Was it not this woman’s two-day-old breakfast that you fed Nasir and yourself, while twisted into an amoeba in your allotted corner of the Mediterranean crosser? Whilst trying not to think about the boat’s wanting to impress the ever-demanding waves, with front flips, without care for its bearings, nor its passengers.

In the absence of all these things, you began to pray.

Here Bordeaux is a sketch of modernity, glass, spices slipped into the atmosphere, which peppers you to pray, for one last strength.

You finger your rosary seated in the Cathedral’s hall, even after many Mass comers had gone, probably already at their homes. You allow yourself to forget, moulding into a liberal yet peaceful being, with each Hail Mary, Mother of God, from your scathed lips, you make certain they hit certain rusty notes inside of you, as you mute from your ears Nasir’s loud running through the sanctorum.

At home, sometimes, you try to do same, but with your Tesuba. Reclining on the only chair in the room close to the window, your ears attuned to the hive from the street below. You try not to misplace Allah for Subriy’ an Allahyi. The way Nasir’s fountain taught you, in that undecided life.

Don’t say you cannot recollect that cramped warehouse after school, those humid rendezvous hours, when there seemed to be too much sunshine, too much ecstasy, too much perfection, for a bump on your bowel to have had him out of your life, burnt with all the things one vows to obliterate into the settling sunshine.

It is a good thing that you forgot not. Perhaps all those years of not saying much, not having much to say, has come to help oil your memories into wellness. Nonetheless, keep praying for that strength. The one to help you reach where you had thought you should leave.

Home.