May, 2001

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? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember much of anything now that the Advanced Placement exams were over and her head felt utterly drained. It was mid-week, mid-May. Marwa’s predictions had come true, both she and Marcus had won summer internships on Long Island just as she had thought: she’d be on the north shore at Stony Brook in genetics, and Marcus would be closer to the Atlantic Ocean at Brookhaven, in physics. That was fine with her. Genetics it was. Genetics it was to be. In this giddy post-exam mood, verb tenses tickled Marwa to pieces. There was a gene associated with synesthesia. Genetic mutation 60 centuries ago allowed some humans to continue drinking milk into adulthood. Those Lactose Tolerants started talking ‘Dairy’, giving rise to Semitic, Indo-European, and Uralic language families. Marwa’s head still swam with factoid sediments swirling and sinking to the riverbed of her memory.

Prix mailed her an invitation to his birthday party at a club. Marwa’s father, both lock and key to all incoming mail, had, of course, opened the invitation first, interrogated Marwa, and forbidden her even to RSVP, let alone attend, but for the moment, Marwa was more buoyed by the invitation than sunk by the parental command. Mr. Haddam had given their English class a wonderful assignment to write/retell a fairytale of any ethnic origin, preferably one they remembered aurally from their own pre-literate childhood, and in Art
they were doing a project with and about Crayola crayons and color. Marwa felt happy. Descartes made Marwa happy. Descartes and Denim Prix and the month of May. If Marwa could carry a tune, she would’ve
carried it around like a newborn baby. What were the colors of Descartes’s dreams?

What if this New Science guy was right, and mathematics wasn’t the natural language of the universe?
“Don’t go throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” Marwa’s math teacher said. Was that an ironic comment about metaphor in non-math human language? Marwa couldn’t be sure that Mrs. K. wasn’t teasing as much as teaching her. In Marwa’s current mood, it didn’t matter. She hopped from one thought to another happily, even the metallic, pointy ones. It had been such a relief to discover she wasn’t crazy. There was a word for it, synesthesia, and this summer she’d be working with someone studying the actual genetics of why new things and ideas came to her eyes filtered through orange gauze, why colors had shapes or moods, why days of the week were different colors: grey Monday, yellow Tuesday, and Wednesday was brown. Brown had no contrasting color, which was why everything went so well with brown. What a reliable, nonargumentative hue which would not hew! Whew! There was a whole
little party going on in Marwa’s brain that her father could not keep her from attending.

On the night of the day when 24 year old Descartes had found “the foundations of a wonderful science,” November 10th, 1619, Descartes had three dreams he imagined could only have come straight out of the Divine Box. It was a Holden Caulfield-kind of dream, of walking pursued by phantoms, fearing he was about to fall at every step. In Descartes’s first dream, his right side was so weak, he walked bent to the left. When he tried to stand up, a whirlwind spun him around three or four times on his left foot. Intending to pray in a college chapel, Descartes was stopped by someone he imagined had a melon from a foreign country, but he was most amazed that people who stopped to talk with them were unaffected by the wind that had staggered him but which was then dying down. Descartes awakened in pain and turned over to his right side, begging God to protect him from the evil effects of his dream. To Marwa, Descartes’s first dream
looked brown.

Which Crayola brown? When she looked at the first eight (8 again!) colors in the original 1909 crayon box, there was ‘brown’ among black, green, violet, blue, orange, yellow, and red. Forty years later, Marwa’s favorite color appeared, ‘burnt sienna’, but Crayola also added ‘mahogany’ and ‘tan’. Later, there was
‘raw sienna’ and ‘sepia’, and recently ‘beaver’, and ‘fuzzy wuzzy brown’.

Descartes’s first dream was cocoa-the-color-before-you-added-milk-brown. It had a wash of violet in it. During the dream, the possibly-melon-carrying man had said that perhaps Descartes would care to look for Monsieur N. and “he had something to give him.” Marwa thought: in dreams speech sounds like speech, not like thought. In dreams, you can differentiate between speaking and thinking, hearing with your ears or just inside your mind, but when you’re awake, it only ‘sounds’ like thought, not talk — unless you’re a mystic
and/or a schizophrenic. And/or was a lovely, bright yellow expression.

Marwa’s art teacher said he was giving the class an exercise from modern architecture. There were two images, a pair of buildings, two drawings, two household things (a salt shaker and a ketchup bottle), and he asked them to choose the one of each pair that had “the most life” or was “a better picture of the self.”

“And/or?” had popped out of Marwa’s mouth in class.

“Yes,” her art teacher said, which made everyone laugh. The teacher went on, “80% of people chose the same one. The architect says that order is inherent in space and systems and that they are more or less ‘alive’ based on the quality of the order they manifest.”

Marwa figured her teacher was leading them toward choosing which colors had “the most life,” but she thought that was the wrong question. The bell rang, and Marwa left art class frowning with thought. How does the brain process visual information? And/or, what color dress (should she wear a dress?) to Prix’s forbidden party? And/or, would she go? Which question had “the most life” and which answer would be “a better picture of (her)self?”

Descartes’s second dream was more weird. It was sound and sight and fear: the sound of a loud thunderclap explosion which scared him awake. When he opened his eyes, they gave off enough bright sparks for him to see nearby objects by. Descartes said this had happened often before, the eyesparks, not the explosion. Before Marwa had found out anything about synesthesia, she had been reassured by Descartes’s eyesparks. Awake and seeking for a philosophical explanation for his second dream, Descartes arrived at “satisfactory conclusions” which relieved his and therefore Marwa’s fears.

Descartes’s third dream wasn’t Marwa’s favorite, but she had referred to it in Latin class once. He’d dreamed that he opened a book and read a line of poetry, ‘Quod vitae sectabor iter?’ Marwa had used the question ‘What path shall I take in life?’ as her topic sentence for a five minute Latin dialogue. It was a good
question. What path was Marwa going to take to or not to Prix’s birthday party?

‘Est et Non,’ ‘Yes and No,’ Marwa murmured aloud.

Moving beside her in the current of students passing from one class to another, “Yes and no, what?” Vivian asked. “What fairytale are you telling in Mr. Haddam’s next?”

“I’m hoping he doesn’t call on me today. I didn’t decide yet.”

Vivian understood this meant that Marwa had more than one story in mind. “How was art?” she asked, offering a bouquet of crayons.

Marwa looked to see that her backpack was unzipped and she’d been leaving a trail behind her. When she and Vivian stopped, students dropped crayons into both girls’ open palms.

“Sunny’s doing Zulaikha and Yusuf,” Vivian said as they walked toward their English classroom.

“As a fairytale?”

“Not from the Koran, from,” Vivian paused, remembering, “the author’s name is Jami. Sunny said he died the year Columbus discovered America. She checked that, but she’ll tell it the way her grandmother did before she could read, or as Sunny said, ‘before she even knew stories had authors.’”

Mr. Haddam was at his desk angled at the front of the room, the window sill and a large metal cabinet creating a triangular space. Several classmates milled about his desk as he took attendance. Sunny
was in her seat, nervously looking at notecards. She was a Muslim whose family had come from Pakistan. Biren had once observed that standing together, Marwa and Sunny looked like the number 10 although
Sunny was not as tall as Marwa. He had tried to get his stupid foot out of his mouth by saying Sunny looked more like a Buddha than a Muslim.

Sunny had summarized, “So I am fat and short, thank you very much, Biren.”

But Sunny was neither, she was just shorter and rounder than Marwa was, and she relied on Marwa to lead her as a Muslim girl. When Marwa had removed the hijab, Sunny had not even asked why, but she had
taken hers off as well. She put it on every day before returning home. Her real name was Sunniya, but her second year at Stuyvesant, she’d asked to be called Sunny.

Mr. Haddam directed the class to arrange themselves for a circle discussion, and then he invited Sunny to begin. She checked her notecards yet again and tapped them on the desk arm of her chair. She
looked at Marwa, who nodded.

“This is how my grandma told me the story when I was very little,” Sunny began. “She used to lie down next to me and while she was telling me the story, she would,” and Sunny gestured, “with her first finger move my hair over and back over my ear over and over again. I miss my grandmother,” Sunny’s voice thickened, and her classmates around her in the circle stilled all movement. Mr. Haddam noted the hypnotic effect.

Sunny cleared her throat and began, “Once upon a time there was a beautiful Princess who was a daughter of the King of the Magrib. When she was young, she had three dreams. In the first dream, she saw
a young man who was as noble as he was handsome, and he was very handsome. In the third dream, it took all her courage to ask the young man his name, and he said he was the Wazir of Egypt.”

Sunny paused, probably as her grandmother always had, and looked up. Everyone, including Mr. Haddam, was paying close attention, but Marwa’s long face had reddened, her dark eyes were wider than the
saucer-eyed dogs in the fairytale they had heard yesterday, and she pressed the tops of her fingertips against her lips, her chin supported by her thumbs, as she leaned forward against her elbowed arms. Sunny was thrilled but also worried because Marwa had never listened to her like this before.

“When it was time for the Princess to marry, she refused all offers from kings and princes all over the world because in her heart she held only the picture of the man she had seen in her dreams. When her father, the King, learned that she would only marry the Wazir of Egypt, he sent a wise man to Egypt to arrange it.

The wise man learned that the Wazir of Egypt was both ambitious and reluctant to marry the Princess because he was a eunuch. But the wise man also knew that if he returned to the Magrib without
satisfying the wish of the Princess to marry the man of her dreams, she would surely die.

When Zulaika heard the news, her happiness knew no bounds. She went on a wonderful journey to Egypt, carried in a litter made from sweet-smelling wood covered with jewels and gold, closed inside curtains of golden brocade. When she finally arrived in Egypt, she peeked out of those curtains to see the face of the man of her dreams.

But when she saw the face of the Wazir of Egypt, whose name was Aziz, it was not the young man she had dreamed of, whose name was Yusuf! ‘I planted a palm tree,’ the Princess cried, ‘and this is nothing but thorns! What shall I do?’”

Sunny paused to alter her voice again. “A voice came to the Princess from the unseen world, ‘True, it is not thy love. But thy desire for thy true love will be satisfied through him. Fear him not. Thy jewel is safe with him. If a great sleeve is shown, but there is no hand within, what is there to hold a dagger?’

The Princess knew she must wed the eunuch Wazir of Egypt named Aziz, but she began to sing a song of grief.” Sunny stopped and said, “My grandma sang this part, but I can’t. ‘I know I will win thee,’ she means Yusuf, ‘at last and when that happy day comes, I shall not be I, but thou! May I see thee soon. I shall roll up the carpet of life when I see thy dear face again, and I shall cease to be, for self will be lost in that happiness, and all the threads of my thought from my hand will fall, More precious than heaven, than earth
more dear, My self were forgotten if Thou were near.’

Then a slave was brought into the market and Zulaikha’s husband the Wazir of Egypt went to bring him before the King. When Zulaikha saw this slave, she was overcome, for she recognized the face of Yusuf, the man of her dreams, and she knew she had to have him. She ordered her husband to double the bid of anyone else at the slave auction, even the beautiful Princess Baziga of the ancient ‘Ad race.

But when Princess Baziga met with Yusuf, he told her that the world we can see is but the mask of an invisible beauty beyond all dreaming.Yusuf told Baziga that what we can see here is only a reflection of the real and eternal Beauty, Goodness, and Truth that she should seek.

And Baziga was so overcome when she listened to Yusuf that she began to sing happily, ‘From a fond strange love thou hast turned my feet, the Lord of all creatures to know and meet; If I had a tongue in
each single hair, Each and all should thy praises declare!’ Then Princess Baziga gave up all her wealth and crown and spent the rest of her life taking care of the poor and in prayer on the banks of the Nile.

Yusuf became a slave in the house of Princess Zulaikha, and one day she could no longer resist his beauty. He ran away from her when she reached out to catch him, and his shirt was torn right off his back. Zulaikha was so angry at Yusuf’s rejection that she made up a terrible lie about him, but the Wazir knew that since the shirt had been torn from Yusuf’s back, he had to be trying to get away from Zulaikha. She was still furious that Yusuf would not suffer a punishment for humiliating her, especially in front of the ladies of
Egypt who were spreading nasty rumors about her.

So Zulaikha invited all the ladies to a banquet. When it was time for dessert, and all the ladies were cutting their oranges with shiny knives, Zulaikha called for Yusuf to serve them. When the ladies saw him, they called him an angel and were so shaken they cut their fingertips.”

Sunny stopped and saw that Mr. Haddam had put a paper cup of water beside her. She smiled at him and sipped. Marwa took her hands away from pressing against her mouth and folded them in her lap under
her desk.

“All the women were upset by Yusuf and understood Zulaikha’s desire for him. They each wanted him for themselves. So they advised her to weaken his resistance by having him thrown into prison. But
when Yusuf was in prison, he was an answered prayer for the other prisoners because he taught them the Truth and explained their dreams to them so they would not trouble them any more. While Yusuf healed
the men in prison, Zulaikha’s husband died and she became sick and ugly and blind.

When the King needed his dream explained, Yusuf was called out of the prison and saved Egypt from a famine the royal dream predicted. Then Yusuf, after the King, became the top man in all of Egypt, and
Zulaikha was at the very bottom. She cried out to Yusuf who took pity on her and prayed for her. Then her health and youth and beauty and eyesight were all restored to her, and Yusuf married Zulaikha with true love.”

Sunny looked up, put her last notecard down, and drank the rest of the water in the papercup. “That’s how it ends,” she said.

“She even goes blind,” a classmate observed.

“You stayed awake till the end of that?”

“I just wrote down all the parts together that I remembered,” Sunny said.

“Did you know half the words you just used when you were little? I mean, ‘famine’ and ‘humiliating’ and all?”

“I guess not,” Sunny said, looking to Marwa for support.

Mr. Haddam reminded the class there was nothing wrong with Sunny’s retelling.

“Didn’t Yusuf lie in the first dream? What’s up with that?”

Marcus had waited, but seeing that no one else made the obvious observation, he said, “That’s the Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife story from the Bible, isn’t it?”

Marwa snapped, “They have elements in common, but they make a different point.”

Marcus heard her annoyance, but he was more interested in information than argument. “Why? Don’t they both show that Joseph — Yusuf — comes out on top because he’s God’s favorite?”

“On top of what?” a girl asked to general, but not unanimous, laughter. “I mean, does she have to go blind? Doesn’t anyone else think it’s so misogynist?”

Marwa had calmed herself. “She doesn’t go blind, I mean she does, but the point is, she is blind until she can see past superficialities.”

“Superficialities like lust?” Biren asked.

“Here’s what I think,” Judy interrupted, “it sounds to me like the old Adam and Eve thing all over again, only Yusuf’s the apple and all the women want a big bite of him. But he’s the apple and the snake and the tree wisdom all wrapped up in one thing, and Zooley is humanity, is Job, and has to suffer all sorts of ways until
she’s got the know-how how to get back to Paradise. It’s the same story over and over again, journey for knowledge, suffering to get it, happy ending.”

“So what fairytale are you gonna tell us, Judy?” a classmate demanded.

“I was hoping to go last,” Judy smiled at Mr. Haddam as the bell rang.

It was lunch period, and Marwa intended to get out of the building as fast as possible. Sunny caught up to Marwa first, but Biren wasn’t far behind.

“I told it wrong, didn’t I?” Sunny said.

“I’m going tomorrow,” Biren said, “and you should like mine.”

Marwa stopped at the foot of the stairs, getting out of the way of waves of students, trying to think of how to let her friends know she wanted to go out by herself without hurting their feelings.

“You told it fine, great,” Marwa said. To Biren she added, “Why does everyone think they have to apologize to me?”

Biren had very big, very dark round eyes that were tilted slightly inward. When he blinked, it was an event. “I just wanted to tell you the story.”

“I’ll hear it tomorrow,” Marwa snapped, but as Sunny walked away, Marwa said guiltily to Biren, “Okay, tell me, but outside.”

“Where you gonna grab lunch?” Biren said. “We’re going up to 23rd.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Biren decided to quit while he was ahead, and spoke fast. Once outside in the bright May noon, he put on new sunglasses which increased his confidence.

“I figure not to use notes, I mean… it’s more like real storytelling without them… my uncle didn’t use them when he — anyhow, my father’s younger brother lived with us when I was little, and he was the one who told me the stories I remember. He lives in Phoenix.”

“Biren?”

“Okay, okay. There’s this old stonecutter working in the sun, and this young lady says to him, ‘That is very hard work you are doing’ and gives him some water from the river.

‘Yes,’ says the old stonecutter, ‘sometimes one is fated to do hard work. Fate is strange. See that young man resting over there?’ he says, ‘he is doomed and only a loving sister can save his life.’ Since it was her brother, the young lady asked the old man how. ‘By pretending to be crazy and doing everything the opposite of what’s expected of her, and cursing him.’

“You must’ve loved the cursing,” Marwa said, but even with the sun hot on her head (she thought of her hijab), she was curious to hear the rest. Three other classmates, including Sunny, had joined to listen. Marwa smiled at Sunny.

Biren was pleased with himself. “The loving sister had to do this until her younger brother’s fate changed which the old man said would only happen after his bride had been in his house for a whole day. So the sister and brother traveled home to the brother’s wedding, and she yelled at him the whole way like a crazy person. On the day of his wedding, his sister was acting even crazier than usual, putting on a ragged old sari and coming up with curses no one had ever heard before. She screamed when they put the wedding crown on her brother’s head and started poking it with a long needle. Everyone thought she was totally nuts, but a v-e-r-y thin VIPER, slithered out of the crown,” Biren gestured sinuously with his right palm.

“Viper,” one of the boys repeated.

“Yeah, a viper,” Biren nodded, “and then the bridegroom got up on the wedding horse, but the sister started yelling to get him off it, she wanted to ride it, so the family put the crazy sister on the horse. Just as she was leaving their house, a gateway fell on her. When the family crowded around her to see if she was badly hurt, which she wasn’t, they said, ‘Well, maybe she’s crazy, but she’s done some good.’ So then there’s the wedding, and when the groom and bride were going to bed, the crazy sister again started her ranting that she had to sleep in their flower-filled bed.”

“With them?” Sunny asked.

“No, instead, go on. Okay, what’s in the bed?”

“Ex-actly,” Biren said. “It was a giant SCORPION. A week later, the mother told her son they could either send his crazy sister back to her husband or lock her up in a back room, but one way or another, she wasn’t going to get the golden sari she was supposed to get for coming to the wedding. But now the sister said in her normal voice,” and Biren falsettoed as his brother had when telling the story, “‘Now I will leave with my golden sari because I followed the advice of the wise man who said the only way I could save my brother’s life was by cursing him, by acting crazy, and by doing the opposite of what everyone expects of me. I did all that AND took your insults. With my love, I saved a mother’s son, a sister’s brother, and a bride’s groom. And I am NOT crazy!’ Then she grabbed the golden sari and said goodbye to them all.”

“Not bad, not bad, where we grabbing food?” Biren’s friend said.

“No, you all go,” Marwa stepped back from the small group.

“She’s not hungry,” Biren explained. Quietly to Marwa before joining the others, Biren said, “I thought you’d like it with the girl hero,” but he turned quickly before she had a chance to reply.

Marwa went to walk along the river by herself. It wasn’t that it was quiet with city traffic and sirens and so many other people from the nearby giant towers having the same idea on a gorgeous lunch hour in May. She walked along the esplanade and enjoyed all the babies and toddlers noisy with their nannies or the occasional mother and that even rarer species, the stay-at-home father. Blue sky, some sailboats on the Hudson, some bigger ships, the glittering George Washington Bridge in the northern distance, all this was quite enough. Marwa stopped under a vendor’s umbrella stand and bought a pretzel and a bottle of water. She checked her wristwatch and saw it was time to get back to the high school for her two afternoon classes.

She didn’t see Prix walking behind her and didn’t register immediately who it was when he moved into step beside her. He didn’t even say hi. “Hey, you didn’t even RSVP. Where have you been hiding yourself?”

Blessings on the bottled water. She took a sip. He was wearing a short sleeved, collared shirt with a designer logo she didn’t know. It Crayola ‘Purple Mountain’s Majesty’over chino shorts. Prix looked like he’d just awakened, but then that was a look he had. There were no creases on his face, and his remarkable, rimmed eyes were wide open even in the bright sunlight.

“I have to get back to school,” Marwa said.

“That’s a nice hello. Why didn’t you RSVP? At least.”

“My father only told me, showed me, the invitation yesterday. When did you send it?”

“Two weeks ago. My agent’s secretary told me she sent yours. Where have you been hiding yourself?”

“I haven’t been hiding myself,” Marwa said.

“Don’t get mad at me. I really want you to come to the party. It’s at a comedy club. You can bring as many friends as you want.”

“I’ve got to get back to school. I’ll be late for class. My father has forbid– he says I can’t go. All my friends are underage. We can’t go to a club.”

Prix stopped himself from laughing. Soberly, he said, “You wouldn’t be the only 16 year olds in the clubs, y’know. I guess at Stuyvesant you’re all too smart to know how to get fake ID’s.”

“And I guess you are amoral.”

Then Prix did laugh. “You’re a dream.” It was as if it had taken him all this time to understand about her father. “He told you yesterday? I can’t believe it.”

“Well, believe it. I’ve got to run now. Literally.”

As Marwa began to turn, Prix reached out for the bottled water and took a long swallow. That stopped her. “You either want to come to my party or not. Yes or no. If you say yes, we can figure out a way.” Then he handed her back the water and turned his back on her, walking away.

Marwa started walking fast back to Stuyvesant. Water splashed out of the bottle. She couldn’t even decide whether to put her lips where Prix’s had been or replace the bottle’s cap. Yes or no, not even that. Yes AND no. Est et Non, Descartes’s three dreams. Zooley,’ Judy had called her, and yes, Yusuf had lied, but not in
Zulaikha’s first dream, it was in her third, hadn’t he lied, identifying himself as the Wazir or Egypt? Yusuf’s Purple Mountain’s Majesty designer shirt, torn right off his gorgeous back.

Running now along the crowded sidewalk, Marwa had to watch her step very carefully because she thought she might be going blind.