A secure enough life, constrained but more luxurious than anything she had ever imagined, her mother’s aristocratic fantasies lived out on a far shore, until it ended. Until she ended it by an act of outrage. Again she shifts her thoughts away and rests her head against the cool glass and looks down into the dark. They are probably over Turkey now, only a few scattered lights mark Anatolia below. She stares at the sparse twinkles until her eyes grow heavy and she joins the other sleepers.

Something wakes her in the night-turbulence in the air or in her spirit, she can’t tell-but she has been dreaming. Sonia takes her dreams seriously, and while the rags of it drift from her mind she gropes in her bag for her notebook, opens it, and flicks on her overhead light. The notebook is thick, quadrille ruled, European; she has had it for nearly twenty years; its black pasteboard covers are scarred, gouged with travel and use, its pages marked with grime, wine, tears. She writes down the dream: She is in a farmyard-no, a circus encampment; there is a boy there, who is not quite right, subtly deformed, a crablike stride, his head too large, an avid look on his face. He holds up something for her inspection, a nest of tiny birds or squirrels, she can’t recall which: small, warm, helpless things. He begins to smash them on the ground; they explode with soft pops and gouts of vivid red. He offers her one; she takes it and smashes it. She knows it’s wrong but she can’t help herself; she is carried away by the transgressive excitement. There seems to be an endless supply.

Then a presence appears, dark, powerful, a woman in a spangled costume. The odd boy cringes before her, hands over the nest. Sonia feels horrible, she wants to undo the carnage. The spangled woman embraces her and tells her she is forgiven; it was the boy’s fault, and Sonia is shown the nest and sees it is still full of tiny birds. Or squirrels. The boy will be punished, but Sonia is loved; she will not be punished, only she will have to take the place of the boy, will have to be deformed too. The dream becomes horrible; the kind stern woman wants to turn Sonia into…

Sonia finishes writing down what she can recall. It is a significant dream. She often has such dreams when she travels, travel being symbolic of the psychic journey, releasing the collective symbols up through the quotidian sludge to illuminate, to terrify, sometimes to foretell. She wonders what old Fluss would say about it. Not much, he never interpreted but pushed and prodded her into doing the hard work, and she recalls how she resented him and loved him during that year in Zurich at the Jung Institute when he saved her life and became her mentor. Remembering him and neat, snowy Zurich, she smiles; she is going to the opposite of Zurich now, where the archetypes walk the streets in the blazing sun of day. Is this also the reason for taking this somewhat inconvenient flight, instead of going straight from London? She switches off her light, puts in earplugs, falls asleep again, and wakes only when the cart comes around with tea. It is six-thirty in the morning, and an hour later they land in Lahore.

She sees Rukhsana waiting for her on the other side of the customs barrier, looking nearly the same, a woman ten years younger than Sonia, maybe grown little plumper over the last year or so, startlingly like her father in drag. She is wearing a dark Western suit and blouse with a chiffon scarf draped loosely around her head as a sop to propriety. Expensive sunglasses perch above her broad brow. She is a reporter for the liberal English paper The Daily Times and has seen no reason to quit this job just because she is married and a mother.

The two woman embrace warmly. Rukhsana says, smiling, “Lahore Lahore hai,” Lahore is Lahore, which is how residents of that city greet one another after a long absence, as if to affirm that there is no other place fit to live in. Rukhsana fights Sonia over Sonia’s bag, wins, links arms with her, and carries her out of the terminal. A sprightly blue Morris is parked right at the curb, in violation of traffic regulations but protected by a large card on the dash that reads PRESS in English and Urdu. The two women drive off into the insane Lahore traffic, west on Durand Road, through the death-defying intersection by the Lahore Press Club, past the Provincial Assembly, and down Egerton Road to the Mall, which no true Lahori ever calls by its new properly Muslim name.

While they drive, Rukhsana talks; family first. The children, Hassan, Iqbal, and Shirin, are fine in health and accomplishments; husband Jafar is fine too, in health and accomplishments; she speaks also of his defects, which are numerous, both physical and mental. Her brother Nisar remains chubby and sly, mistresses galore, richer than ever although a little nervous now, trying to maintain his place on the spinning circus ball of Pakistani politics. Seyd, the baby brother, recently made major, still a pompous pain in the you-know-where, dreadful politics, a supporter of the recently deposed general. Sonia asks what Nisar thinks about the conference they are organizing, the reason Sonia has returned to Lahore.

“Oh, you will hear that from his own lips. I suppose he is as interested in it as in anything else that does not immediately put money into his pocket. Or votes.”

From which they pass to a précis of the current political situation in her nation and the familiar defects of the foreign policy of the United States.

“No wonder you are losing!” Rukhsana says. “Pakistan is stupid enough, but we are all Bismarck compared to you. Why is this, Sonia? People ask me, because I was educated in America, so I am the expert. What can I tell them?”

“You can tell them that not one American in ten thousand can distinguish Iraq from Iran or find Pakistan on a map. We are not a subtle people.”

“Oh, you can say that again! The British were bad enough, but at least they made the effort to understand. They spoke the languages, they knew the history, and still they made terrible errors. But nothing like this. Our country is coming apart, and it all comes from what you are doing. You know how I know this? My brother is moving funds out of Pakistan, so when it collapses we will not be standing in our shirts. This is what we’ve come to.”

She pauses to honk at a motor rickshaw driver who has swerved into her path, a long blast nearly unheard over the continuous honking of the other traffic.

To change the subject, Sonia observes, “The traffic has gotten worse. I wouldn’t have believed it possible.”

“Yes, Lahore is unlivable now, but we still live here. I’m glad I have this Mini. Jafar wants me to use the Mercedes, but can you imagine trying to steer that boat in this mess? Look, there is the High Court. Do remember when you used to drive us children to meet my father there when we had half days at school, and he would take us to the bazaar for ice candy?”

“Oh, yeah, and other sweets. He had a sweet tooth himself, and your mother would always complain that he was ruining our appetites. And he would let himself be berated and give us a sly wink.”

A painful silence after this; then Sonia said, “I’m sorry about your mother. I’m sorry I didn’t come to the funeral.”

“Yes, you should have been there with your husband. She was not very nice to you, but you should have come.”

“I didn’t think I’d be welcome.”

“Oh, what nonsense! Because of something that happened twenty-eight years ago? A book? But now you come.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and is.

“I forgive you,” says Rukhsana, “although others may not.”

“Does that include Nisar?”

“Oh, no, with Nisar everything is negotiable, even forgiveness. Otherwise we would not be here. Move your ass, you stupid monkey!” This is shouted out the window at a van that has stopped in a traffic lane to make a delivery.