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The music was so loud, Dina could feel it thudding in her bloodstream, making her teeth judder, the beat infectious, and yet the only thought in her head was to leave, make a break for it, scurry away. She was sure she would hear the sound of the dhol drums ringing in her ears well after the performance finished. Beside her, her father and mother had their arms in the air, their shoulders moving with the beat, and she couldn’t help but smile. Her family weren’t dancers, but Azeez and Nasrin Haq were great at playing along. Unlike Dina, they wanted to be in the thick of things. She let them dance ahead of her, ducking her head so she wouldn’t be so noticeable. Though, who was she kidding—dressed like a bright-orange Popsicle, she was hard to miss.

At least Lisa was having a blast, and her Bollywood dance moves were a revelation—her best friend was shoulder shimmying and hand twisting like a pro. Lisa caught her eye and grinned, her skin flushed. She was clearly enjoying herself, and Dina remembered that her friend’s family was Hakka Chinese, part of the Han people who had settled in various parts of India. She recalled how shocked she had been when she met Lisa’s parents and they had spoken to her parents in fluent Hindi; Lisa told her once that her family had settled in India over a century ago. Now Lisa sashayed over to Dina and wrapped an arm around her waist.

“Let me see you move, girl!” Lisa yelled over the music. Dina obligingly did a half-hearted shoulder shimmy. This was so not her scene, which her friend well knew, but for family, she could make an effort. She didn’t want to disappoint the readers of Vogue Arabia, after all. Also, her sister could be scary when she was making content.

Dina found the performative parts of her sister’s chosen career deeply uncomfortable. Hania had tried to bring Dina into her reels on more than one occasion, but Dina couldn’t help but freeze whenever she was in the spotlight. Now she tried to execute a few classic Bollywood dance moves: an awkward “turning the light bulb,” followed by a limp “put the bread in the oven” maneuver, all while bouncing up and down in time to the music and trying not to feel too foolish. Hania had wisely kept Dina out of the choreographed dance she had prepared with her friends, and as the doors of the airplane opened and a stream of guests emerged, each member of the bharat dressed in a colorful outfit and eager to celebrate the start of the wedding festivities, the A girls lined up in formation behind a suddenly demure-looking Hania, who had pulled her ornate dupatta shawl low over her face, and started twirling and moving in perfect harmony, executing a flawless dance routine set to “London Thumakda,” an older but very catchy song, though Dina recalled that, in this particular movie, the heroine was jilted by her fiancé days before the wedding.

The crowd cheered when Samir, dressed in a heavily embroidered shalwar suit, emerged from the plane, flanked by an older couple, clearly his parents. He was a handsome man, and when he spotted Hania, walking demurely toward him, her entourage of A girls dancing alongside, his face lit up with such genuine affection that Dina was positive there would be no altar-jilting at this wedding.

She wished Arshad had ghosted her on her nikah day, she thought suddenly. Her life would have been a lot simpler. As if her thoughts had summoned him, the fly in her mocktail suddenly appeared, hands and hips moving in time to the beat. Arshad had always enjoyed making his own grand entrance.

Dina watched, disgusted, as he executed a perfectly graceful dance, engaging first one A girl and then another as if he were a Bollywood actor, before making an exaggerated bow to the approving audience. He spotted her in the crowd and smiled hugely. When he pointed at her and crooked his finger in a come-hither gesture, a wave of panic overtook her, and she backed away. Arshad started dancing to her, the crowd parting, delighted with the show. Dina froze; she knew she had asked Arshad to play the part of doting husband over the course of Hania and Samir’s nuptials. Had, in fact, agreed to owe her odious ex-husband a very large favor for the privilege of him keeping their current relationship status under wraps until Hania and Samir drove off into the sunset. It only now occurred to her that in order for this ruse to work, she in turn would have to play the role of besotted wife, and she wasn’t that good an actor.

Arshad was halfway toward her now, but Lisa, faster on her feet than Dina, stepped in front of Arshad’s path. Just as her ex-husband paused to dance with Lisa, Dina saw her chance and fled to the security line.

As she approached the line, Dina became aware of a conversation taking place between a Canadian border agent and a young Brown man. The young man had his hands up and was clearly trying to de-escalate the situation, while the border agent, who was armed, advanced on him.

Dina’s heart started to pound for an entirely different reason, one that had nothing to do with the bhangra beats behind her. As a Muslim woman who wore hijab, one of the reasons she had decided to become a lawyer was to help the many people in her community who were routinely harassed, overpoliced, and punished for simply existing. Though most of her casework these days revolved around assessing corporate contracts, she still volunteered her time at various legal clinics and had sat on the board of the NCCM, a Muslim lobby group that advocated against Islamophobia in Canada.

She felt a familiar fury rise within. She was so sick of men throwing their weight around, taking up all the oxygen in a room, manipulating everyone around them to maintain their own status. She hurried forward, ready for a fight.

“I’m part of the wedding party,” Lucky explained again to the border officer, who looked at him dubiously. The officer was a young South Asian man with a full beard, light-hazel eyes, and a stern expression.

“Then why aren’t you dancing with the rest of them?” the officer asked—quite reasonably, Lucky had to admit. “They booked the hangar for fifteen minutes, but here you are, skulking away. Seems sus, bro.”

“I’m . . . shy?” Lucky said, wanting to face-palm. Why had he phrased it as a question? If he had known the price for not participating in the group project was an unwelcome interrogation, he would have grudgingly busted a move.

“You don’t look shy,” the officer said. “I bet you were the loudest kid in your grade-six class. Real class clown type.” The officer glared at him, and Lucky looked more closely at the man. Was the border guard’s lip twitching, as if he were holding back a smile? Lucky tried to picture the guard without his beard, and his eyes widened suddenly. Before he could respond, a voice spoke up.

“Excuse me, Officer, but why are you harassing a young Brown Muslim man?” a woman behind him asked.

Lucky froze. He knew that voice. He had dreamed of that voice often over the past six years. At one point, he had hoped to hear that voice every day of his life. Suppressed feelings of longing and loss came back to him in a rush as he turned slowly to meet Dina’s righteous gaze. He watched as the color drained from her face, and he noted in a daze that she had only grown more beautiful in the intervening years, which seemed unfair. He watched as she opened and shut her mouth a few times. It gave him a tiny twinge of pleasure to see that she was just as much at a loss for words as he was. He swallowed thickly, and when he spoke, his voice was shaky.

“Salam, Dina,” Lucky said. “Come here often?” He wanted to snatch the words back the instant they left his mouth. Even the border officer inhaled sharply at his idiotic opening gambit. As for Dina, she narrowed her eyes at him before glancing at the border guard.

“Actually, I’ve changed my mind. You can go ahead and take this one for secondary screening,” she said. “I can personally vouch for his propensity to lie. About everything.”

Lucky’s mouth dropped open. Had he heard her correctly? Judging from the hostile expression on Dina’s face, she was deadly serious.

Another border officer joined them now, and Lucky groaned inwardly. This could turn very, very bad. Still, Dina’s words left him puzzled.

“I never lied to you,” he said.

Dina huffed out a bitter laugh. “What about when you never bothered to tell me you were moving to Chicago?”

“I didn’t lie. I just never mentioned it,” he said.

“Dude,” the border guard said. “That’s, like, lying by omission, right?”

Dina snapped her finger at the border guard. “This one gets it. Have your way with him, gentlemen.”

“Whatever you say, lady,” the new guard said, a wicked gleam in his eyes. He reached for his handcuffs, and Lucky rolled his eyes.

“Really, fellas?” he said. “She’s not the queen of Canada. You don’t have to listen to what she says.”

“You’re a liar and a bad friend,” Dina added. “You never attended my wedding. You didn’t even bother to reply to my invitation.”

The original guard hissed. “That’s just not on, bro,” he said.