Denim Prix (‘Pree’) met Marwa on what he considered his bench on the esplanade of Battery Park City.

Marwa’s mother taught part-time, Arabic and Arabic studies at Columbia.

She liked the noisy sleet against the window that shifted sound volume with the silent snow carried by glass-thumping wind gusts.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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