Your Daughter is with Us (Pt.1)

Hua was a nine-year-old girl from Eastern China who had joined her parents in Paris just two months before we met. I was their neighbor, and they passed by my window twice a day. Her mother described, whisking a clenched fist over an outstretched palm, how she paid twenty-thousand euros for the necessary travel documents. Hua lived with her parents on the ground floor of an old apartment complex with several stairwells rising through two five-story buildings, home to hundreds. A stone lane runs from the gate at the street straight back to the last ground-floor door. In the evening, before the parents got home from work, there was often a knock on Hua’s door, and a voice echoed back along the lane. Hua? Are you alone? Have you eaten? Hua managed the five-minute walk to and from school alone, doing homework or sleeping until somebody came home to cook. The neighborhood has a leftist legacy, and the primary school, named after a Latin American revolutionary hero, offers a special adjustment class for the new arrivals who do not yet speak French.
One day Hua forgot to take her key. She couldn’t go home, so she decided to look for one of the three people she knew: her parents and an ‘uncle.’ She negotiated a route into the metro between the Chinese squatting in line for the sidewalk pay phones, Africans in flowing dress, Jews and Muslims opening their couscous restaurants and shops. Somehow in the jostling mass, this small, silent girl caught the eye of a transport system employee, who placed Hua in police custody. Hua lead three male officers back to her door, where they waited for the parents to return. The Police were firm about not leaving the girl behind in the care of friendly and concerned neighbors who appeared on their way home. A light rain fell; everyone waited under the stairwell arch near the letter boxes. A stoic Hua leaned against the wall, unable to understand anything that was said until I happened to come down the lane and speak to her in elementary Chinese. Hua explained that she had left her key inside, and that her parents would be home soon. I got a hint of a smile when I showed her pictures on my laptop of me in China.
The police scribbled a note to the parents (‘Your daughter was found alone in the metro. She’s with the police. Call this number’), slipped the paper into their mailbox and left. Hua’s black ponytail swung over her bright red backpack as she trotted along, keeping pace with the tall officers.

Not Allowed to Show You

How long should I have remained standing in silence, waiting for answers from a man frozen in concentration as he stared at a page of words I did not understand? I had asked this local consultant for help in translating a text. Interrupting the meditation to apologize for trouble caused before swiftly departing might have been offensive, indicative of a lack of faith in this person’s willingness or ability to decipher the blurred script. A compromise became possible when the reader looked up as another matter called his attention, allowing me to express gratitude and leave.
I do not yet have the wanted details. This much I do know:
The 11th-century text is in Arabic, covering two pages of an open book depicted on the front of a plastic file supplied by my bank for storing monthly statements. The other recognizable object on the file cover is a scrap of papyrus with hieroglyphics running horizontally across the fragment, suggestive in form of a rimless high hat with a commanding lower V which would run across a forehead down to mid-nose. I read neither Arabic nor hieroglyphics, so I called the bank to request a translation, and was informed that the Arabic text is from the 11th-century Egyptian mathematician Ibn al-Milli. Employed as a Customs Official in Alexandria, he hoped to be succeeded by his son Mohammed and wrote a textbook dealing with the math-related aspects of Customs work, such as calculating foreign exchange rates. The hieroglyphics on the papyrus scrap - not a hat at all, but apparently used as legal tender - would take longer to translate, but the Communications Department has promised to get back to me on this one. I requested permission to display close-ups of these graceful texts as they appear on my plastic file, but the bank said no.

Hold Down Pages

Certain libraries allow visitors to photograph books as long as the camera is silent and no flash is involved. This is terrific when the library you are in is far from home and the books can't be checked out. I hadn't thought of it myself until spending about ten days printing out microfilm copies from a special collection in the basement of an otherwise attractive building. At one point I left the room for a break and passed a young woman, quite Goth, photographing page after page from a book laid out on the main table. I got myself a decent digital camera and in no time I was I was having new library experiences. In a university library reading area, I brushed aside peanuts, potato chips and chocolate bar wrappers, cleaned the surface of the table, and captured the pages needed while surrounded by other visitors who chatted, composed text messages on their phones and snacked. In a Municipal library in a different city, a sweet, smiling librarian supplied me with a tome-shaped white pillow to rest the book on and a matching string of white beads to lay across the open book, thereby holding down the pages. He demonstrated the technique, and explained their library policy in a whisper.