“Mommy, do you know Adonis, his poetry?” Marwa asked her mother the next time they spoke on the phone.

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

Grover Cleveland was on the $1000 bill. Marwa was in a dorm room at the State University at Stony Brook on Long Island.

Did she feel guilty? Marwa had Sunday and several days after to ask herself that question.

Why were Hands and Feet angry with Head, Marwa remembered her
mother beginning.

Was it really 60,000 years ago, 600 centuries, that the Nile began its modern flow, rising from June through September? Where had Marwa read that?

Was the universe cut from whole cloth, or was it a thing of shreds and patches?

Sunday, March 4, Marwa set aside homework fine-tuning preparation for the Intel Science Fair in Brooklyn in two weeks) to accompany Judy and her father out to a cemetery on Long Island for their annual rite of visit to Judy’s mother’s grave where visit stones had to be placed.

But Marwa felt herself at a great distance from the classroom cheer in a different place and time altogether.

Mid-December, another Saturday night Marwa wasn’t going anywhere, she was home babysitting for Joey, her parents out at a holiday party, and of course Sharif was in Alexandria with their maternal grandmother and aunts for his winter break.