It’s morning. I pace my one-room house, waiting for my daughter to return. But she doesn’t.
Go fetch her, I think. But then she’ll know you’re spying on her.
No! You are the mother, not her; you decide what she does.
And in another thought, I think, leave her be. She will tell you all when she is ready. Trust your child.
And so, I let her be, for now. But I have a mother’s worry flowing through my veins, so I awaken the hawk once more.
“Saqr,” I say, “Go find Layala.”
The hawk leaves, and I continue my pacing. Do I walk to the next village? Leave our cottage at the edge of the woods and search for my child? Or do I trust she will make good decisions?
Didn’t you make horrible, stupid decisions when you were just a bit older than her?
Saqr returns a while later, and I lay a hand on him. The images come in snatches, as if he darted around, looking for a better vantage point.
She’s asleep, her cloak draped over her fully clothed body, the fire burning bright.
So, Layala spent the night at the jinn boy’s house.
The jinn sits in his chair, watching her, stoking the flames of a fire every so often to keep it from burning too low. I narrow my eyes at him, even though I’m only seeing him through Saqr’s memory.
Saqr picks up a stick and flings it at the window, then hides from view. He perches on a tree branch, looking into the house. Layala stirs, then notices the morning light shining through the window.
I can’t hear what she says, but I see her lips move. Her eyes are wide and she’s shaking off the jinn’s grasp on her arm.
I think I see her mouth ‘I have to go.’
Saqr’s memory cuts off then, and a breath later, his body is quivering, hardening, and he is clay again. I set him up on his shelf and go outside to gather the morning’s seeds.
I’m sitting at my table, drinking pomegranate juice, when Layala rushes in through the door.
“I was worried all night,” I tell her, my voice calm, even though I note a little shakiness to it. I pull up a chair and pat it, inviting her to sit.
She remains on her feet. “I fell asleep at jido’s,” she lies, not meeting my gaze.
“I see. Did you eat yet?”
She shakes her head, now picking at the edge of our small wooden table. “I’m going to rest,” she says.
“I thought you slept at your grandfather’s?” I put a hand to her head, as if feeling for fever. “Are you unwell?”
“No, just tired,” she mutters, and her cheeks flush red. I let her go; best to not press her and have her shut herself off from me.
No, let her come to me with her heart’s secrets in her own time.
Layala undresses and slips into bed, facing away from me. I bend over her, tucking the covers under her chin and around her slender body, just as I did when she was younger.
“I love you, maman,” she says, whispering into her pillow. “I’ll never do anything to hurt you.”
I’m surprised by this, but only kiss her soft cheek, still round with baby fat yet to shed. “I know, hiyati.”
I stoke the fire to make sure she’s warm, then slip outside. The air is cold, and I wrap my maman’s old cloak tight around me. I long for the feel of the warm earth under me, for Illyas’s smile, for his reassuring words.
I make a snap decision and steal back into the house, taking jars and water, before padding toward the cemetery and back into death.
Illyas finds me, as usual.
“Hiyati,” he says, “what’s wrong?” His brows are furrowed as he tries to draw me close, but our bodies aren’t flesh enough for that. Instead, he leads me to a crumbling tower and has me sit down. The pale ground is made of tiles, cracked and cool, flowers and weeds growing through the cracks. Death mimics life, but it’s never the same.
“It feels strange here,” I note, glancing around. Even death has movement, but it’s still—too still—and it’s missing the something that gives it a semblance of life.
“It’s new,” Illyas agrees. “A few of the others stuck here wanted to build a town.” He shrugs, but he’s still watching me with worry deep in his eyes. We are in … I’m not sure what, but it’s a town, more a village, and it’s beautiful, at least for death.
I eye the gate circling the town and the fence it’s attached to. Both stand three heads higher than I am tall. It’s been years since Illyas and I broke into places we shouldn’t be in, giggling from the thrill of chasing each other into ramshackle houses and walled-up gardens.
I glance around, expecting to see huts thrown together, built out of what the land gave and what could be gathered in the woods and tied or nailed together with scraps. Instead, the houses are in neat rows, gardens and trees planted in sections of raised earth. Vines grow on the houses’ stone walls, a neat cloak protecting the stone from being bleached by rain and sun. The faint scent of jasmine wafts over me.
I scan for movement, but the town is as still as an empty grave. Stiller even, because even graves have crawling worms.
Despite the beauty, the town feels dead. Nothing stirs, not a leaf, not the grass, not a curtain behind an open window. There’s a layer of dust on everything, as if the town were abandoned. Or frozen in time.
It reminds me of the glass globe filled with little specks suspended in water that Layala’s jido, Abu Illyas, gave her when she was much younger. She would shake the globe, watching the little white specks settle on the miniature village set inside the sphere. Then she would shake it again, laughing as her head bounced back and forth. I smile at the memory, at how a simple little toy could bring her so much joy.
There’s nothing sentient around that I can see. Not a lone rabbit nibbling on a plant or a bird resting on a branch.
I shake my head of my thoughts and memories. “She’s in love with a jinn boy,” I say.
“Who? Layala?” he says, his eyebrows furrowing deeper.
I nod. “I saw them, through Saqr. She spent the night with the boy.”
He tenses.
“She kept her clothes,” I add quickly, but it does little to ease the tension rippling through his body. “But she lied to me.”
“Who’s the boy?” he asked, his voice gruffer than I’ve heard it in a while.
“I don’t know. But I’ll find out.”
Illyas gives a sharp nod, his frown carved as though in stone. “I’ll wring his neck if he does anything to hurt her.”
I snort. “You and me both, hiyati. The last thing I’d want is for her to fall pregnant at barely fifteen.”
Both our faces flush; our second-greatest mistake, and greatest joy, has been Layala. Born to young parents who knew nothing of the world, never mind raising a child, Layala tore out of me, bright red and screaming, on a night just shy of my sixteenth birthday. Illyas was three years older and he fainted at all the blood. I remember cleaning my daughter’s face of my insides while fanning him with a slip of paper.
Illyas reaches over to hover his lips over mine, and for a moment, I feel a memory of his warmth. Then it is snatched away, and lightning strikes through my body.
Something is pulling my soul back into my body.
I gulp in harsh, cold air and flick my eyes open, only to find my daughter standing before me. Her face is twisted in anger, her hands planted firmly on her hips.
“Maman,” she says, and it sounds like she’s accusing me of something. “What are you doing?”
I sniff and get to my feet, dusting dirt off me. “I needed some fresh air,” I say. “I guess I fell asleep.” I realize the sun is setting now, the air much colder than before.
She narrows her eyes at me, as if not quite believing what I say. “I woke up and you weren’t there,” she accuses. “I waited, thinking you went for a walk, but you never came back.”
Her gaze lands on a clump of drooping flowers near a gravestone, and she reaches out for them. Her hands hover over the petals, and slowly, slowly, the stems straighten.
No. Please, no. Let her not have an ounce of magic in her veins. Let her live a long, normal life.
“Well,” I say, reaching my hand out so she can help me up, distracting her. The flower wilts again, and Layala turns to me. I grunt, heaving my weight forward to stand. “Long day, I suppose. Help your maman to the house, then,” I add, leaning on her strong young figure. Going into death wears the body out more than I like to admit to myself.
Back in the house, I set a kettle to boil, not tired enough to sleep. Layala sits beside me, legs curled under her. She picks at her nails, a habit she has only when something is on her mind. The air is thick with herbs and the scent of rose petals, all picked from our garden.
Layala has been planting more, buying seedlings from the market and growing on every inch of earth she can around the house. I smile as a memory washes over me.
“What is your favorite color, Layaloon?”
She was three, almost four years old, and she was always playing in the dirt, in the grass, whispering to the wildflowers growing between our home and the woods.
“Green, maman,” she said, laughing, one tooth in the front loose. “Green like the grass.”
“Green?” I repeat, picking her up and throwing her up in the air. “Not blue like the sky? Or yellow like the sun?”
“Maman!” she giggled. “Green, green, green! Green because I made the grass go brown to green,” she said in her high child’s voice.
I set her down, my blood running cold. “What do you mean Layl? Brown to green?”
She takes my hand in her tiny one and leads me to a patch of dry grass under the shade of a tall and wide tree. She points at a tiny spot of green in the middle of all that brown. “Green,” she says. “I made it green.”
“What is it, kushtbani?” I use her father’s nickname for her: thimble. She was so tiny when she was born, she could fit into the palm of his hand if curled up.
“Nothing, maman,” she says with a sigh. “I just … I want to tell you something, but not now.”
She looks at me with her wide, dark eyes, eyelashes fringing them like tassels on a curtain.
“Tell me when you’re ready, kushtbani. I can wait.”
My heart aches at her beauty as she smiles at me. She doesn’t see it yet, but under those baby cheeks are a grown woman’s bones.
She pushes back her chair and steps over to her cot, and though she is just feet away from me, I’ve never felt further from my child. There are too many lies between us, and I must do something about it.
Night falls, and the next morning comes angry, with rain pelting the window, the wind howling through the trees.
I dash outside, gathering as many seeds as I can. Layala helps, grabbing handfuls of pomegranate and dirt and grass and shoving them into the basket. We run back inside, laughing at the downpour as we peel off our sodden clothing.
“I’ll get the fire going, maman.”
I sit down and sift through the seeds, setting aside the clumps of grass Layala grabbed. I juice the seeds, taking a sip to taste the mood. A sense of sadness washes over me, and I swallow the urge to cry.
“Is everything fine, maman?”
I nod, reaching for a lemon.
“Ah,” Layl says. “It’s sad seeds.”
“Very,” I say, squeezing the lemon into the juice and stirring. The sourness of the lemon masks the sadness of the souls, enough that I can drink without sobbing.
The stories shove around in my mind, snatches of sound, morsels of flavor. I get the whiff of warm cinnamon, the taste of cardamom in rice. The feel of a baby’s skin, the weight of a warm fur around a neck on a cold winter day.
The stories clamor for my attention, each one trying to be the next that gets written. Souls can be impatient, eager to move on. Eager to have their tale written to pay Mote, the final gatekeeper of death.
I try my best, the ache in my bones growing and the din in my head rising. A headache is coming on.
I sense Layala near me, then feel the press of a cloth to my nose. I must be bleeding again, the strain of storytelling too much.
“Maman,” she says, her voice sounding far away. “Take a break. The dead can wait.”
“No rest for the dead,” I insist, barely aware of what I’m saying. “No rest for the weary.”
A story floats toward me. I feel its incessant nagging, a whining sound that builds in my ears like the church bell in town on a Sunday morning.
A young man spent his days drinking and casting lots at the gambling tables. Every morning, he stumbled home and his poor father helped him to bed. The son would have vomit encrusted in his clothes, and his hair would be covered in sweat and dirt.
Fed up with his son, one day, the father tells him, “Ibni,”—my son—“how about you spend just this one night without getting sakran? Spend one night without drink.”
The son laughs, then says to his father, “Baba, for you, I will do as you say. Just this one night.”
The father considers this. “Come,” he says. “Take me to the place you like the most for drink. We will watch, and I will show you what I see.”
The two go to the son’s favorite tavern and walk inside. Men sit in chairs, slumped over from drink or arguing with each other in slurred words.
The son glances around and spots his friends, but he keeps to the shadows, watching them instead.
“See?” says the father. “This is what I see when you are sakran: a foolish man who can’t even string two sensible words together and who stumbles around like a babe just learning to walk.”
They stay another hour, when the drunken men begin fighting over quibbles or vomiting over each other. The son is disgusted and turns his face away from the tavern.
“Baba,” he admits, “you are right. I will mend my ways immediately.”
But his father is not so easily placated. “Ibni,” he says, “do one more thing for me. Go, go find the King of Gamblers, and see how he lives.”
The son grins and seeks out this King. He searches through villages and towns, asking for where the King of Gamblers resides.
The first old man he meets tells him to seek a shaman in the village over. He will know where the King is.
The son goes to the shaman, who tells him to seek an old goatherd who dwells in the valley. The son finds the goatherd, who tells him to find the medicine woman who lives in the forest.
The son finds the medicine woman, who tells him, “Ah, ibni, I know the one you seek. He is my brother, and he lives just up that mountain.” She points at the mountain in the distance. “Climb the mountain, and there you will find the King of Gamblers.”
The son spends days reaching the mountain. And more days climbing it. He stops at the first person he sees.
It is an old man with skin like leather and teeth stained with tobacco.
“I want to meet the King of Gamblers,” the son says.
The man looks at him and invites him into the simple tent he lives in. The son enters, finding a threadbare carpet laid on the ground and a rolled mat in the corner. There is no food but a bit of bread with green mold, and nothing to drink but a pot of tea.
The old man offers his food and drink, but the son refuses and offers his own food instead.
The man tears greedily into the dried meats and figs the son has with him, then leans back to watch him.
Then he says, “Why do you seek the King of Gamblers?”
“My father, he told me to search for him.”
“Ah,” the old man says. “Well, you have found him.”
The son flicks his eyes around him. The palace he expected to find is but a tattered tent. The riches, the women, the feasts he sought—he found none.
“Now I know why my father told me to find you,” the son says. “For the King of Gamblers is no king at all.”
I write the story and, as the last word is set, the soul snatches its tale and I am left with just the sour taste of the lemons.
Just as I turn to my daughter, an angry knock sounds at the door. We never have visitors.
I want to ignore the door and keep the curtains closed tight, but the knocking continues.
“Get behind me,” I tell her as I slip out of my chair and grab a wooden spoon from the table.
The knocks are angrier, and so are the voices behind the door.
“Open, Hakawati!”
“Layl, go through the roof,” I say, meaning the short ladder that leads to the flat top of our cottage.
“No, maman.”
This is no time for defiance, but I don’t have a chance to say anything before the door is kicked in and three men enter.
“Hakawati,” the first man says. “We’ve come for you and that ill-borne girl of yours.”