A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

He watched her with a worried look on his face, as though her response would determine if he should have hope. It was never going to happen. Mumma bought them shoes from the cheap shoe stores; they were allowed one pair a year, usually in the fall before school began, and they wore them until they became too tight or until the next school year. “Definitely,” she said, just so he would let her study in peace, but when he jumped off her desk and almost ran out the room, she did not know why she had said it.

I was very interested in tracing the effect characters have on one another, and the weight of their words and actions—even the ones that seem inconsequential in the moment or said in passing. In this scene all Hadia says is “Definitely,” but that is all it takes for Amar to begin to hope for the shoes.