Scheherazade wrapped herself under the bedcovers, Detroit’s violent wind still coursing through her timeless blood. Fatima sat at the vanity mirror and brushed out her purple hair. She paused, dusted her hands off on her robe, and carefully opened the mother-of-pearl Koran at her bedside. “This is Mama’s Koran. She could read it herself,” she said. “My grandfather made a pretty good living with his carpentry, and she was able to go to school until she was fifteen.” “Mashallah,” Scheherazade replied. “God be praised.” Fatima took out a tattered sepia photo from inside the Koran. “She died of something the doctor found in her bosom, my uncle told me,” she said, and handed Scheherazade the photo, which showed a woman tilling a tobacco field, the sun having given her skin a beating. She wore a long black thowb. What little embroidery it had was also in black. The woman looked as if she never had experienced youth. “I only knew Mama in mourning clothes because someone in her family was always going away and dying,”
