◇Chosen from our list of nearly zero applicants◇

﷽Al Bodega was the only shop open seven days a week at the local farmers market because Luis lived there and had no other home.

During COVID, his father returned to Morocco and his mother returned to Mexico. They secured new products, had them shipped, and occasionally sent emails when sales were down.

Luis had not seen his parents in years, and for at least three they “forgot” his birthday. Padre had reopened a storefront in a bazaar in Tangiers, and at night he drank mint tea with his brothers singing na’t. His mother possesses an “Island Life: Boss Babe” social media front where she travels across the Caribbean with various tías, enjoying umbrella drinks and purchasing odd Santeria goods at a discount to send to Luis.

Another reason why the Bodega was open seven days a week, really. It was the only affordable supplier to the superstitious, and an herbal pharmacy for those who prefer black cohosh and pennyroyal tea over medical abortion.

Luis opened the bodega as he always did, by pulling himself out of his hammock in the back room, stretching, showering in the utility sink, then getting dressed in his jeans, slides, and anime shirt [today was Castlevania], feeding Luna, the all white bodega cat, and finally opening the door.

Outside the door was a small blue box wrapped in metallic ribbons that read “Congratulations!” stamped in repeat. The card on the box indicated the contents were “For Mr. Luna Al Bodega.”

Luis was confused. Luna was clearly female. Occasionally, on holidays, he would even dress her up in tiny quinceañera dresses as she mostly slept on the counter in front of the register on top of a pile of folded, woven ponchos.

[The top poncho always remained Luna’s, as she claimed it each day with her fur]

Opening the box further, Luis found a registration packet, a set of prayer beads, and $5000 cash.

“Congratulations to Mr. Luna Al Bodega on your acceptance to The University of Alaraf’s Philosophy of Religion department for the fall semester. You have been chosen from our list of nearly zero applicants! To preserve our standing as a liberal arts campus and maintain our revenue streams, we have provided you with $5000 to enroll full time in our online degree program! You choose your own pathway through an interdisciplinary multimedia experience led by caring & experienced faculty. We will continue to support your journey each semester with cash assistance and the cost of tuition fully waived. You earn a prestigious degree from a historical campus, and we keep our funding! It’s a win/win.

Congratulations and Welcome to the University of Alaraf!

[Go Cats!]

Signed: 🐾

Your loving faculty advising team

P.S. We already know you have zero friends in real life by your gamer profile, so a friend & study buddy will be assigned to you after you log in to the official University of Alaraf website and enter the 6 digit code on this letter.”

Luis pulled another package from the box containing a cat-sized white hooded sweatshirt with the school motto written in gold foil Latin [“In felibus veritas est.”], some Alaraf paw-print fruit snacks by Sodexo, and finally, “I and Thou” by Martin Buber in three languages: English, German, and Persian.

The problem was, everyone in the region was aware Alaraf was already a bombed out campus with the only remaining viable majors being nursing, business, and historical reconstruction.

There was current news of faculty being found living in the sub-basements and treated for heavy metal toxicity, and a long history of protests against the prior campus administration for unlawful and inhumane testing on animals & students.

Luis was abandoned running a bodega at the Q-mart with zero car, zero friends, a high school diploma he completed online during COVID, and a family that viewed him as a distant income source without even pretending to care about his welfare in years.

He got a stipend of $1000 a month to cover his expenses, which his family thought was “generous,” as they viewed Luis as “lazy” for having absolutely no life except the life he was presently confined to by their efforts & personal disregard.

Luis fired up his gaming PC behind the register, perched on his wicker swing chair held by a single chain to the ceiling, and entered the code on the Al-Araf website.

Instead of a typical university greeting, he found a cut-scene.

The view was film noir dark, the perspective from a podium at the front of a classroom facing common rows of lined collegiate desks. Instead of students, the chairs themselves were fashioned with Alaraf giftshop gear, and from the neck holes of each shirt stood paper plates attached to rulers to keep them upright, smiling with sharpie smiles, the eyes small drawn dots. Some had drawn on eyelashes.

The windows in the room were shattered, and outside seemed to be a maelstrom of debris against ash and rising plumes of smoke. Even the single fake plant in the room looked dead.

“Welcome to a new year at Alaraf. This is Philosophy 101. Please turn to the syllabus, you will see that it is empty. This university is a burnt out husk and almost none of you care to be here or even comprehend anything I am about to say to you. We are going to start the lesson with Plato’s Cave-“

The screen went dark briefly, then slowly returned, now showing the inside of a subterranean room filled with medicinal plants, grow lights, and a menagerie of cats paying varying amounts of attention to the lecturer.

“-We are going to start the lesson with Surah Al Kahf.”

The speaker now had paws.

He continued, “Luis. Can you please find your father’s Quran from the top shelf of the Southeast corner of your shop, above the Moroccan textiles, and start reading from the first Ayat…?”

“I can’t read that.”

“You do not speak Arabic?”

“I already broke my wudu, and I don’t read Arabic well.”

“Excellent. Neither do I. How did you break your wudu?”

“Breakfast flan & intestinal protest.”

“Do you pray?”

“I showered this morning and said ‘Dios Mío’ when the guy from the pet shop flushed the toilet.”

“Please find ‘Mijo’s First English Qur’an’ at the end of the leftmost aisle of the store, near the coloring books and baby’s first Novena candles.”

“I still don’t have wudu.”

“It’s just ‘The Clear Quran’ from Al-Furqaan with a sticker on the cover. There is no Arabic text, so technically, wudu is not necessary.”

“How do you even know what my store looks like?”

“You have many cameras and poor firewalls. Why does it matter how it is known if it leads to necessary solutions?”

Luis looked at the cameras he had never once checked, then at the cat asleep on her poncho, then at the five thousand dollars on the counter.

No one had paid that much attention to Luis in years.

He went to find the book.

He was “lazy” according to his parents anyway, and evidently had nothing better to do with his time than waste it on a Philosophy of Religion degree.

Luna continued to sleep through the first lecture and nobody asked her to read the Qur’an nor Plato.