BLOWS
If Mr. Gansler recognizes the address I give him, he doesn’t say so. In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all during our short car ride together. He just sweeps the fast-food wrappers from the passenger seat before I get in. There’s a child’s booster seat and a healthy scattering of crumbs and broken crayons in the back—things that surprise me more than they should. The contents of his car are uncomfortably normal.
I start to thank him as I get out, but he waves me away. “I’ll see you soon, Laila. Take care.” He’s robotic with exhaustion.
I’m wary as I walk up the steps of the building, but none of Amir’s horrible neighbors are in sight. My stomach gurgles acidly as I knock on the door; it feels like a volcano is erupting in my belly. I can’t remember the last time I ate.
A familiar man opens the door. He’s been in our apartment before, and I remember him from Bastien’s birthday party. I’m embarrassed that I don’t know his name, but it seems too late to ask now.
He knows exactly who I am, though. I can tell from the way he looks like he wants to kill me.
For a long moment he just stares. “The doors of empty castles open wide,” he says finally, in a hissing knife of a voice. It’s an old saying from home that I’ve heard before, but it has never sounded so personal. Or so threatening. The man does not move aside. His hands open, then close into fists, and his nostrils flare. For a moment I think he’s going to hit me. For a moment I want him to hit me, to substitute physical pain for guilt. Do it, I will him.
But he doesn’t strike. “Amir!” He barks the name and whirls around, leaving the door to swing slowly shut.
As I wait awkwardly in the foyer, I realize that Amir’s apartment is full of people, just like mine. But even through the closed door, I can hear a difference. The muted sounds feel different. I can hear a woman crying, and I know the gathering inside is not a happy one.
Finally, he comes to the door. Amir is dead-eyed and gray-faced, and he won’t look directly at me. “You have some nerve showing up here.” But his anger sounds anemic. Like he has no further energy to spare me—neither good nor bad. Like I am dead to him.
“Amir, I didn’t know. I had no idea. I thought what I told you was true, I swear it.” I know he’ll hear my words as lies, but what else can I say?
He starts to close the door in my face, then changes his mind and swings it open so hard it slams against the wall. Now, at last, he looks at me. It’s almost comforting to see the hatred back in his eyes—it’s better than the grieving nothingness of the moment before.
His voice is a barely controlled fury. “Our people showed up exactly where you told us. But you promised there’d be one man and enough guns and money to win the war. Instead, there were twenty men, no money, and the only guns were those in the hands of your uncle’s supporters—the ones who ambushed our group. The ones who killed fifteen of my friends and relatives.”
“Not your father …?” I can only whisper my question, I want so badly for the answer to be no.
He doesn’t reply at first, and I fear the worst. But then he shakes his head, a sideways tilt to his mouth making the scar on his cheek deepen and crease. “No, not my father,” he finally says. “He’s still recovering from his time in prison. Good thing, or he certainly would have been there. Tuberculosis and two bone fractures that were never properly set, and still my mother had to practically chain him to the bed to keep him from going. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that injuries from your father’s people kept him from getting killed by your uncle’s people?” He laughs in a way that isn’t funny at all.
“I’m so glad, Amir. I was so scared—”
This was the wrong thing to say. He goes wide-eyed with incredulous anger and then grabs me roughly by the arm and pulls me into the apartment.
I could run away. I could push him, or yank my arm away, or scream for help. But instead, I let him pull me inside, half tripping as he drags me down the hallway into a crowded room. I’m limp with dread, and I let him shove me the last few inches. Dozens of eyes burn into me as everyone stops talking and turns to stare.
“You should know what you’ve done, Laila. There should be consequences. We did your dirty work. We killed your uncle, Laila. That’s what you wanted, right?” His voice cracks, and he’s breathing hard, but he isn’t finished. “And let me guess. Right now people are coming out of the woodwork, gathering at your home, claiming they’ve supported your mother all along, even if just yesterday they were here, supporting us. Right? Your family wins again, Laila. It always does, doesn’t it?”
I stand in the circle of judging, hating eyes, shrinking under the weight of Amir’s accusations. His words feel like lash strokes, and it’s all I can do to stay on my feet.
He’s not finished. His voice grows quieter, thaws with compassion. But the compassion is not meant for me. “See her?” he asks, pointing to a middle-aged woman with anguished red eyes. “Her husband died. And him?” He spins and points to a young man who looks like a taller version of himself. “His father died.” He singles out three more people. “And her, and him, and her? They all lost someone. Each of us did. Everyone in this room lost a friend, or a relative, or a neighbor, or …” A long-haired woman comes to his side and puts her hand on his shoulder, and he wilts.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper. I look at the floor, desperate to escape the stares. “I just thought—” I scramble for the right words, but they don’t come.
Amir doesn’t let me finish. “I just thought there was more to you. Something that could be trusted. But I was wrong. You are your father’s daughter.” He spits the last sentence, and from his mouth it sounds like a curse.
I’m hunched, cornered and cowed by the hate around me, and my mouth opens and closes uselessly as I realize there’s nothing I can possibly say.
“Get out.” The voice is thin and high, but unmistakably clear. “Get out.” Nadeen, Amir’s sister, repeats herself as she steps from behind a cluster of men and draws herself up to her full, crooked height.
I nod slowly and then turn to walk out, cringing as I wait for a blow that never comes.
No one else speaks. There is nothing left to be said.
POSSESSIONS
We’ve accumulated more than I realized since we arrived here. Mother and I stand together and fold, but already it’s clear that much will be left behind.
“Should we keep these?” I ask, holding up a stack of Bastien’s oh-so-American T-shirts. Skulls and crossbones; dinosaurs, monster trucks, and ninjas. Cheerful horrors adorn his wardrobe here.
“No.” Mother shakes her head. “He won’t need those.” She retreats into her bedroom and then emerges with two familiar garments. She hands me one. “Will it be hard for you to go back to wearing this?”
I chew on my lip while I consider the veil. “No. I don’t think so. It never really bothered me before, anyway.”
She makes a face while she pulls her own veil up and over her hair. “I’ve always hated it.” She tugs it off her head and tosses it aside. “Enough packing for now. Let’s eat something.”
But the cupboards are empty again. We’re leaving tomorrow, and life has been too turbulent to think of things such as groceries. We sit at the table anyway, neither of us bothered by the lack of a meal. My stomach is too jumpy, my nerves too electric to eat.
“It’s not going to be the same, Laila. You know that, right?” She’s been gentle with me all week. Watchful, as if she’s worried she has broken me. “The palace has been looted. Darren has only seen the outside, but he said it looks like there might have been a fire. There’s probably nothing left inside.”
When I don’t say anything, she continues. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed. I don’t want you to expect things to be like they were before.”
“I don’t want things to be like before.”
Mother tilts her head at this. Squints at me. So I repeat myself. “I won’t do it. I won’t go back to the way it was before. The lies. The betrayals. The violence.”
Her eyes drop. We both know what I mean by this. For the first time, we both know the same things. “Your father—” she starts.
“Don’t defend him!” I slap my hands down on the table. Hard.
She’s still for a moment. Then she nods. “Your father loved us.” Her voice is quiet.
“I know.” On that one simple fact we can agree. The rest is too complicated and too painful to discuss now—or maybe ever. In order to go forward, much will have to remain unspoken. It’s not forgiveness so much as it is … momentum. But I can’t resist one last question.
“How did you know I’d do it? That I’d pass the information to Amir? That I’d even find it?”
Mother rises from her seat across the table. She comes around and sits in the chair next to mine, taking one of my hands in both of hers before answering. “Because you’re good, Laila. Because you’re smart, and decent, and kind. Not to mention terribly nosy and a shameless eavesdropper.” She smiles at that, and her hands rise to stroke my hair. With featherlight fingers she turns my face toward hers so that I have to look at her as she speaks. “I didn’t plan it this way. I didn’t want to involve you. But you kept seeing what I hoped to keep hidden, and you kept hearing what I wanted kept secret. You learned things I wanted to protect you from, and then it was just too late. You were already involved.”
She kisses my forehead and then sits back. “It’s for the best, really. You were the one who could be trusted. By me, and by your friend Amir.” She sees the argument on my face and continues quickly before I can interrupt. “I know he doesn’t think so, and I’m sorry for that. Maybe someday he will. Probably not. But you saw something wrong, and so you did something right. You chose the only goodness you could see. Just like I knew you would.”
She stands up slowly, kisses me one more time on the top of my head, and then walks back to the piles of clothing and starts to fold again. “Let’s finish here. Tomorrow will be busy.” She begins to hum a tune.