The paw is now hanging below her breast. It’s larger than the span of a hand now and has sprouted toes with small mouths. The toes flex like spiders’ legs. When she sits at the desk, before her scant, numbered notes, the toes pick up her pen. The extremity squeaks; it’s covered in a viscous varnish. She doesn’t dare touch it. Her earlobe is red; blood is accumulating in the capillaries. She watches her new extremity move toward the scribbled writing on one side of her notes, a ballpoint pen between its toes. It adds to the scribbles. She attempts to make out what it’s writing with so much concentration and at such a furious pace, but when she tugs away the pen, the paw tugs back. It resists even more strongly when she ties it to her hair with elastic bands. The moaning of the toes changes to frantic mutterings and the extremity kicks out rather unconvincingly at her shoulder. Then it calms and she feels its relaxation spilling down her side. What would happen if she cut it off?

She checks her cellphone. Why not call her mother and tell her what is happening? What use are these incomprehensible, numbered notes? She imagines a now huge paw creeping to the post office and putting them in an envelope. And her mother, dark circles under her eyes, trying to read those notes, doubly unintelligible due to the additional scrawls of the paw.

She goes back to the desk. The flowers and geometrical motifs of the hangings covering the walls are hypnotic. They seem to move, although in fact it’s mites crawling through the threads of the old, moth-eaten fabric. She hears that mute army, distinguishes the nuances of its movements. The mites jump, stop, scuttle through the fine strands like tiny rats, like fleas through long hair. Seventy, eighty, a hundred years of dust has accumulated in those hangings, which to her eyes don’t look faded now. There are also microscopic particles that were once desert sand. Something so old that it can no longer be named pulses within the weaves.

The next day the paw is ten centimeters longer. Since it’s impossible to tie it back, she decides to return to the headscarf store. Outside, the world radiates light. The paw swings back and forth, as if it too is enjoying the bright, cheerful morning, and passersby stare at the bulge wrapped in something that is neither Western nor Arab clothing.

“I’d like three hijabs,” she says in bad French.