The Death of Vishnu

caused the nazar—after all, when was the last time she had praised Ahmed?
    The taxi left them at the mouth of a passageway lined with stalls. As they made their way through, dozens of hands reached out, offering to sell them coconuts and flowers and incense. “All we need is thread,” Nafeesa said impatiently, brushing off the hands.
    The gates were already closed at the shrine entrance, and only visitors who had a relative being treated inside were being admitted. “We’re here to see our mother,” Nafeesa told the scowling attendant, “to see if you’ve managed to beat the ghosts out of her yet.” Reluctantly, the gate was opened a crack to let them in.
    The gateman was still watching, so they mounted the steps to the women’s dormitory, as directed. They passed a series of closed doors, and Arifa tried not to listen to the sounds of scratching and flailing. The last door was ajar, and as they neared it, a scream emerged, so full of despair that it stabbed right into Arifa’s heart. Arifa looked inside and made out a body, naked from the waist up, glistening through the loban smoke. The woman screamed again, and Nafeesa pulled her away from the door, but not before Arifa noticed the woman’s hands tied to a beam near the ceiling.
    “This way,” Nafeesa said, and they descended a narrow staircase that brought them back to the courtyard.
    There were several people here, and Nafeesa hissed to Arifa to act as if they belonged. “The shrine is through the door, there,” Nafeesa said, and Arifa saw an opening cut into the stone on the far side, next to the neem tree.
    Amira Ma had been a holy woman, widely reputed for her powers of exorcism, who had lived there several decades back. Arifa remembered her stone grave, and the marble grate that surrounded it, from the time Nafeesa had brought her there once before. Pilgrims traveled from as far as Pakistan to tie threads to the grate, and it was said that those who came with pure hearts had their wishes fulfilled. The tradition of exorcism continued to this day, with people possessed by spirits being brought there to inhale the holy loban smoke, or in more serious cases, to be left behind for treatment.
    They passed into the inner sanctum and Arifa saw the fire in front of the grave. Flames leapt up from a square hole cut in the stone floor, shooting into the air in flares of blue and green and yellow. It was the strangest fire she had ever seen, smokeless, but accompanied by loud crackling and popping sounds, as if the ground itself was being consumed. A woman stood over the hole, drawing her hands over the flames, beckoning them to come to her. Her eyes seemed strangely blank behind the colors that danced in them, and her hair, uncombed and knotted, hung in black tangles around her shoulders. As Arifa neared, the woman turned to face her, rubbing her palms over her chest, as if to transfer the heat from her hands to her bosom.
    “The thread,” Nafeesa reminded her, and Arifa tore her eyes away from the woman and stumbled after her sister.
    The grate looked molten in the light of the fire, like something just disgorged from the earth’s magma. Arifa drew up to it and touched it cautiously, half expecting it to sear her skin. But the marble was cool against her fingertips, and she ran them over the carved stone, feeling the threads that others had tied. Thousands and thousands of them, white ones and red ones, fine black sewing string and sturdy brown twine, a few already unraveling against the marble.
    She pulled out the thread Nafeesa had bought her from one of the stalls outside. It felt so light in her fingers. Would it be strong enough to save Ahmed, to bring him back from wherever he had gone? What if the good omens had not been enough? What if the unthinkable happened, and the thread broke while she was tying it? But she was being ridiculous.
    “This knot I tie for Ahmed,” she whispered to herself, as she tied the thread to the marble. “Set him free from his nazar, Amira Ma.” The thread did not break.
    Arifa felt her sister’s hand on her shoulder, and brought it to her face to kiss it. Her eyes felt wet, but when she dabbed at them, there were no tears. Perhaps she had cried enough. It was now up to Amira Ma. She would just wait and see.
    The woman by the fire had disappeared. The flames were still flaring into the night. A man was rolling a giant drum into place for the morning ceremony.
    “All those colors,” Nafeesa said. “It’s