Zainab huyo. Do not use on stick; he ran by instinct and agony, meeting the path back to the cabin with his feet in desperation. It remained in the darkness for hours, with the cold earth filtering the hues.
When Yusha retired, the air seemed different. On the scent of wood now oil is quenched.
—¿Zainab? —he asked, perceiving the change. Have a small package on the table: bread, quizzes, or a little of this—. What happened?
—Are you always begging, Yusha? —asked. Su voz was hueca, like a junco chasqueando al windo.
The silence that followed was long and heavy, filled with things that could not be said.
—I’ll tell you one more time —I say, with the voice lacking in its poetic caliber—. Not always.
My sister met me today. She told me you’re a liar. She told me you’re hiding. You use my darkness to stay in the shadows. Tell me the truth. Who are you? And why are you in this cabin with a woman you pay to take you up?
Lo oyó move. Don’t worry about her, until you look for them. If he arrodillò to his pies, his rodillas hit the earth compacta with a dull blow. Take your hands in your hands. They were temblando.
“You were a doctor,” he whispered.
Zainab heard it atrás, but he sujetó.
It’s been years since I had a brother in the city. A fiber. Yours was young, arrogant. I think I could cure everyone. Trabajé hasta el delirio. I made a mistake, Zainab. A miscalculation in a dye. No maté to a desnocida. Maté a la hija del gobernador provincial. A girl no mayor than you.
Zainab felt the air leave the room.
“No only do I forget my title,” continued Yusha in his quiet voice. “They left my house. They declared me dead for the world. They converted me into a beggar because it was the only way to disappear. I was in the mezquita looking for a way to die slowly. But then I brought your father. He had a hija that was ‘useless’. A hija that was a ‘maldición'”.
He opened his hands to her dear. She felt the humidity of the tears; not yours, but yours.
I didn’t take you because they paid me, Zainab. I read you because when I described you, they told me we were the same. We both wandered into ghosts. I thought… I thought that if I could protect you, if I could see the world through my words, then I could recover my soul. But it makes me fall in love with the ghost. And that was never part of the plan.
Zainab became paralyzed. The journey was, yes, the lie of one’s identity, but it was wrapped in a much more painful truth. No he was a beggar by fate; he was a beggar by his own choice, a man who lived in a self-imposed purgatory.
—The fire —he whispered—. Aminah talked about a fire.
—Mi pasado arde —dijo—. Don’t ask me anything about this man, Zainab. Only the knowledge of how to heal. I was treating the sick people of the village for the night, in secret. Ahí comes el cobre extra. It was how you bought your medicine last week.
Zainab extended her hand, with red hands, as she traced the contours of her beak. He met the bridge of his nariz, the eyes, the humedad of his eyes. He wasn’t the monster his girlfriend had described to her. He was a man destroyed by his own humanity, trying to put it back together with his suaya.
To continue reading, click (NEXT) below!
