I make that sound so easy. Nothing about this has been easy. But somehow I find I really am strong enough to bear it. And I recognize how remarkable, and how unearned, a gift that is.

Rabia calls out my name. I hold up a hand to say I’ll be there in a minute. There is one thing that remains to be done, one ritual to fulfil.

I walk away from the water, but not too far away. The sand here is wet and packed solid. I write my mother’s name in the sand. Did she and Omi really make love in a cave with someone watching? Was that someone Ed? In all those sentences Ed wrote about her what was truth, what falsehood, what his own interpretations? They had dissolved into my memory of her — all those words had — and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to separate them out.

With the little plastic spade I’ve been carrying I cut out the patch of sand which has my mother’s name inscribed on it.

Some days she’d leave the house and walk down to the beach nearest us. It was no more than a twenty-minute walk but we’d always tell her she shouldn’t be out on the streets alone. She replied that no one ever bothered her. The last time anyone saw her she was walking down the street towards the sea. It was the monsoons, not a time to go to the beach, not a time to put even a toe into the water. The undertow could carry you out so far you’d never return.

She never returned.

Her absence was proof of her death. She loved me too much to allow me to believe she was dead when she wasn’t. Despite all the lies, somehow that memory, that certainty, had come to me, urgent and unshakable. And for that, I’d always be indebted to Ed.

Did she throw herself into the sea, or simply let it carry her away? Or did she struggle in the end, trying to find her way back to shore? I’ll never know. I don’t even know for which of those options to hope.

I take the block of sand in my palms and walk forward until I am knee-deep in the cold, clear water. The bright winter sun throws a net of silver between the horizon and me. I bend my back and lower my cupped hands just below the surface of the sea. Her name and the sand stream out between my fingers, dissolve into the waves, and are carried away.

About the Author

KAMILA SHAMSIE’s first novel, In the City by the Sea, was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize. After her second novel, Salt and Saffron, she was named one of the Orange Futures “21 Writers for the 21st century”. A recipient of the Award for Literary Achievement in Pakistan, she lives in Karachi and London, where she writes frequently for The Guardian. She often teaches in the U.S.