 My mother says to me, Yasmin, can you please talk to the bank lady on the phone for me? I always do, but I never understand why she asks, because to my ears her English is perfect. She cuts through any silence like a knife. She's sharp, but they call her dull. I'm one whole of two halves, and when he and I speak they listen, but when she speaks they turn away. I know her blood, that it runs through my mind that it's thousands and thousands of years of ancestry and tradition and war and family and famine and survival that lead it down to an accent. They call funny.