October, 2000

Judy Yamiguchi was Marwa’s best friend. Her father “sat on a Chair at NYU in neuroscience.” Her mother had died when Judy was in 8th grade, and she had a younger sister a year older than Joey. Daily, Judy had to pick up her little sister at the elementary school near Stuyvesant where Joey was a second-grader. Marwa’s mother arranged for an old woman from Masjid al-Farah, their mosque on West Broadway, to pick up and stay with Joey until either she or Marwa returned home from work or school.

Marwa’s mother taught part-time, Arabic and Arabic studies at Columbia. Sharif commuted to college in Brooklyn , but childcare was not expected of him and certainly not of their executive father who had moved from a Brooklyn branch bank to a bank office in the Wall Street area. In Marwa’s family, there had never been any sentence in which ‘father’ and ‘childcare’ could appear together. The thought had never occurred to her.

“It’s all a matter of translation,” Judy argued with Marwa. They were studying together for a history test. “Translation is like a window into another culture. I speak Mandarin and you speak Arabic, and both of us speak American English. And you and I wouldn’t even agree on how to say something in English!”

Around Halloween, they sat together at the white formica dining room table in Judy’s living room in one of the Washington Square Towers apartment buildings in Greenwich Village . Her younger sister was off in her own bedroom, a cubicle-sized space next to Judy’s room; from time to time Jody, who was in third grade, would interrupt the two high school juniors with her homework questions.

Marwa admired Judy’s patience. She also liked Judy’s daintiness and quiet albeit fierce arguing ability. At five feet, Judy barely came up to Marwa’s shoulder, and her eyeglasses (she refused to get contacts) always slid down her nose, but she usually won any classroom argument she chose to enter, and she won them at home with Marwa as well.

Judy was arguing about Michael Servetus, a 16th century scholar who had been burned at the stake for translation of the Bible. “He only agreed with Erasmus,” Judy fumed.

“The Nicene Creed, Judy,” Marwa tried to get them back to the task at hand.

“But that’s where it started,” Judy insisted. “It’s not important just to know what it is, but what it did, after. It burned Michael Servetus at the stake for his translation. He only agreed with Erasmus who said the 4th century St. Jerome Vulgate translation had unauthorized additions which were the Biblical justification for the Trinity. So Erasmus left out I-John 5:7 from his 1516 translation which was just what Servetus did.”

Marwa examined her notes and compared them to the text open by her right hand. “‘The concept of the Trinity arose out of the 1st Council of Nicea, convened by Emperor Constantine the Great in 325,’ so that’s right after Constantine makes Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire–”

“Right,” Judy said.

“– ‘there was a Libyan bishop named Arius, who was preaching that while God, the father, was timeless, infinite, and divine, Jesus the Son, was created by God and subordinate to the Father, and therefore not divine. For the Church hierarchy, the problem with this interpretation –’”

“–‘One that plagued Xtianity for more than a millenium–’” Judy read from her notes.

“X-tianity?”

“That’s what Mr. Sullivan said. ‘Ex-tee-anity.’ I love when he does that. Like inanity. He’s terrible.”

“He just wants us to call him on it.”

“Bee-WARE of political correctness!” Judy imitated their history teacher, “it is the foolish hobgoblin of modern minds.”

“He’s so immature sometimes. Two years with him — too much! So what’s the deal with the Nicene Creed? I’m getting tired and it’s getting late. We can IM this later.”

“Just that if Jesus isn’t divine, he could’ve been made divine through ‘faith and acts,’” Judy quickly read. “‘And if that were true, couldn’t anyone do it? And if so, then how could the Church hierarchy say it was the only ‘and irreplaceable intermediary between Man and God,’ a position from which, even back in the 4th century, it got its enormous political power?’”

“And from there, in reaction to the Nicene Creed, and the faulty translation, the Protestant Reformation can start,” Marwa reasoned.

“Yeah, that’s the point, I think.”

“Y’know, that’s like the 70 virgins promised to Muslim martyrs–”

“Male, of course,” Judy said, “you’re blushing.”

Marwa didn’t really like talking about her religion with Judy, who had been bat mitzvahed the year before they’d met freshman year, but the virgins had popped out of her mouth.

“No, I am not. Those 70 fair maidens are a mistranslation of ‘crystal clear raisins.’”

“Crystal clear raisins,” Judy said slowly.

“White raisins of crystal clarity,” Marwa said.

“White raisins of crystal clarity,” Judy echoed. “You’re a raisin.”

“You’re a raisin.”

“Am I a raisin?” Jody asked, entering the living room with a book carefully balanced open to a difficult page. “I’m hungry. When does Daddy get home? Is he bringing dinner?”

Marwa and Judy were laughing, and then Jody’s feelings were hurt because she thought they were laughing at her but mostly because she was so frustrated with her homework and Judy wasn’t helping her, so Marwa packed up her backpack and left and took a cab home, but not before Judy made her promise to tell her what had really made her blush. Marwa hadn’t told Judy about Prix. He had been her secret for two months.

A month later, after Thanksgiving, Marwa and Judy were at a lunch table crowded with classmates where several conversations loudly went on over and under the din of the lunchroom because the lousy weather had kept them all from going up to the 23rd Street diner.

“This is not sushi!”

“Oh, you’re not interested in religion.”

“Yes, I am, just not in any of the religions we have.”

“That’s Woody Allen’s line.”

“Amateur poets borrow; professional poets steal.”

“Who said that?”

“T.S. Eliot.”

“Religion isn’t religion, it’s politics. It’s all about power.”

“It’s psychology. I swear, I’m beginning to believe everything is just people’s personalities. It doesn’t matter what they say they believe in or whatever group they join, it’s who they are, how they were raised.”

“I don’t see that at all. At least, not entirely.”

“You can’t discount history.”

“But what history? Economic? Military? The power elite or the poor slobs on the outs they find in bogs centuries later?”

“In blogs?”

“Bogs, boob. I mean that if a meteorite can fall in the Middle East hundreds of thousands of years ago, millions, and the Stone Agers –”

“Were they stoned, you think?”

“– Excuse me, if they were stoned or sober in the Stone Age, and the meteorite falls and they think it’s a cooled uterus–”

“I think the uterus is cool.”

“You would.”

“Why did they say this is sushi? It’s tuna fish without mayonnaise.Yuck.”

“He’d like to see your uterus.”

“He’ll have to wait till he’s an ob-gyn. And even then –”

“You wish.”

“Why did you take off your scarf, your hijab, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I do mind, and that’s personal.”

“Which is why it’s interesting.”

“Drop dead.”

“Oh, that’s intelligent.”

“But we can talk about the Kaaba as being chilled space rock misinterpreted by prehistorics as Her Divine Box, and that you’ve got no problem with.”

“I have a problem with it. I have many problems. But they are my problems.”

“Her Divine Box? Oh — that’s terrible! You are a total pig!”

“There are plenty of countries where they’d be happy to kill you for saying that.”

“But they wouldn’t eat my flesh because I’m a pig.”

“You’re so funny I’m not laughing.”

“Well, Judaism’s no better where only the priest class and those they’ve initiated can approach and spread the sacred labia of the ark doors to reveal Her Divine Boxed Law inside.”

“I can’t stand this talk, I don’t care if we’re practicing anti-political correctness, it’s disgusting and insulting and — it’s stupid!”

“Ah, stabbed through the heart!”

“It is stupid. It’s reductionist past belief–”

“That’s the point, Stupid, isn’t it, getting past belief–”

“Oh, now name-calling.That’s intelligent. That’s mature.”

“Which perfectly proves my point, it’s all personality. Psychology. All the rest is this fake sushi. Which I am not eating.”

“I will.”

“You’ll eat anything.”

“I soy-tane-ly will.”

“Who was that supposed to be, Groucho Marx?”

“He’s just being dirty again.”

“You kiss your mother with that tongue?”

“Anyone other than my mother…want some?”

“Put that nasty thing back and shut your labia!”

“Wait, look, can you curl your tongue like this?”

“That’s nothing, that’s genetic. I’ll use you in my Intel.”

“I’ll go in-tel anything you say, whenever.”

“What else you got? Left-handed, blue-eye, anything else interestingly recessive?”

“Ah, we’re back to recesses–”

“What kind of meteoric rock?”

“What?”

“Inside the Cube.”

“Cube what? What cube?”

“In Mecca . That’s what Kaaba means, ‘cube.’”

“Who you calling Cube?”

“Stop it. Marwa wasn’t call you a cube. I want to know. What type of meteoric tektite is it? Does anyone know?”

“Oh, god. Now textiles.”

“Not textiles, tektites. It could be Libyan desert glass. There are at least six recognized geographical distributions of tektites on Earth, and Mecca ’s in the pathway of one.”

“How do you know that?”

“There are several excellent meteor sites online. I subscribe to the chief zine.”

“I read that at Mecca the Goddess was worshipped as a black, aniconic stone. It actually is kept inside the cube in the Haram which means sanctuary and is a cognate of ‘harem’ which used to mean a temple of women. ‘Allah’ is a masculinization of ‘Al-Lat’ part of a female trinity, along with Kore or spelled Q’re, the Virgin, and a crone part. The Koran is like the Word of Kore–”

“Judy!”

“–Aniconic, cool word, an-iconic? –”

“Please, stop! I thank my gods everyday they’re Hindu and free of your Judeo- Christian-Muslim anxiety, this incessant dialectic of Mind over Matter! My gods enjoy the sex they created — Good grief, Relief! — frigid uteruses falling out of the sky? ‘The sky is falling!’”

“Uteri.”

“Say ‘frigid uteruses’ like you father. I love when Biren does his father’s accent.”

“Do that dance thing with your arms and your father’s accent at the same time.”

“I see we’re back to practicing anti-political correctness.”

“Thank god.”

“Which one?”

The bell signaling the end of the lunch period rang.

“As in saved by the—”