“Okay, so I think I understand the Stations of the Cross — but why are there 14 stations? Why not a lucky number, like seven? Or an unlucky number like 13, since Jesus wound up dying? Or a really big number like 100? Or even 1,000? Huh? Nick?”

I can’t answer Nooshin right away because my jaw is clamped shut. A reflexive clenching that threatens to shatter my teeth. I take a deep calming breath, and relax the muscles so I can open my mouth, and try to explain YET ANOTHER weird inexplicable Catholic thing.

My words come out like 12 gauge buckshot. The humorous irony of our situation is squandered on me. Me, the atheist who grew up Lutheran. Her, the softboiled Muslim. This, the Dia de Santa Anastasia — Saint Anastasia’s Day — a local Catholic holiday.

Nooshin is folded into a wicker chair on the hotel veranda, a mess of skinny limbs and sharply-angled joints. She’s wearing one of my plain white button-down shirts over a pink Hello Kitty tanktop and drainpipe jeans. Her hair is pulled back in a simple ponytail, revealing an intent focus on the religious procession that’s clogging Guanajuato. Behind her sunglasses the next question is percolating, I just know it.

Penitents flood through the streets in Abu Ghraib-style black slitted hoods and horsehair belts, dragging chains, suffering ritualistically for their Christ as he suffered for them. Gangs of bent men struggle beneath ornate icons of Jesus in all the Stations of the Cross. Little girls in angel costumes are marching with incense decanters. It’s the craziest godshit you’ve ever seen, if you’re a farmboy from Iowa.

Nooshin doesn’t seem all that impressed, despite her never-ending questions. I wish we could make a shopping detour into one of the many bookstores hidden away in these twisty cobblestone streets and dead-end alleys. Buy her a copy of Catholicism for Dummies or something. But Saint Anastasia’s Day doesn’t just clog the streets of Guanajuato, it also shuts down the stores. The entire city takes the weekend off and goes loco with religious fervor. You can buy crap like blessed scourges of barbed wire, Crucifixion-shaped candy, holy water, but that’s about it.

Apropos of nothing, Nooshin suddenly asks, “What happens when the Pope dies?”

At first I just stare in bafflement. Then I notice a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI bobbing in the crowd. The pontiff looks like beef jerky dressed in an Andy Warhol wig. “Well, a bunch of cardinals — 120, I think — get together at the Vatican and elect a new pope.”

She leans intently over her knees, filing away that piece of Catholic trivia. Behind the opaque curve of her sunglasses I can see her right eye. The crooked orb is wandering my direction, trying to look at me instead of the Saint Anastasia’s Day procession.

A bunch of Mexican men costumed as Jesus are filing past, bloody with stigmatas of tempura paint. I take a swig of the Diet Coke I’m nursing. “So all this is pretty different from Islam, huh? Especially the Pope stuff. I suppose that seems strange to a Muslim, the way Catholics elect their supreme leader and call it God’s will.”

“Mormons do the same thing,” Nooshin says matter-of-factly.

I watch my knee piston for a while. How the hell did she know that? The girl of neverending surprises.

“Actually, this is a lot like Islam,” she continues. “Like, the processions and carrying banners and stuff. Even the date reminds me of Islam. A couple weeks ago it was Arba’een.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Arba’een is probably the most somber day of the year for Shiites. It commemorates the final day of mourning for Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. He died as a martyr, just like this Saint Anastasia person.” Nooshin smiles bitterly. “All Shiites are supposed to visit his grave, but I’ve never been to Karbala. Iran was at war with Iraq, with Saddam Hussein, when I was a little girl. We could only listen to my grandfather’s stories about his pilgrimages.”

I’m remembering the newspaper I read when we arrived. El Correo de Guanajuato. It had a wire story on the Karbala pilgrimage in Iraq. “Sounds like the pilgrimages are happening again, now that Saddam Hussein is history.”

“Yeah. Some of Saman’s family was going to Karbala this year. It’s their first visit to the imam’s grave in 25 years.”

“I hope they get blown up by Sunni suicide bombers.”

Nooshin pivots her face toward me. Her crooked eye becomes a faint outline behind the smoky plastic. “You don’t mean that.”

“Actually, I do. They want to kill you, remember? To regain their family honor or whatever. How fucked up and Dark Ages is that?”

“Islam isn’t like that. It’s a beautiful religion.”

“You’re my only exposure to Islam. You and your family and your in-laws. So maybe I’m dealing with an unrepresentative sample here, but I don’t see anything beautiful about it.”

She colors with fury. “You’re prejudiced, Nick! Not only against Islam, but any religion. You’re even prejudiced against just believing in God. Because you don’t want to admit there’s a higher power than your stupid know-it-all self.”

“Gimme a fucking break.” I try to load finality into my tone. This conversation is so over.

“It’s true,” Nooshin says stubbornly.

I watch my knee piston up and down. “You’re only defending your in-laws because you feel guilty. And you shouldn’t. So what if you weren’t the good Muslim girl? So what if you fled an abusive situation? So what if you want a divorce?”

“So what if I’m pregnant with your child?” An eyebrow arches above her sunglasses. “I have a lot to feel guilty for. I’m the reason you’re going to get kicked out of UCLA. You won’t get your Ph.D. because of me.”

“Well yeah, but…”

I don’t finish the thought. I’m distracted by the tiny scars that ghost across her forehead and bleed into her eyebrows, reminders of the difficult truce between a little girl and her lazy eye. They look like shards of ivory in the bright sunshine.

Nooshin’s full lips compress a little, and muscles twitch along her sharp jawline. Scrutiny still makes her nervous. It was always the prelude to uncomfortable double-takes and teasing words and disdain. But she doesn’t turn away in shame the way she once did, resigning herself to rejection, a self-defensive reaction. Now she holds my gaze. Bravely. Or maybe just in hopeless resignation.

Just contemplating her like that — the imperfections of her beauty, and the beauty of her imperfections — my heart bursts into starshells, and I want to make her pregnant all over again. The impulse seems absurd at first, like revisiting a mistake just to make it again, but then I realize this is where I want to be. With Nooshin, an incredible girl who got under my skin, and into my head, and through my ribcage. I want to be joined to her for the rest of my life.