Before she understood that her life was a pattern repeating itself at every scale, Nina thought she was simply teaching English to twelve women in the basement of a Methodist church on Wednesday nights. She thought she was doing something small.

The classroom was a rectangle of beige cinderblock with fluorescent lights that hummed at a frequency just below pain. There were thirteen folding chairs and thirteen laminated copies of a children's book about a duck. Twelve women and Nina. The women came from Syria and Somalia and Yemen and Iraq. They came from places where the buildings no longer had roofs. They sat in the chairs and held the laminated pages and watched Nina's mouth when she spoke, as if the shape of her words might unlock something inside them.

Nina wrote on a dry-erase board with a marker that was running out of ink. She wrote: I am. You are. She is. We are. They are.

The women repeated after her. Their voices were soft and their accents were heavy and the words came out bent in ways that made Nina think of spoons she had seen in photographs of kitchens after bombings—still recognizable, still trying to be spoons, but wrong in a way that told the whole story.

There was Fatima, who was thirty-four but looked sixty-four. There was Amal, who had not smiled in the three months since she arrived. There was Rania, who carried a photograph of her brother folded into the lining of her coat. There was Hala, whose hands shook when she held the laminated pages. Twelve women. Twelve stories. Nina knew almost nothing about any of them, and what she knew was worse than knowing nothing.

This is what she knew: Fatima's husband had been killed by a drone. Amal's children were still in Damascus and she had not heard from them in seven weeks. Rania's brother had been taken at a checkpoint and no one would tell her where he was. Hala's hands shook because she had been in a building that was hit by a barrel bomb and the concussion had done something to her nervous system that the doctors could not fix. Nina knew these things because the women told her, not because she asked. They told her in fragments, in the broken English they had learned from television and from each other, and then they looked at her.

They looked at her.

Nina was thirty-eight years old. She had been a Walmart associate in Detroit for twelve years. She had a daughter named Layla who was twelve and who had a condition that required treatment the insurance company said was not medically necessary. Nina had spent two years fighting the insurance company. She had spent two years losing.

She was not a teacher. She had not been trained. She had gone to Aleppo for three months to teach English in a makeshift school that was funded by a humanitarian organization that had a name she could never remember, and she had done it because she needed the money—the humanitarian organization paid a stipend that, combined with what she saved from not being in Detroit for three months, was just enough to cover one round of Layla's treatment. She had gone because she had no other choice. She had gone because Grace, her friend Grace who brought soup when Layla was sick, had found the application online and printed it and left it on Nina's kitchen table with a note that said: You just need to do what you can.

Nina had never understood that note. She still did not understand it. But she had taken the application and she had filled it out and she had gone to Aleppo and she had stood in front of twelve children in a room that had once been a living room and she had said: I am. You are. She is. We are. They are.

The children had repeated after her. Their voices were soft and their accents were heavy and the words came out bent in ways that made Nina think of the spoon photograph. She had not known what else to do. She had a laminated book about a duck.

Tarek had watched from the back of the room. Tarek was Nina's father. Tarek had been a teacher in Aleppo before the war, before the school was destroyed, before the children stopped coming. Tarek had taught English to children for twenty-three years. He had taught in a room with windows that faced the old city, and he had taught the children to say I am strong and I am brave and I will not be afraid. He had taught them these words in English because he believed that language was a kind of armor.

Tarek watched Nina standing in front of the twelve children and he did not say anything. He was a thin man with gray in his beard and a limp from a piece of shrapnel that had been removed from his leg six years ago. He sat on a plastic chair with his hands on his knees and he watched his daughter teach.

After the class, Nina said: I don't know what I'm doing.

Tarek said: Neither did I.

Nina said: The children don't understand me.

Tarek said: They understand enough.

Nina said: I don't think I'm helping.

Tarek looked at her for a long time. His eyes were the same color as hers, a brown that looked black in low light. He said: Do you know why I taught English?

Nina said: Because the school needed a teacher.

Tarek said: No. I taught English because I wanted the children to have a word for what was happening to them. I wanted them to know that other people had words for it too. I wanted them to know they were not the first people to feel this.

Nina said nothing.

Tarek said: The children I taught in my first year are dead now. Most of them. The children I taught in my last year are scattered across the world. Some of them are here, in this city, in other cities. I do not know if the words helped. But I know that I gave them the words.

Nina said: I don't know if I can do this.

Tarek said: You are already doing it.

This was three years ago. Grace was still alive then. Grace was still bringing soup to Nina's apartment in Detroit and sitting with Layla when Nina had to work double shifts. Grace was still saying: You just need to do what you can. Grace had not yet died of a heart attack at the age of forty-two, leaving behind two children and a husband who did not know how to make soup. Grace had not yet left Nina alone in the world with only a note that said: You just need to do what you can.

The note was on Nina's refrigerator. It was held by a magnet shaped like a strawberry. Nina looked at it every morning when she made Layla's breakfast. She had been looking at it for three years.

Now she stood in a rectangle of beige cinderblock in the basement of a Methodist church and she held a marker that was running out of ink and she looked at twelve women who had come from places where the buildings no longer had roofs.

Nina wrote on the dry-erase board: I have. You have. She has. We have. They have.

The women repeated after her.

I have lost. You have lost. She has lost. We have lost. They have lost.

Nina did not write these words. She wrote I have a book and You have a pen and She has a duck. But the women did not say these words. They said the other words. They said them in their soft voices with their heavy accents and the words came out bent and wrong and true.

Nina wanted to tell them that it would get better. She wanted to tell them that the losing would stop. She wanted to tell them that there would come a day when they would wake up and the first thing they thought of would not be the thing they had lost.

But she had been told these things too, and they had not been true.

Nina's mother died when Nina was nine years old. Cancer. Tarek had come to America with Nina because there was nothing left for them in Aleppo. Tarek had found work as a janitor in a school in Dearborn. He had cleaned the classrooms where other people taught. He had never complained. He had never said: This is not what I was supposed to do. He had simply cleaned the floors and emptied the trash and come home and helped Nina with her homework.

Nina had not understood this when she was nine. She had not understood it when she was nineteen, or twenty-nine. She understood it now.

She stood in the basement of the Methodist church and she watched Fatima struggle to pronounce the word have and she saw the ghost of her father standing in the back of the room, his hands on his knees, his eyes the same color as hers.

The classroom was a rectangle. The city of Detroit was a rectangle of neighborhoods and abandoned buildings and people who were trying to hold on. The city of Aleppo was a rectangle of rubble and the ghosts of buildings that had once been rectangles. The world was a rectangle that could not contain all the people who needed to be contained.

Nina said: Let's try again. I have.

The women said: I have.

Nina said: You have.

The women said: You have.

Nina said: We have.

The women said: We have.

The word we was the hardest one. It required them to be together, to be something that was more than the sum of their individual losses. It required them to believe that they were in the same story.

Nina believed this. She did not know when she had started believing it, but she believed it now. She believed that Fatima and Amal and Rania and Hala and the eight other women whose names she was still learning were part of the same story she was in. She believed that Tarek's twelve children and her twelve women were part of the same story. She believed that Grace had been in this story, and that Layla was in it now, and that the story was older than any of them and would continue after they were gone.

She believed that the story was about teaching. She believed that the story was about giving people words for what was happening to them. She believed that the story was about one person standing in front of another person and saying: I know what it is to lose. I know what it is to be afraid. I know what it is to have the only words you know be the wrong ones. But I am here. And you are here. And that is something.

Nina did not say these things to the women. She said: I have a book. You have a pen. She has a duck.

The women repeated the words. Their voices were soft and their accents were heavy and the words came out bent. But they came out.

After the class, Amal approached Nina. Amal's eyes were red. She held the laminated pages against her chest like a shield.

Amal said: My children. I hear from them.

Nina said: That's good.

Amal said: They are safe. They are in Turkey. They have a room.

Nina said: That's very good.

Amal looked at Nina. Her face was doing something complicated that Nina recognized as the shape of hope trying to fit itself into a face that had forgotten how.

Amal said: I want to tell them. I want to say—she stopped. She looked at the dry-erase board. She said: I have.

Nina nodded.

Amal said: I have children. I have love. I have—she stopped again. She pressed her lips together. She said: I have hope.

It took her a long time to say hope. The word came out bent, like a spoon from a photograph. But it came out.

Nina went home that night and sat on the edge of Layla's bed. Layla was asleep. Her breath was shallow and her face was thin and she looked like a child who was running out of time. Nina touched her daughter's forehead and felt the heat of a body that was fighting itself.

The insurance company had sent another letter. Nina had not opened it. She did not need to open it. She knew what it would say. It would say that the treatment was still not medically necessary. It would say that she could appeal. It would say that they were sorry for the inconvenience.

Nina sat in the dark and she thought about the word we. She thought about Fatima and Amal and Rania and Hala. She thought about Tarek's twelve children, scattered across the world. She thought about the Methodist church basement and the marker that was running out of ink and the laminated book about a duck.

She thought about Grace. Grace who had printed the application. Grace who had left the note. Grace who had said: You just need to do what you can.

Nina had always thought the note was about her. About Nina. About what Nina could do. But now she wondered if it was not about her at all. She wondered if it was about everyone. About all the people who were doing what they could, in basements and living rooms and classrooms that no longer had roofs. About all the people who were standing in front of other people and saying words that came out bent but still came out.

She wondered if the story was not about her at all. She wondered if she was just a character in a much larger story, the same story that Tarek was in, the same story that Grace was in, the same story that every mother who had ever held a child in the dark was in.

Nina thought: Maybe it is not a story about a person. Maybe it is a story about a shape. The shape of one person reaching toward another. The shape of a word passing from mouth to ear. The shape of a hand holding a hand in a room where the lights have gone out.

She looked at the note on her refrigerator. She could not read the words in the dark, but she knew what they said. She had been reading them for three years.

Nina's Wednesday class met every week. The women came. They sat in the folding chairs. They held the laminated pages. They repeated the words.

The weeks became months. The months became a year. The women learned to say I am tired and I am hungry and I am afraid. They learned to say I am not afraid, which was harder. They learned to say I want a job and I want a home and I want my children to be safe.

Fatima got a job in a bakery. She learned to say I bake bread and The bread is good and Thank you.

Amal's children arrived from Turkey. She learned to say My children are here. She learned to say We are together.

Rania's brother was released from the prison where no one would say he was. He arrived at the airport on a Tuesday. Rania did not come to class that Wednesday. She came the next Wednesday. She had learned a new word, which she said to Nina at the end of class.

Rania said: Hope.

It came out bent. But it came out.

Nina opened the insurance letter. The appeal had been denied. She opened the second letter. The second appeal had been denied. She called the insurance company and spoke to a person who spoke to another person who spoke to a supervisor. The supervisor said they would review the case. The supervisor said they would be in touch.

Nina sat on the edge of Layla's bed and held her daughter's hand and thought about the shape of the story.

She thought about Tarek, standing at the back of the room in Aleppo. She thought about the twelve children who were scattered across the world. She thought about the twelve women in the Methodist church basement. She thought about Grace, who had printed the application and left the note and died before Nina could ask her what she meant.

But Nina no longer needed to ask. She knew now.

You just need to do what you can.

It did not mean: You need to do enough. It did not mean: You need to fix everything. It meant: You need to do what you can. The small thing. The only thing. The word that comes out bent but still comes out. The hand that reaches in the dark.

Nina went to the Methodist church the next Wednesday. She held the marker that was running out of ink. She looked at the twelve women.

She said: Today we are going to learn a new word.

The women waited.

Nina wrote on the dry-erase board: Persist.

The women said the word. It came out bent. It came out wrong. It came out true.

Nina wrote: I persist. You persist. She persists. We persist. They persist.

The women repeated the words. Their voices were not soft anymore. Their accents were still heavy but the words came out less bent than they had been a year ago. The women were learning to make the spoons straight again.

Fatima said I persist and she was talking about the bakery and the morning bus and the apartment where she lived alone.

Amal said We persist and she was talking about her children and the room they shared and the school where her children were learning English.

Rania said They persist and she was talking about her brother, who was learning to walk again after what had been done to him in the prison where no one would say he was.

Hala said I persist and her hands were still shaking but she was holding the laminated pages and she did not drop them.

Nina said We persist and she meant all of them, all twelve women and all twelve children and all the mothers and fathers and daughters and sons who were standing in front of other people and giving them words.

The classroom was a rectangle. The city was a rectangle of neighborhoods and people. The world was a rectangle that could not contain all the stories that were being told in it. But the stories did not need to be contained. They needed to be told. They needed to pass from mouth to ear, from mother to daughter, from teacher to student, from one person to another in a room where the lights were humming and the marker was running out of ink.

Nina looked at the note on her refrigerator when she got home. The words had not changed. They did not need to change.

She thought about Tarek, who had taught English in Aleppo for twenty-three years. She thought about the children he had taught, the children who were dead and the children who were scattered and the children who were here, in this city, learning to say I persist and You persist and We persist.

She thought about Layla, who was fighting a war in her own body, who was learning to say I am strong and I am brave and I will not be afraid.

She thought about Grace, who had known the shape of the story even if she had not said it. Who had known that the small thing was the only thing. Who had known that a note on a kitchen table could be a kind of teaching.

Nina got up the next morning and made Layla's breakfast. She looked at the insurance letter on the counter. She did not open it. She would open it later. She would call again. She would appeal again. She would do what she could.

Then she would go to the Methodist church. She would stand in front of twelve women. She would hold a marker that was running out of ink. She would teach them words.

The same words her father had taught. The same words her friend had left her. The same words that had been passed from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, from one person to another in basements and living rooms and classrooms that no longer had roofs.

The same words, in the same story, at every scale.

I am. You are. She is. We are. They are.

And then, the hardest one, the one that came most bent:

We will.