January – April, 2005)

To exchange items they’d left behind, Marwa planned to meet James for lunch before she went to a matinee of Shaw’s ST. JOAN. She made the date for 12:30 at a luncheon- ette near the basement theater so there wouldn’t be much awkward time for them to talk. Since she had nervously arrived early in the lower Chelsea neighborhood, she killed some time out of the bitter cold at a Barnes & Noble bookstore. On a kiosk of New Arrivals, she saw a spring green paperback cover of Halldor Laxness’s UNDER THE GLACIER. Half of the front cover was a painting, Marwa checked on the back, by Louisa Matthiasdottir, “Courtesy Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York.” Apparently, the original painting was available in NYC. Of course, Marwa thought. She had to buy the book.

In the luncheonette, she and James exchanged shopping bags. Marwa talked too fast, about Dr. Rawi telling her Mecca was like NYC, “‘where even a woman can demand, ‘Why do we look only into the past and not to the future?’ It’s attracted people for 1425 years.”

“But non-Moslems aren’t allowed in.”

“I hope you win a Gates for next year,” Marwa said.

James ate his hot food. “I got called for the Annapolis interview for next week. What time’s your play?”

“At 2,” Marwa said, looking at a clock behind the luncheonette’s counter. “Anna- polis. That means you got it!”

James shrugged. Marwa knew his shrugs.

She missed most of ST. JOAN, crying in the theater’s miserable bathroom, but she made it back to her seat for theEpilogue; what she heard sounded like harsh echoes of 9/11:“Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?” Then The Executioner said, “She is more alive than you, old man. Her heart would not burn; and it would not drown. I was a master at my craft: better than the master of Paris, better than the master of Toulouse; but I could not kill The Maid. She is up and alive everywhere.” But the best, worst moment came when Joan herself said, “And now tell me: shall I rise from the dead, and come back to you a living woman?”

On the frozen street, it was dark and loud and crowded at the start of rush hour. Marwa walked to the subway and wanted to go home. What would she have said if Prix hadasked Joan of Arc’s question? Would she have wanted him to come back to her as a living man? She didn’t want to think about it. That’s what going home meant. Her parents weren’t back from work, and there was no Mrs. al-Banna babysitting for 11 year old Joey who was horsing around – literally – with Ositadimma Bem. They had been galloping around, pretending to be centaurs in Harry Potter’s world.

“Followers of Firenze, Muggle Alert!” Osit yelled when Marwa came in, and Joey, returning to his preteen younger brother self, demanded, “What are you doing home on a Wednesday? Does Mommy know?”

Marwa ignored Joey, went to her bedroom, and began reading the introduction to UNDER THE GLACIER by Susan Sontag. “There are special places in the universe where familiar laws that govern identity and morality are violated,” Marwa read and flinched. “These are places where wisdom accumulates…a place of secret pilgrimage… The question is not survival but what one can know, and if one can know anything at all… Everyone [the young narrator] interviews has pagan or post-Christian ideas about time and obligation and the energies of the universe: the little village at the foot of a glacier is in full spiritual molt…The journey ends when the revelatory presence proves to be a phantom, and vanishes. The utopia of erotic transformation was only a dream, after all. But it is hard to undo an initiation. The protagonist will have to labor to return to reality.”

Marwa shut her eyes.

Her parents showed no surprise at her presence. They listened to her talk about Joan of Arc. “She was condemned on my birthday in 1431.”

“April 29th 553 years before you were born in 1984,” Joey showed off.

Her parents were quiet when Marwa said she was considering an umra to Mecca sometime before Sharif’s summer wedding. Because they would not ask, Marwa said defensively, “It is not a hajj. And it’s not an anti-hajj. It’s ameta-hajj. I enter Mecca through Ground Zero in full spiritual molt. I–,” Marwa struggled, “– not humility, butcuriosity. I mean, not submission, but responsibility. I — share celebration.”

Her mother said, “Yes, with all Muslims.”

“No,” Marwa said, still struggling, “with All.”

Her father said, “You don’t expect us to understand,” his tone of voice a cleansed blue sky, After Blizzard Blue.

Later, Marwa wandered into Joey’s room. He sat on his bed arranging small red, white, and blue striped booklets of Cracker Jack prizes. One pile was Surprise Inside/ Guess What’s Inside, and the other was Ballpark Legends, One In A Series Of Ten Collectible Prizes. “I got Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, George Sisler, Walter Johnson, Thurman Munson, Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, and Lou Brock. 9 outta 10, I’m missing Joe Jackson. Shoeless Joe Jackson. ‘Say it ain’t so, Joe,” Joey said.

“That you’re missing his card?
Joey looked at Marwa in disbelief. “His glove was the place triples went to die. He’s the Judas of Baseball, don’t you know? The 1919 World Series?”
“That what they’re calling homework these days?” Marwa asked.

“Infidel,” Joey yelled. “Get outta my room.”

Marwa returned to her bedroom. Someone she knew had lived here, but she didn’t.

“Hey, Marwa,” Joey tapped at her door. “Lookit this,” he said, showing her a Cracker Jack Surprise Inside. “When you fold it, the two separate faces turn into two faces, noses touching, or, a vase.” He tapped the top of her head. “Y’see?”

She accepted the peace offering. “It’s a trompe l’oeil. That means ‘fool the eye.’”

“Donald Trump?”

Marwa laughed, and Joey let her kiss him good night. She felt very tired and went to bed. She saw a tomb painting inside a pyramid. In the silence of the tomb, she looked at a flickering image on the wall: the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. Osiris, Lord of the Underworld, would Weigh the Heart. Marwa watched Osiris (Prix with all his colors), his scattered body parts being collected and put back together by Isis. Isis was the actress who had played St. Joan. Marwa was thrilled to see Prix alive and whole. Was Marwa’s box still hidden in the bedroom? She was Hagar searching for water for newborn Ishmael between the two mountains Marwa and Safa. Truly, Safa and Marwa are among the landmarks of God; therefore anyone who performs the hajj or the umra, s/he does no harm if s/he circumambulates them both. The pilgrim leaves the courtyard of the Qa’ba and enters the lane that runs between the two points right outside…The starting point is from as-Safa…The pilgrim walks back and forth between these two points seven times…This ritual ends at Marwa.. When Marwa awakened the next morning, she knew what it meant, you can’t go home again.

So she went back uptown to school. In early March, she was scheduled for a meeting with her Presidential Scholar advisor about summer and senior year plans. In the university newspaper, a picture of James appeared beside a color photo of the Central Park Jeanne-Claude & Christo display of some of the 7500 orange sheets flapping in the wind, sharing the headline, FORDHAM WELCOMES THE GATES.Crossing the campus on a windy March day, Marwa saw crocus poking through cold-crusted earth. Blackened heaps of snow were shrinking. She could feel softer threads of Spring in the cold sheets of air tossed and spread about the college grounds.

Two students were walking towards Marwa, and she overheard the girl, “Two molecules bump into each other while walking down the street, and the 1st Molecule says, ‘Are you okay?’ The 2nd Molecule says, ‘No, I lost an electron!’ ‘Are you sure?’ asks the 1st.”

Marwa passed them. She remembered the punchline from chem at Stuy: “Yes, I’m positive.” At her advisor’s office door, Marwa tapped politely. A woman’s low voice replied musically, “Entrez!”

Madame Professor Erisa Toto looked up from her desk crowded with books and files; above her desk were bookshelves (Marwa worried they’d one day collapse and knock her Presidential Scholar advisor senseless). Prof. Toto never stood to welcome students; she was over six feet tall and very thin. On another wall, cattycorner with a window, were arranged African masks from Burundi where the professor had family.

“Ah, Mam’selle al-Hal, bienvenue, asseyez-vous,” Prof. Toto said.

Marwa sat down and from her backpack removed her Prez Folder.

“’02, ’03, you plan to return to Alexandria for a third summer, coming up?” the professor said.

“I will be in Alexandria for my brother’s wedding in July, but I hope to go to Mecca before – and after, with your help,” Marwa said. “There’s a high school in Mecca; if I could work there, maybe teach, science and Latin, the U.S. Constitution. They’ve got this program for gifted students – Meccans see themselves as like an antidote to extremism.”

Prof. Toto raised an already arched eyebrow. “You wanted work at the New Library in Alexandria.”

“I did.”

Prof. Toto pursed her dark, glossed lips. “I see.” She hesitated, then, “People have interest in your plans. The Alexandrian Library is encouraged. There is a fellowship for you. Presidential Scholars have a high profile.”

It was Marwa’s turn to pause. “When we were all arrested, last October – that’s why I was released so fast? James was a Prez, too –”

Prof. Toto sighed. “One who is fluent in Arabic with family in Egypt has been of great interest. The State Department has a Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs which includes the Fulbright Program and other foreign exchanges. An Egyptian-born woman has been appointed its director.”

“I don’t know if I like this. No one told me.”

“And I am not telling you.”

“I can’t believe anyone cares if I’m in Alexandria or Mecca this summer.”

“I can never believe anyone cares about my pitiful contribution of taxes, and yet, each year, they are quite emphatic about it. Between belief and…” Prof. Toto shook her head back and forth, “…reality, the chasm?”

“She can’t make me go to Alexandria, can she?”

Prof. Toto sounded upset. “Mecca may even be preferable. I will see.”

“This is creepy,” Marwa said. “No one said anything about strings attached.” Marwa looked at the African masks. “Why can’t I see? I don’t like this at all,” Marwa stood up.

“You will like it if arrangements are smoothly made for the school in Mecca?”

Marwa zipped her folder into her backpack and took her coat from the back of her chair. “I don’t know.” She put her hand on the doorknob.

Prof. Toto rose to her full height. “We have not discussed your senior fall fellowship applications –” She remained standing after Marwa left, looking one of her masks straight in its empty eyes.

Marcus i.m’d Marwa, and she wrote nothing about Prof. Toto. She felt They might be hacking into her computer. It was right out of Orwell’s 1984, the year of her birth. Marwa was distracted by the screen: Check out Friendster.com and see about Biren! She followed Marcus’s direction and saw Biren Ramanathan, three years older than she remembered, bigger and hard-muscled in a sleeveless black tee shirt blazoned with a green 3 dollar bill. Marwa’s first reaction was, Good for Biren, let Big Brother choke on that.

You have any idea? Marcus typed.

He was always driving me crazy flirting.

Judy said you’re going to Mecca.

Haven’t emailed her for awhile.

Congrats on JB’s Gates.

We’re over.

You closed the door on the Gates? Don’t lie.

Who knows the truth?

Seek and ye shall find. Archimedes bathtubEureka!

Cicero found Archimedes’s tomb in Syracuse:Atque ego statim Syracusanis – so I told the Syracusans

I’d rather find the Higg’s boson. Hadron Collider comes online in 2007. Then they’ll know if the God particle exists or whether it’s the toilet down which bad theories were flushed.

Muhammad’s birthday, Mawlid al-Nabi, fell that year on April 21st . April was, as always, the iconoclastic month in northern latitudes. Fierce winter blizzards had tried to strip trees of every leaf, but April’s greening replaced them all. A week later, Marwa unwrapped an unexpected present: the new Edith Grossman translation of DON QUIXOTE. It was a quotation from the classic, inscribed without signature in James Beekmans’s handwriting.

To Marwa,

“I’d like to send your grace something, but I don’t know what to send, except some very curious tubing for syringes that they make on this insula to be used with bladders; though if my position lasts, I’ll find something to send to you, one way or another.” (796)

“Let us go slowly, for there are no birds today in yesterday’s nests.” (937) Happy Birthday, every day, always.

April 29, 2005