“Azim, where is my mattress?” Ummi asked my father when she saw him three days later. “I’ve been sleeping on the floor on a pile of blankets the Sisters gave me, and I can’t do it anymore. Where’s my mattress? Do you have it?” My father replied in the negative and told her he also slept on the floor in a room crowded with mice and men. “Well, it’s somewhere. We sent it. And I want it back,” Ummi said. For Ummi, it wasn’t so much about the loss of her mattress as it was about her feeling undignified. A rodent bigger than it should have been jumped out of a cabinet at her one day when she opened
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