“You lost your boy, too?”

“He would have loved it here. The game, the food, the people — everything.”

A member of the Argentinian Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo had been taken to Slap’s BBQ in Kansas City, Kansas and had found herself next to a table of SOS Disparus Algerians who had been taken there by another host family. They sat outside on the benches under the American sky that silently struck them each as being the appropriate size for an American sky, clutched hands opening ever outward. The kind of sky-sized hands that could pressurize the moon into a pearl.  

Ramona Ray and Safa Salhi. They spoke of the Junta and the Algerian Civil War of the 90’s, of Hédi Jouini and Violeta Parra, of Messi and Rabah Madjer, of the shows they were watching, how the flights were on the way over, and what they had seen.

“People treat memory like something you can throw out the window of your car as you drive on,” Safa said. “A crumpled can. A cigarette reduced to ash. That’s not how it works. It’s not how any of this works.”

Ramona smiled. “Did your son have a favorite team?”

“Well,” Safa said,” using the cornbread to sop up some lingering sauce, as she had been instructed to do. “Believe it or not, he really liked Boca Juniors.”

Ramona’s smile broke into the sunshine of recognition. “That was our team! What do you want to know about them?”

“I like your earrings, by the way,” Safa said. “They remind me a little bit of the trencadís Gaudi used.”