“Why does God do it?” I say. “Why should we pray? Why believe at all?” “Because what religion—many religions, really—offers is comfort when it’s all too much. A reason for the pain. A hand in the darkness if we reach for it.” “What if it’s not real?” I say. “The hand? What if you reach for it, and it disappears?” “I’m not going to tell you what’s real and what isn’t,” Shafiq says. “That’s for you to decide. But I do think that the hand is what we need it to be. Not what we want it to be.”
