Seema

Seema is the older daughter of Nafeesa and Naeemullah Hussein. Ishraaq, the narrator, tells the reader in the opening of the novel that his mother dies during childbirth. The cause of her death and whether or not her baby survives is not disclosed until near the conclusion of the novel.

Seema has been disowned by her family because she is homosexual. Her father considers her dead. He refuses to say her name and will not let his other family members speak of her either. Naeemullah will not reunite with his daughter even after she marries a man, a move that makes it appear she has renounced her homosexuality. Seema is careful, however, to tell her husband that she has never stopped being a lesbian, even after she married him.

When Seema was a child, she was her father’s favorite. For that reason, it is a shock to...