is the pain I am carrying with me when I am going home and seeing a woman squatting outside my door. Her head is down, and her hair is silver. Hearing my footsteps, she is standing up, and immediately I am seeing the resemblance: It is Jivan’s mother. Inside, she is sitting on my mattress, because there is nowhere else to sit. With her legs folded, her glistening eyes, her small hands, she is looking like a child. Then she is asking me a question that no mother should be having to ask. “Mother,” I am saying to her afterward, “I am knowing what it is like to lose a loved one. And poor Jivan is
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