Memory is a strange thing. It reorganizes and connects. It provides context and clarity; it reveals patterns and divergences. It finds the holes in the universe and stitches them closed, tying the threads together in a tight, unbreakable knot. I learned this from my mother. And now I will teach it to you.

They were beautiful, these girls. They were so, so beautiful. And maybe so was I. I lifted my arms and began to twirl. It felt so good, just for second, to let go. Completely.

Was I the immovable object, or was I the unstoppable force? Perhaps I was both. Perhaps this is what we learn from our mothers.

I remember being twenty-one and thinking that my personality was a solid thing, that me was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But now I know that me is fluid and shape-changing.

For years now he‘d understood that time was all at once, back and forth, upside down. As animals subject to the laws of earth, we think time is experience. But time is more a substance, like air, only of course not air. It is in fact a holy element.

Their teachers were desperate need and decades of rage; the hoarded words of their mothers and grandmothers; one another.

He felt the gazes of dozens of people tracking every step he took, but he kept his head held high. After all he‘d been through, after everything he‘d seen and done, what his colleagues thought of him didn‘t matter in the slightest.

For his beloved grandson, out of his love for him, even the Prophet of Islam could pause the single most important requirement of faith, regardless of how many watched. What were we meant to learn from this that we had failed to?