Acknowledgements
In conversations, acts of patience, and small kindnesses whose consequences no one could have foreseen my book began.
My father was the first person who made me want to write. I do not know whether he remembers the moment, or whether there was ever a single moment to remember. Influence seldom announces itself. A word is spoken, an example is set, and years later someone sits before a blank page because of it. Whatever he set in motion in me eventually became this book.
My mother carried me through the long middle, the part that receives less notice than beginnings or endings, though it asks far more of us. She remained beside me when the first excitement had faded, when the pages refused to become what I hoped they might, and when the finished book was still too distant to imagine. She believed without asking for evidence. Her faith was quiet, constant, and stronger than my doubt. I could not have written this without her.
I brought Ali ideas while they were still rough. He listened before they knew what they meant. He found the gaps I had learned not to see, questioned what seemed too easy, and told me when a thought was sound, and when it was merely pleased with the sound of itself. We often discover what we think only by trying to say it to someone who is truly listening. He was that person for me.
My gratitude to them is not separate from this book. It is written in invisible ink between every line.
