I got an electronic-mail message from an old friend from Yugoslavia, and I printed it out to share it with my mother, who loves my friend, too. She read it aloud before dinner today. Adjusting her glasses from time to time, she went through the message slowly and methodically. “Fuck it,” she read at some point. “God,” she looked at me over her glasses and smiled, “this is the first time I have pronounced these words!” In a month and a bit she will be ninety.