Rain on a window pane a fire truck a tomcat with innumerable offspring it is an intentionally unintentional gaze that allows for chance encounters for stories and memories leads that Ruth Beckermann follows across Europe and the Mediterranean Nigerian asylum seekers in Sicily an Arab musician in Galilee nationalists drunk on beer in Vienna the Capitoline Wolf and three veiled young women trying for minutes to cross a busy road in Alexandria Threads cloth and textiles pop up like book marks in a fabric of movement of traveling or seeking refuge