Love. The fourth face is known as ventricular ejection. The ventricles are empty and contracting, and the semi-loona valves are open. In the years following my father's death, I slowly realized that my devotion to my family and religion, like my own blood supply, is limited. Where Asia prayer was over, and my mother and brother were asleep, I would stare into my father's bathroom mirror at the signs of puberty arriving on my skin, and hear them in my voice, praying for manhood to come soon. By the eighth grade I thought I was ready. I prayed to Allah that a girl like Stephanie, Sarah or Angela would notice me, and that my mother wouldn't learn about the semi-innocent games of truth or dare, or the middle school parties with make-out sessions to the sounds of mixed tapes. During my freshman year of high school, I was lucky enough to have friends with cars. Muslim friends who kept my mother blind to the binge drinking and the sleepovers. She eventually caught on and tried to hide her pain. Ranjelik's son was dead, and all that was left was a hormonal half-ling heaving under the covers with heath and girls. She tried to rain me back in with a fire and brimstone version of Islam, that she, the former Baptist from pure white Texas cotton country, could relate to. I tried to placate her, but I would never be as good as my father. I was a native Texan with an Arab name, the son of a dead Muslim, survived by his proselyt. I was 17 when I packed all my necessities along with my insecure Arab Muslim baggage, and I headed off to the University of Texas at Austin. I was with my girlfriend, and we'd been hitched at the hips since we first met in our sophomore year of high school. But our rocky relationship began to fail during our first year of college, when she was struggling with the freshman 15, and with the 15 she got on her chemistry test. She could no longer pass her classes and was facing expulsion. She then did a typical out of control shouting match. Look, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm sick and tired of fighting with you. I throw it burned from all the screaming. Well what are you going to do about it? Break up with me? Yes, I said calmly after a long pause. I left her apartment and never went back. Her heart was racing over the plunge. I just taken the yes that I'd never uttered before. My replies were usually, no, that's not what I mean. I'm just worried about you. The truth was that I was also failing. I was failing at living in sin. I would also fail engineering, business, and pre-med. I too was on scholastic probation and faced expulsion if I didn't repair my TPA. My only option was to go after the low hanging fruit. I registered for Arabic 1.0 in the fall of my junior year. And after the first two weeks of class, I learned more than all the Friday nights and seven day mornings in Islamic school. The A in Arabic boosted my GPA and gave me the right to call myself Muhammad. That spring I racked up another set of excellent grades in Arabic, geography, and anthropology and the history of the Middle East. There was something about those Middle Eastern studies classes. We just clicked. Muhammad, this is a great paper on the negative impact of the S1 high dams at my geography professor, professor, who had nearly lost his life in a desert flash flood. Muhammad, I just love your analysis of liminality and the ritual of Muslim prayer. He said, my anthropology professor, whose husband was Moroccan. Muhammad, is Shema your family name? Are you Jewish? Ask my advisor from Tel Aviv. The interest in me, whether genuine or not, didn't stop with the faculty. Muhammad, you should sign up for model Arabic said Blanca, whose boyfriend was Lebanese. Muhammad, we play the tubla for us, said Debbie, the part-time student, part-time billied answer who I assumed I must have played, who assumed I must have played throughout my life. This royal treatment boosted my ego. Over the next few years I gained a newfound confidence that I'd lost somewhere between my father's death and denying my faith and mother's wishes. I was proudly rediscovering the buried Muslim tomb of my Egyptian and American identity. I wanted to meet others like myself. You're Heidi, right? She nodded and gave me a cautious smile as I singled her out of the crowd of students leaving the classroom. Muhammad, I sit behind you. What's up? She said in a casual manner. All of a sudden I wasn't prepared. Five years of studying and learning, and now I didn't have anything to say. The words were locked up inside me. I fumbled for a key, but couldn't find one. Instead I tried to pick the lock with the closest object I could find. That's a really cool necklace. Where'd you get it? Thanks, she said softly. She made a motion to cover it, but then took her hand away. It's the goddess Isis. My mom got it for me. She was an Egypt. Her pharonic charm had been working on me even before she opened her lips. I didn't know what ancient Egyptian gods she had dangling from her neck, but the shy, downward gazing statue on her neck guided me, like a pair of wings. Her hands were right to be cautious. I was trying to read her and translate my feelings into meaning. That's cool, I said. I wanted to know where she came from, but I was trying not to trip over myself and blurred out the question. What did your mom like best about it? She knew I liked ancient Egypt. But what did she like about Egypt? Did she go for the pyramids or the mosques? What are you talking about? She wasn't a tourist. We're from Egypt. You idiot! I said to myself, here I am outside of class on Middle Eastern history, and I'm acting like I don't know where the brown skin curly headed girl with the Isis necklaces from. I had to play it off. Away, that's so cool. Where are you from in Egypt anyway? Cairo, she said blankly. Yeah, but like where in Cairo? You know Cairo. I know enough to get lost. Wait a minute. That sounded better in my head than homelips. It's technically outside of Cairo. You wouldn't know it.