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"Who is this?" "Bakira so Dasheem, your honor." "And what the fuck does she want?" "She is here to speak in favor of the reinstitution of the outer space initiative, your honor." "Her and what army?" She is just a woman, your honor. Is she from some Family Ive not heard of? No, your honor. Then why is she here? I cant stand colonial trash. You had an appointment open, your honor. God is most merciful, child, but I am not, particularly when youre clotting up my schedule with colonial martyrs. I suppose it will pass the time until prayer. Send her in. *** Bakira so Dasheem gave birth to her children at the breeding compounds in Jameela, a thriving green settlement in Nasheen between the mountains and the sea. She took the train there from the inland farming town of Mushirah, crossing a desert waste of toppled cities and war-torn vistas that she had only read about in old history texts. It was her first train ride, and she found it exhilarating and just a little bit terrifying. The long war with Chenja and Nasheen spared no one, and each train line she transferred to had the ring of the familiar about it, as if she had heard some news story about it getting blown up or mined or heard of some great catastrophe that came upon its travellers. She was not pregnant then, of course. That was for the magicians and birthing specialists to conjure, but if she had been it wouldnt have made much difference. By all counts, her children would belong to the state, unless she felt some strange need to care for them. She had put off her required birthing quota as long as possible. Her mothers had left her a plot of land in Mushirah, and for many years, she was the only person who could make anything grow there. She spent most of her nights up on the roof, gazing at the stars. She studied astronomy over the radio as part of her state

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school program. But when she went to Mushtallah looking for a job scouring the stars as part of the state-sanctioned outer space programs, she was turned away again and again. Only women who had fulfilled their child quota were given those jobs. If she wanted to know more about the wandering satellites that crossed over her farmland each night, she had to birth the required number of babies. It was her duty to God, and Nasheen. Her mothers once confided that they had each had two broods of six before settling on the interior and raising children belonging to others Bakira included. When Bakira asked them why they cared for her and her house sisters instead of their birth children, both had laughed and told her theyd been far too young to care for babies. But everyone had to do their part for the war, however far-off it sometimes seemed, or how unready they felt. Bakira had known women who died birthing babies at the compounds. She had heard terrible stories of botched deliveries and mutant children. But it was the only way she would get to the stars. Some things, she resolved, were worth a little blood and pain. When she arrived at the compounds, they brought her through an organic filter that ate the dust and bugs and any lingering contagion from her body. It was only the second time in her life shed been through a filter. It keeps you safe, the receptionist told her. Only those coded for the filter are allowed entrance. Less chance of Chenjan infiltration, you know. They stamped her with a tattoo that gave her name and birthplace, and told her to see her first birthing specialist. It was the first of many. It turned out her womb was all wrong for carrying babies. But they made her have them anyway. When it all went wrong six months into her pregnancy, when she was bloated and semi-conscious, aware only of rapid movement and the swinging overhead lights and blinking, semi-organic syringes, she wondered if she would die. Wondered, only once, if the stars were worth it. The magicians crowded over her like flies, buzzing and spitting. She has a bicornuate uterus. I told you she would not last full term, not with a brood this large. Who authorized this? Better to have stuffed her with a new womb.
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We already reduced the number of embryos to And risked a womans life. She should never have been allowed to go past the window of viability. Poor thinking, poor planning. I am sorry, Yah Reza, I did not think No, you did not think, and now it is not just one womans life at risk but a woman and five children. Such fools you are. You want to waste more lives, go throw yourselves on the front line, and spare me your idiocy. It was many years before Bakira realized that the screaming she heard then was her own. *** It says in your report that when Queen Ayyad revoked your programs funding, you did not, in fact, cease your work. Is that correct? That is correct, Bakira said. When the research sanctuary was closed I continued my research in Mushirah, at my familys farm. With what equipment? I had liberated some outdated equipment from the sanctuary. I was told it would be of no further use. You admit to stealing equipment from the monarchy? I admit to furthering our knowledge of what lies beyond the outer atmosphere. And now youre here to tell me this knowledge was worth betraying your Queens explicit order and stealing much-needed resources in our struggle against the Chenjans? Yes, your honor. Why did you do this? For the betterment of Nasheen, your honor. Ours is a perfect world, matron so Dasheem. All that makes it imperfect is the war, and when that is over, you will have all the time you want to seek the stars. Instead, you stole much needed resources to no purpose. I told you. I had a purpose. I wanted to know what our ancestors hoped for. I wanted to believe our world could be better. But you didnt make anything better, did you? Instead, you stole resources and
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threw them at some dead point of light. You and that agency had your priorities backward. Do you have any response to that? *** It was just hours after the bloody birth, still trembling and fuzzy-headed, that Bakira stumbled out of her dormitory bed in the middle of the night, clutching at her cramping belly. She pushed onto the balcony overlooking the sea. It was full dark, and the moons were in recession, barely as big as a thumbprint in the night sky. She gazed across the thundering ocean to where the water met the starry horizon. She gripped the rail and leaned forward, sparking a fresh wave of pain that radiated through her body. The wind whipped at her hair, her long tunic. Blood trickled down her legs. And she wept. Because it was not until that night that she realized what she was. What all of them were. They were merely bodies. Weapons of war. It was an inescapable revelation, and it cut her deeply, deeper than any birthing knife. She wept because she knew then that her only escape was to find some way to get to the stars, away from all this madness and pain, on some lonely planet, where they had been abandoned at the far end of the universe. *** "Have you given birth to any children, your honor?" "I would not sit on this council unless I had." "If the child was diseased, ill-formed, wouldn't looking to the past, to the mother's conditions under which the child was formed at birth, wouldn't that give us some answer to how to move forward to create better children, healthier children? "Are you implying that Umayma is ill-formed?" "I am implying that Umayma could be a better place. There is no sin in saying we could be better people. This cannot be the world they imagined for us. I have proof that it is not." "Not one of us on the high council will sanction the stealing of vital public resources for private purposes." "You think the war is not a private enterprise? I would take weapons from the
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hands of the war machine that profits First Families like yours and the families of those corrupt Chenjan mullahs, and use it to uncover the secrets of our past, and all the technology lost to us. We could cure more ills. Save more children. Surely our predecessors did not die of cancers. Or Azam fever. Or a hundred other things. I've heard it said they lived a thousand years or more. Yet our women struggle to reach fifty -" "Not all struggle." "You dont, no. No, the First Families do not struggle. In a world of nearly twenty million, there are perhaps five hundred who do not suffer as the rest. You make us suffer so you dont have to. But I speak of a future where none suffer. We can build that future. But only if we believe in it." "Your concerns have been noted," the councilwoman said. Are you quite finished, or did you have actual evidence to share at this hearing? I have evidence, your honor. *** The state made it remarkably easy to leave her children. "You want them to have your first name for their last, or keep your family name?" the recorder asked. Or we can just randomly assign them some common names, if you like. It was three days after the birth, and Bakiras wound was already scarred over. They said she could come back and have it cut out of she liked, but most women liked to keep it, to prove they had done their part for the future of Nasheen. Bakira was alone now, with her mothers both gone to cancer, her house sisters dead at the front, and her lovers Ghaliyah and Farah long since lost to her. Easy enough to do her duty to Nasheen, have her little babies, and leave them here to be raised. What did she know about raising babies? She had been brought up in a state school for three years before she got her first house mother. And it was three more after that before she was permanently assigned to a household where she felt comfortable calling her parents "mother." Even then, she knew she was not a wanted child, just a necessary one for helping around the farm. It was a cold existence. "I'd like them to keep the second name," Bakira said. Its an old name. My
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mothers said its from the beginning of the world. The recorder shrugged. "Fine. Boys?" The only boys shed known had been in stories, and in the stories of heroes she read, she only remembered a few names. So the youngest she called Ghazi, after Ghazi Karif, and Fouad the King, and Amir the famous politician. The recorder simply wrote them down, as if it didnt matter which boy got which name. Bakira supposed it didnt really. They do not belong to you, she reminded herself. "And the girls?" There were thousands of Ghazis, Amirs, and Fouads. But her girls had to be singular. "Used to be everyone wanted a girl called Fatima or Kadijja, the recorder muttered. Now its all Danjiasa and Fahdajah. What kind of a name is that, I ask you?" Bakira told her the names. The recorder sighed, and wrote Kinedaja so Dasheem and Nyxnissa so Dasheem. The recorder pressed a custom tattoo onto each childs foot, then passed over a piece of organic paper. Thats it, then. Press your thumb there to turn them over to the state. Bakiras hand hovered over the page. Can I keep the right to retrieve them in three years? When theyve finished with the inoculations? Makes no difference to me. The recorder gave her a different paper. Bakira studied it carefully, then pressed her thumb to the page. The recorder peeled away a copy from the page and gave it to her. Nobody does, you know. What? Come back, the recorder said, and gave her a thin smile. You all say you will, but nobody does. Bakira turned away from the desk and began walking down the hallway. She still ached, but the magicians had already stopped her bodys production of milk, and scrubbed her clean of many of the surging hormones that had made her so mad and exhausted in the months of her pregnancy. She would still expel bugs in her stool for weeks to come, they said, but it would reduce her chances of depression and
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encourage her bodys healing. When she stepped into the blinding light of the afternoon, she could almost pretend that the last year of blood, pain, and confinement had been some kind of dream, a waking nightmare soon forgotten in the warm afternoon. By evening, she had a state-sponsored ticket to Hayat, and a position waiting for her at the Mount Hayat Astronomical Research Sanctuary. When she looked up at the night sky from the train, she could almost pretend she had never had any children at all. *** And what is that evidence? Its what our ancestors left behind. Bakira pointed up, to the dome that enclosed the high council chambers. The councilwoman shook her head. That stuff up there is just a bit of waste, effluvia. Nothing at all of importance. What is the purpose of looking behind us? It's like asking a woman to keep her placenta in a jar and examine it all day, scrying for some hint it would give to the person her child will become. That it sorcery and witchcraft at best. Youre mistaken. Pretending a thing did not happen does not make it so. Pretending that when we look up into the sky, were all alone, does not make the rest of the universe disappear. The councilwoman leaned toward her, squinted. I think too many of you astronomers are high on sen, is what I think. *** When they finally allowed Bakira access to the powerful telescopes, it was merely to verify the findings of others. They spent much of their time at the sanctuary mapping the moons, gaining knowledge of how their ancestors had lived on those giant bodies. All that was visible there now were the entrances to sub-surface cities, some roads, and tantalizing glimpses of what may have been old vehicles a metallic fin here, an eroded organic bit of mesh there. It was some time before Bakira asked why it was they did not look at Umaymas smaller satellites the wandering derelict ships that orbited the planet. On occasion, a ship would fall out of orbit and light up spectacularly in the sky, raining down over the
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world like a broken meteor. There are other agencies that study the ships, they told her. Defense, mostly. Are they a risk? Bakira asked. The ships? Sometimes, was the ever-enigmatic response. It was nearly a year before she got up the courage to go to one of the senior directors after midnight prayer and ask about the practical application of their work. Are we planning missions to the moons? Bakira asked. The director knit her brows, frowned. Why would we do that? To learn more about what happened there. Of course not. Its entirely possible there was some terrible contagion that forced them to colonize Umayma before they were ready. We could bring it back and murder every last person. It is not worth the risk. Couldnt we send a bug? We could work with the magicians, maybe, create a space-faring bug Are you mad? I No, I dont think so. Bakira hurriedly pulled out some calculations she had done on discarded bits of organic paper retrieved from refuse dumps throughout the facility. Spread them across the desk. The director recoiled, but Bakira pushed on. Our problem with flight has always been that the atmosphere here eats most ships with non-organic parts, right? The more complex, the faster it disintegrates. The reason so many derelicts survived at all is because they were partially organic. Its why most other ships can never come here theyre all non-organic. The world eats them. Right? But here, she pointed to some notes from the organic tech division on the inherent properties of extinct species, namely fossilized puffer mantids. Many of the early bugs here, the giant ones, are said to be impervious to the vacuum. Couldnt we create a magician-controlled bug with an outer shell like this that also had recording capabilities, like our security bugs? The director hesitantly reached for the pages. Have you shown this to anyone? No, but Ive spoken to some magicians and organic technicians, and they say it should be possible. Child, just because something is possible doesnt mean it needs to be
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attempted. I dont understand. Isnt this what we want, eventually? To get back to the stars? Isnt that the ultimate aim of the outer space initiative? The director gathered up Bakiras notes. She shook her head. Youre new. I will tell you this once. You are here to complete the tasks you are assigned by Queen Ayyad. That is all. The mission of this agency is not to go into outer space. The stars and the moons were abandoned by our ancestors for a reason. You may not like this world, Bakira so Dasheem, but it is yours, and there is no escaping it. *** I am not mad, Bakira said. Im simply able to see beyond what you have all put in front of me. I can see beyond this place. I can see something better. How do you know life on those other worlds was any better than life here? It has to be, Bakira said. The councilwoman snorted. For a woman whose use of logic is so vital to her proclaimed profession, you have presented very few logical statements. *** They closed the program two years later. The sanctuarys dozen or so researchers were brought into the skylab, thanked for their time, and issued chits for their final pay and train vouchers home. Bakira took her chit and her vouchers and packed her things. It was simple enough to pack one of the smaller telescopes in with her belongings. No one had cared much for it while they had the funding. She supposed no one would care anything for it now. She traveled back to her family farm in Mushirah to find that the women she had left to care for it had abandoned it the year before. Looters had been through at least once, and taken most things of value. The fields were weed-choked and ragged, and her neighbors told here they were six months into a severe drought. When she went into town for end of week prayer, the mosque was more crowded than ever before. During the day, she could now hear the raised voices of daily prayers clearly from the edge of her farmland, every Mushiran united in one purpose fervent desire for a storm that would not come.
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Bakira set up the telescope on the roof, beneath a tattered awning. Each night, she ate fried locusts and sat on the roof, legs crossed, waiting for the suns to set. It was the most peaceful time of her whole life, the time she felt closest to God. And when the veil of the night descended, she trained the telescope not on the mapped-over moons, but on the smaller satellites, the derelict ships, and every night was a revelation. There were hundreds of ships circling Umayma, hundreds of types, in various states of death and dismemberment. There were shattered globes; spinning, jagged ovals; pearly rectangles; blocky, mangled squares the color of dawn; and more, so many more that she could not imagine how she had lived so long without ever seeing them. She had stared up at the sky her whole life, but they had fixed her gaze on only one story, one narrative. Umaymas epic journey from the moons to the world below. No one asked how theyd gotten there in the first place. No one talked about how many more had been barred entry. It was then that Bakira wondered, for the first time, what it was her people had run from, so many thousands of years before. How terrible must it have been, that they were so frightened now to admit anyone else on the planet And what was happening out there now, that so many were still seeking shelter on Umayma? But it was the night she turned her telescope into the blackest part of the sky that massive stretch of the eastern horizon devoid of stars and satellites - that changed everything. *** Arent you going to ask what I found that makes me so passionate about reinstituting the program? Does it have relevance? Or is this just drugs and liquor talking? It has relevance. I think that whatever you found, you came to the incorrect conclusion about it. Im heartened to hear youve agreed to this hearing with an open mind. *** That night, she realized her farm was a lonely place. When she looked up, now, she feared she would be swallowed in blackness. She knew what she needed to do,
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though there was no reason or logic to it. The next day, bereft of money, she hitched a ride out to the coast, to Jameela, and watched the ragged, desolate landscape with new eyes. She knew now that she was not abandoned, not alone. Im here for my children, Bakira told the clerk at the compounds. It came out all in a rush. She knew that if she did not say it quickly, she would simply turn around and walk home. Youre four weeks early. Youll find the names here. She passed the paper over to the clerk. Kinedajah, Nyxnissa, Amir, Faoud, and Ghazi. They are mine, and Id like to take them home. When they presented the five strangers to her, Bakira doubted her decision. What was she going to do with so many children? What did she know about them? But then she thought of the wasted farm, the seething darkness of the sky, and she held fast. There is some training, if you wish it, the nursery attendant told her softly. Training in raising children? Bakira asked. She had not thought such a thing existed. The attendant nodded. Yes, Bakira said. The five strangers stared back. She wasnt even sure which was which. That would be good. *** Perhaps we are alone here for a purpose, the councilwoman said. "Did you drunken astronomers ever think of that? Perhaps we are here because we escaped a great calamity, and by surging up into those stars, you would kill the last of us. God brought us here. There is no doubt of that. If we have retreated from the stars, that is our fault, not His. Let's not confuse our own faults with some greater plan or purpose. It used to be we could celebrate the beauty of God through study of His creations. You bar the stars to us like there's more to be unraveled in learning how to better destroy others' bodies than within the whole universe. But just because something is lost doesnt mean we can never get it back. And it doesnt mean we should shun it because we dont understand it."
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And you think you understand it. I do understand it. Do you know the true purpose of the outer space initiative, child? Now I do, yes. You know it was never our intent to go to the stars. I know. You know it was simply another program we funded in pursuit of new weapons for our war with Chenja. I know. Then why are you here? Because I know why you want to keep us all at war. Is that so? Yes. I found something. *** When the youngest girl, Kine, was six years old, she asked Bakira, Did you always want to be a farmer? Outside, the fields of red grass were ripening, turning crimson-gold in the heat. The children were sitting at the table, dutifully reading the Kitab before evening chores. Bakira stood casually on one foot, partially leaning against the kitchen sink, staring up at the darkening sky. It was the only time she could get them to be quiet, to stop questioning when she had them read aloud from the Book. Someday, she wanted to be able to tell them what it all meant. No, Bakira said. I wanted to be an astronaut. The other girl, Nyxnissa, looked up from her copy of Kitab, one finger pressed to the pages to save her place. Bakira already suspected that she did not read as the others did. She often caught her up on the roof, sounding out the words under the stars. Whats that? Nyxnissa asked. Im not sure anymore, Bakira said. Worst of all, she was not entirely sure why she had come back for her children. *** All right, you drunk colonial. What did you find?
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I found God. *** Bakira released the boys to the state schools for training at sixteen. It was almost a relief. She sat on the train afterward and sobbed and sobbed, because with the relief came a deep and abiding sense of grief and guilt, as if she had betrayed everything she had promised by taking them home from the compounds in Jameela, as if she had not truly believed what she saw in the stars. As if she had failed her children, the way God had failed her. When she returned home, the house was quiet. Kine was off tumbling with some local girls, getting into some fresh round of trouble. It was Nyxnissa who waited for her, recently returned from the mosque, hair still covered. Such a serious child. Where are they? Nyxnissa demanded. Bakira did not look at her. At some indeterminate point, her children had ceased to be strangers, and had become active agents with their own dreams and desires. One morning she looked up, and in the place of her dutiful little children, she found herself caring for wild, angry, vexing adults. How much easier it was, with boys. You tried to care for them a little less. For all the good it did. I told you, Bakira said. I kept them as long as I could. Just like that? You just threw them away? Nyxnissa lashed out for the first thing at hand, her copy of the Kitab and threw it at Bakira. It thumped on the far wall. The act left Bakira breathless, but it drove Nyxnissa to tears. Nyxnissa was already taller than Bakira, broad in the shoulders, lean, and well-muscled - the sort of young woman Bakira had always wanted to be. Someone strong. Impervious to the terrors of the world outside Mushirah. The world she wanted so desperately to abandon for the stars. Nyxnissa burst into a terrible explosion of emotion, weeping and snarling all at once as she stormed around the kitchen, throwing plates and bug bins, jars of preserves and pickled locusts. Why the fuck did you come back for us if you were just going to abandon us
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again? Nyxnissa cried. What are we to you, things? Dont you feel anything? Anything at all? Bakira thought of the boys, looking back at her as they were led into the cargo hold of a train headed east, to the state combat schools. Three pinched, hallowed faces. Terrified, confused, even after all this time. But it had been easy, hadnt it? Far easier than continuing this way, responsible for so much. "I don't know," Bakira said. "I don't know what any of us are supposed to feel." She reached out and smoothed over Nyxnissa s head scarf. The girl was trembling. "You were good with your brothers. You will be good leading boys. I've kept you out here far too long. Maybe this is not the place for you, either." Nyxnissa pushed her hand away. Fuck you. Thats enough. Fuck you, Nyxnissa said again. She retrieved her copy of the Kitab. If you wont protect them, I will. Some part of Bakira feared she had lost something important in that instant, some tenuous connection to something outside of herself. Why was it that girl seemed to feel everything, when the only time her mother felt anything was when she stared out at the blackness that ate the stars? *** That is not an acceptable answer, Bakira so Dasheem. If you want us to fund a dead program, you had best bring something to the table less open to interpretation than your own personal theology. It is admirable that you see God in the stars. Many do. He constructed it, after all. But tangible proof of God outside the Kitab is the stuff of mullahs and ministers, not serious inquiries from the state, not in Nasheen. The councilwoman sighed. The clerks tell me it is near afternoon prayer. Let us adjourn until then. That wont be necessary, Bakira said. I am almost finished. She thought of the day she got the letters telling her her sons were dead, less than a year after she released them to the war. Thank God for that, the councilwoman said. ***
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Below, the house was quiet. Her children had gone off to fight in the war, each in their own way. Bakira sat on the roof, staring out at the blackness in the sky. When she had gone to the former director of the sanctuary with her findings the director had sighed, said This changes nothing. I know you miss your work, but your obsession with the sky is going to cause you nothing but pain. She thought that was funny, as if anything up there could be worse than the world down here. Youre a robust sort of woman, Bakira. We could always use more of you at the breeding compounds. We lose too many frail flowers there. Career breeding? Your children are gone, arent they? How long can you truly manage that homestead by yourself? The Queen has killed the program. Its dead, Bakira. Stop fighting and go find another occupation. Something more grounded. Now Bakira put her eye to the telescope once more and gazed out at the blackness. She had always been told the dark part of the sky was simply a lack of stars. It was there because Umayma rested at the edge of everything, all the schools said. Their predecessors had chosen this place because it was the farthest away from everyone and everything - the edge of the universe. But when she trained her telescope over that darkness, the darkness had an edge. She had logged its jagged circumference, like a giant puzzle piece smashed upon the night sky. When the other satellites passed into the darkness, she found, their light grew a shade dimmer. Not enough to note with the naked eye, but with her telescope, she could see that something was shielding that part of the sky, like some kind of giant film or filter that protected the world, a second skin broken, tattered. Because if it was meant to be some sort of protection from radiation, or contaminants - or perhaps a cloak of some sort, obscuring the planet from view it had been torn long ago. Now it hung loose and frayed across the eastern edge of the world. Yes, they were far from any other star systems, it was true. But that swath of the sky was further obscured by the remnants of the cloak. At some distant time, her people

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had the ability to create and maintain a filter over the whole world. Protection against the dark or the calamity that had driven them from the stars? She followed the path of one of the giant dead ships as it slipped across the dark side of the skin, and as she watched, the light it reflected from the sun began to make the misty script visible behind the curtain. It had taken a year on the roof to document it all, every laborious slash and flourish of the old script, spun across the cloak like a prayer on a shroud. Once, it must have spanned the whole world, held it and protected it. Offered some solace. A promise to those left behind. God will return for you, the soft script said, in the old prayer language, visible only with the dead ships as backdrop, and only through a telescope. That was all it said. She had mapped it a hundred times. There was no more. A promise? A prayer? A blessing? Some kind of direction? She would never know. Something had torn up the rest of the cloak that once draped the sky, and whatever writ or direction or message beyond that had been lost with it. God would return for them. They had not been abandoned at the edge of the universe. They had not been abandoned at all. *** A message in the stars? They were able to put a filter over a whole world to keep others out, to shield us. Why would they do it? And, more importantly councilwoman, why would they tear it down? Why tear it down if they didnt expect us to return? To escape? Pass this knowledge to a mullah and she will tell you it meant we should stay right where we are, that all will come in good time. If God is returning for us, if there truly is some heavenly writ up there, it simply affirms the Queens decision to abandon the program. But it came down. Its broken!

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You do not know who tore it, though, do you? That could just as easily have been Iblis making mischief. If you have found anything in the stars, Bakira so Dasheem, you have simply found confirmation of your existence. That isnt what If this is the most compelling evidence you have, some tattered dead script in the sky so wildly open to interpretation that the Chenjans would likely tell you it meant the world would explode tomorrow, then I must decline your request for funding. But councilwoman That is all. Arent you at least curious? Dont you want to know what they hoped for us? Why were here, and why they tore down the filter? Dont you want to see whats out there waiting for us? Im about to go to prayer, matron so Dasheem. And then an early supper. That is enough for me. Ask, instead, why it is not enough for you. *** In Mushirah it was full dark, clouded over no stars. Bakira stood on the roof, spread her arms. It began to rain. *** You dont understand, Bakira called after the councilwoman. There are no options for me. None. You have taken all of them. I know what we are here. You say Nasheen is ruled by God and Queen, but it is not. It is ruled by rich, blind, First Family women like you who wish to divide and conquer us. I see what you made us, and I reject it. We are not just the bloody afterbirth, the mess you leave behind as you claw your way to prominence. We are human beings, as good as you. Better. I know we can build something better. Then go build it, the councilwoman said. *** When Bakira jumped from the roof, it was with the knowledge that she would not die she had jumped many times from the roof of her farmstead and lived.

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She jumped not because she wanted to die, but because in that one moment one passing, glorious, unforgettable moment, she could believe the message written in the stars was for her, for her children, for Nasheen, for Umayma. She could believe there was someone waiting to catch them all on the other side, someone inviting them home. Someone who believed in them enough to wait.

END

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