimage, Jezmeen had been the first to grasp her hand. Don’t leave, she was saying, even though she had known for a while that the end was near. Mum’s fingers were icy; her blood circulation had already become poorer but the shock of those familiar hands feeling so foreign had made Jezmeen recoil. It took her a while to grasp Mum’s request, because she was still frightened by the thought of Mum’s body rapidly deteriorating.

“We need to call a truce, then.” Rajni sighed. “You and me. No more of this. You saw how upset Shirina was on the train. We need to stop arguing.”

Jezmeen gulped back a sob and nodded gratefully. She had known from the start of the trip that a conversation with her sisters about Mum’s death was inevitable. For the first time, the thought of it didn’t seem so awful.