How I got from there to here I don’t remember. I wake up in my old bed in the makkar, on my own, under clean sheets. It’s dark outside but the door is open an inch or two and some light gets in. There’s a glass of water on the floor beside me, and as I prop myself up on an elbow and reach for it the pain in my head returns. I give up and lie back. Planes fly overhead but no bombs fall, none that I hear.
At some point Badra comes. She’s her usual self, impossible to know what she’s thinking, but she brings me more water and asks me if I want medicine. Something for my head, perhaps, Nurofen. Paracetamol would be better, she says, and gives me three pills to swallow. The water tastes like metal and feels like it doesn’t belong in my throat.
She lays her hand on my forehead and tells me I’m still burning up. I want to know who’s doing my work, what will happen to me, but she doesn’t answer. Just rest, she says.
I’m not well enough to read, but I pray. I pray for the strength to get through this, and to take whatever punishment is due to me. I expected to wake up in a cell but with Badra you can never tell. Is she curing me or holding me? I can feel the sense of disgrace waiting for me, just there, waiting until I’m well enough to realize how bad it truly is.
When I get reception I manage to text Khalil that I’m ill, I don’t mention anything else, and then the signal goes and I wait hours for his reply. Not knowing if he knows what I’ve done is worse than everything else.
I know I should sleep but my dreams are still crazy and I’m not enjoying them. Nothing makes sense in there. Sometimes I’m inside this huge machine, and that’s all there is, wheels and cogs and steam and noise, banging and crashing and clanking. It’s like a metal hell. I want to find a way out but I can’t.
I get a text back from Khalil, telling me to hang in there. I have so much to say to him but don’t want to burden him with my weakness when he’s fighting. I let him know I’ll be okay. Not long now, he says. And that thought, which should be the happiest one, is the one that eats me up. When I disgraced the khilafa I disgraced him. I should tell him now but I can’t bring myself to because what if he leaves me?
Badra comes to me and says I have a visitor. Just like that, you have a visitor, no explanation, no suggestion of who it is or what they want. This is it, I think. Of course, they wouldn’t punish a sick person because the punishment wouldn’t register. If you’re out of your mind, how are you meant to understand? Where’s the pain or the improvement?
It’s Umm Karam, and when I see her I actually feel relief, like someone who’s been condemned to death who finally sees the electric chair. I sit up in bed, try to make the covers neat. My heart is still going at a thousand beats a minute, and in my pyjamas I am so exposed. Ready for judgement, I guess. She’s unveiled, and I look for signs in her face, but she’s like Badra, a sphinx, there’s nothing there. Badra follows her with a chair from the kitchen, sets it down for her and she sits. I say nothing. I don’t even have the confidence any more to greet her.
After a minute she nods and says she’s pleased to see me looking better. She came yesterday but I was sleeping.
‘Thank you,’ I manage to say.
‘You have been through a great deal.’
‘And I disgraced my position. I failed the khilafa.’
Umm Karam looks at me and her eyes are the most piercing I’ve ever seen. I feel like there’s nothing she doesn’t know about me.
‘You were weak, but your spirit was doing what it could.’
I barely understand her. I don’t know where this is leading.
‘That was your first stoning.’
‘It was.’
‘Did your first stone hit?’
Badra might have told her. And anyway, I cannot lie.
‘No.’
‘Your second?’
‘My third. I’m not good . . . it’s not so easy to hit.’
‘If your arm is guided by Allah, the most glorified, the most high, it is easy. If you mean the stone to hit, it is easy.’
Her eyes are so clear. She can see right inside me.
She’s silent again, leaving me to consider the truth she has just shown me. Badra was right to test me that night. I wasn’t ready. Where there was justice I saw horror.
‘If I had the chance again I would not miss.’
‘You would not want to. But you would. You are not a punisher. Your intelligence is your strength and the source of your weakness. To destroy a person with stone after stone until the life leaks from them you must be fully righteous or part of your brain must be dead.’
Now I feel like I’m in Badra territory. She’s right, but it leaves me nowhere. I long to know what she wants, where she’s going. Then she tells me.
‘You will no longer work for the brigade.’
I close my eyes. How will I explain the disgrace to Khalil?
‘I understand.’
‘There is new work for you. A chance to redeem yourself.’
I can’t believe it. Of all the blessings He could have given me, this is the greatest. An energy starts spreading through me that I thought had gone forever.
‘Thank you, Umm Karam.’
‘Think on your weakness. Try to understand it.’