Even the Farsi translation, the barely legibleprint beneath each calligraphed line callsfor translation. How scholarly she is at ten,squatting cross-legged, hunched overthe book of spells she spreads daily on her knees.Thou shalt not touch the verses.With the full length of her arm she turnseach page from one corner of the magic worldto the next, careful not to scare the sacred,the gilded accents, little blades suspended,twinkling over the cursive script.Thou shalt not recite in a foreign tongue.She loves the Arab tongue of God, she loves her lipssliced with surahs, the consonants he thruststo the back of her throat, the long vowelshe sustains on her breath. Her incantations soar,her white chador a floating tent sownsunny with daisies beaming with childhood.She pauses to drink at the turquoise bank:the hand-painted margin of the page hemsher faith and brims with embossed blossoms.Then dervishlike, rocking with each sibylline versethat rises out of her pliant throat, she is the reverberatingmasjid dome, poised over her paisley janamaz,birds of praise come nesting, they come cooing, darting out and into her chador.Each surah, the utterly incomprehensiblespell she incants from her proud minaret, her cupped handsan invitation for God to join her, dancewith her on the naked waters of her childhood.Before long, dancing, too, shall be forbidden.