* * *

“And the Entities?” Khalid asked her. He was six, then. “Will they be judged by Allah too?”

“The Entities are not people. They are jinn.”

“Did Allah make them?”

“Allah made all things in Heaven and on Earth. He made us out of potter’s clay and the jinn out of smokeless fire.”

“But the Entities have brought evil upon us. Why would Allah make evil things, if He is a merciful god?”

“The Entities,” Aissha said uncomfortably, aware that wiser heads than hers had grappled in vain with that question, “do evil. But they are not evil themselves. They are merely the instruments of Allah.”

“Who has sent them to us to do evil,” said Khalid. “What kind of god is that, who sends evil among His own people, Aissha?”

She was getting beyond her depth in this conversation, but she was patient with him. “No one understands Allah’s ways, Khalid. He is the One God and we are nothing before him. If He had reason to send the Entities to us, they were good reasons, and we have no right to question them.” And also to send sickness, she thought, and hunger, and death, and the English boys who killed your uncle Khalid in the street, and even the English boy who put you into your mother’s belly and then ran away. Allah sent all of those into the world, too. But then she reminded herself that if Richie Burke had not crept secretly into this house to sleep with Yasmeena, this beautiful child would not be standing here before her at this moment. And so good sometimes could come forth from evil. Who were we to demand reasons from Allah? Perhaps even the Entities had been sent here, ultimately, for our own good.

Perhaps.

* * *

Of Khalid’s father, there was no news all this while. He was supposed to have run off to join the army that was fighting the Entities; but Aissha had never heard that there was any such army, anywhere in the world.