[Cross-posted at Religion Dispatches]

It’s 4:30 am and I can’t sleep. Outside our bedroom window, trucks begin to move in to prepare for the neighborhood festival. I get up and work on the anthology for hours in the rare silence before the baby & Basil awaken.

The festival begins. It’s one of those perfect San Francisco days, warm enough to enjoy the perpetual breeze. The band plays just beyond the walls of our roof deck, and soap bubbles float up close enough to pop from the crowded street below.

All afternoon, friends join us. Music and sunlight stream in to the kitchen through the open glass doors. We eat dark strawberries picked the day before, drink homemade lemonade, and dance on the deck to everything from the Beatles to Hank Williams. Our friends are second-generation American Muslims of South Asian, Arab, and African heritage, white converts, and beautiful toddlers of inter-racial marriages. Watching them interact, I am content, and hopeful for our future here.

After our friends leave, Basil and I push the stroller through the neighborhood. The festival is officially over but children are still dancing on a wooden floor as a crew dismantles the stage behind them, as women clear stalls of crafts and clothes.

Later that night, Basil and I are stunned and relieved at OBL’s death, watching Twitter swell and listening to President Obama’s address on the laptop.

The relief dissipates. I have no desire to set off fireworks, jump into a car and yell out the window while waving fists and flags. If I were in New York City, I would light a candle at the memorial and keep vigil. In San Francisco, I pray in a room lit only by a streetlamp, filled with sadness for those who have died in America, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and apprehension at the terrorism-related deaths to come. Our work as Americans and Muslims is far from done.

The next morning, all I want to do is read articles and listen to NPR, but Bean is grouchy, refusing food and wanting to be held. The more he grabs at my legs, the more irritated I become. Aggrieved, I take him to the other room to play. Within a few minutes, we go from grumpy to giggling. Right now, being aware of the world and its future is meaningful only if I can also be fully engaged with this tiny, wriggling, joyful boy.

There will be many articles searching the details for meaning in the coming days, and after awhile they will all begin to sound the same. What is important is this: He is dead, and in the court of the best of judges. We who live have choices to make.

Perhaps I will remember the neighborhood festival for the news at the end of the day. More likely, I will remember it for the women setting things right after the crowds dispersed, and the children dancing as men worked carefully on.

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