Layala slips into the house that night far later than she’s allowed to be out. The door clicks shut behind her, and I hear her slip off her soft leather boots and set them by the fire. She hangs her coat up on the nail by the door and undoes her long braid.
“Maman?” she whispers. I pretend to be asleep but watch her through my slitted eyes as I lay in my cot. A smile beams on her face, one that stops my heart for a breath. It’s the smile of a young girl in love.
I want to reach out to her, to tell her that love will come, more mature love, and to wait. But I know it’ll be no use; I had that love at her age. Who am I to begrudge her it?
Instead, I let her be and stay up the rest of the night, counting my prayer beads and asking a wish-prayer on each one.
Keep her safe.
Keep her happy.
Let her find good love.
Let her know peace.
Let her know her heart and mind.
Let her be.
It’s a prayer I’ve said for Layala since before she was born, when all I knew of her were her strong legs and fists inside my womb.
I fall asleep, waking every hour, my heart stammering in my chest. I keep checking that Layala is in her cot, but every time I look, her chest rises and falls in the way only a peaceful sleeper knows.
But before the sun has even had a chance to yawn, she is up and about, setting tea, kneading dough, and laying out the za’atar and zayt we will eat for breakfast.
“Layl, you’re up early,” I say.
“Sabah al-khair, maman.”
“Your father won’t be here for another two hours, at least,” I add.
She ignores me, humming and smiling to herself. A question hovers on my lips—who is the boy? I want to know, but I don’t ask her. Let her tell me in her own time.
She sits at the table, scripting something on empty sheets of cream paper.
“What are you writing?” I ask, forcing myself not to lean over and read it myself.
“Stories. Like you do, except on paper instead of in the air.” She flashes me a smile and dips her head back to write some more.
“Your stories and mine are different, binti,” I tell her. My daughter.
She rolls her eyes in all the exasperation of a girl on the cusp of womanhood. Still, she’s just fourteen, and I pull her in for a hug. She smells the same as she did when she was a baby—of powder and sweet skin. I breathe in her scent, keeping her in my arms for as long as she’ll let me. But soon enough, she’s unwrapping herself from my embrace.
“What did you do yesterday?” I ask, unable to help myself. “At jido’s.” I notice then the knees of her pants, stained with dirt. She didn’t change out of them last night.
“Were you in the cemetery again?” I ask, staring pointedly at the evidence.
She’s pulled out two dried flowers from her pocket now. They’re laid like corpses on the table, but Layala soon cups them in her palms, as if trying to warm them.
“I don’t see why you hate me being around buried bodies so old they’re dust when you’re always spending time with souls.” She doesn’t look up from her writing.
“It’s my job.”
“I went into town,” she says finally. I notice she hasn’t answered my question.
“Again? To throw more horse shit at the town boys?”
She cracks a smile but shakes her head. “Just to walk.”
I’m watching the flowers, now less pale than before, more colorful, like a child’s pale cheeks turning pink in the cold.
“Mmm, knowing you, you may have said a few words, too. Words to the wrong person, at the wrong time.”
She sighs and glances up at me. “I saw the blacksmith’s apprentice and his friends and may have exchanged a few words with them.”
It’s my turn to sigh. “What kind of words, Layl?” I try to force the strain out of my voice.
“They called me witch and death-bringer. Jinn’s daughter. Soul eater.” She frowns. “They tell me I’m made of sin, maman.” Her voice fades at the end and she turns her head away.
“Layl,” I start, tucking a tangled curl behind her ear. I force a gentleness into my voice. “Layl, how many times have I told you, you walk away when people say—”
Her face screws up in anger and she pulls away from me, the curl untucking itself again. “That blacksmith boy deserved it. I only told him what I thought of them.”
“Yes, but their parents might now come to our house, and what good would that do for us?”
“They have no right!”
“Many people have no right to say or do the things they do, but the difference is, some get away with it, and some don’t. We’re in the second group, Layl.”
I scrape the chair back against the old wooden floor harder than I mean to, then set down a bowl of herbs on the table in front of her.
Layala sighs and pushes aside her flowers, then reaches out to pick at the herbs, ripping off leaves and tossing the stems aside. “It’s not fair,” she says after a while. “And it’s not fair you’re stuck all the way out here, just because the townspeople needed a hakawati to deal with their dead.”
I don’t say anything, only cut potatoes into blocks and dump them into a bowl of oil. Layala takes the bowl and rubs in the herbs, releasing fragrance into our small cottage. Soon, we have a fire growing against the cold of the morning and food cooking over it. The air is thick with strong herbs, but thicker in the strained silence between us.
“I wish …” she starts to say when we’ve eaten and she’s already moving about our house, pulling things off shelves and out of drawers. I notice how long her limbs are, how much bigger she fits into our one room cottage, like she’s outgrowing it far faster than she should. Even her cot, which suited her fine just a year ago, seems almost too short for her growing figure.
And then I wonder, is she outgrowing me, too?
My daughter doesn’t finish her sentence, only shakes her head and sits back in her chair, arms folded over her chest.
“I have wishes, too,” I whisper. “But they never come true.”