When Zainab was old enough to understand, Anjum began to tell her bedtime stories. At first the stories were entirely inappropriate for a young child. They were Anjum’s somewhat maladroit attempt to make up for lost time, to transfuse herself into Zainab’s memory and consciousness, to reveal herself without artifice, so that they could belong to each other completely. As a result she used Zainab as a sort of dock where she unloaded her cargo—her joys and tragedies, her life’s cathartic turning points.
