The shadows were growing long in the afternoon sun as the Lexus wove through lanes thick with trucks and cars that had been sidelined by the storm the day before. Everything seemed to have happened so fast. One minute Rachel was waking from the best sleep she’d had in her life, and the next she was in an adrenalin-fueled race to the airport, just like the old days.
At first Miza had shown little surprise at the images in Rachel’s camera. “That is the road in the village, the village in Zanzibar where I was living before I married Tariq,” she explained, her eyes narrowing, as if trying to make more detail appear in the frame.
“Are you sure? Look again,” Rachel insisted.
“It is my village,” Miza replied.
“But that makes absolutely no sense!” Rachel swiped to the next image.
“And that is the fruit market, near to where I brought seaweed in from the ocean. I am sure of it. Do you see the orange wall behind the tables? And the man sitting there, behind the scales? I would go there every morning before I went to work. I would buy a mango or a citrus fruit. We would say hello. I know it is him.”
Rachel took the camera back for another look. “What the fuck? I’ve never even been to Zanzibar!” Out of the corner of her eye she could see Hani’s father smiling a little. “So this,” she persisted, shoving the Leica back toward Miza, “what’s this picture?”
At the sight of the following image Miza seemed to stiffen. “That is the house,” she said, pointing to the screen. “The house of my uncle.” She raised her head up toward Rachel. “But where is my sister? You said you have photographs.”
Rachel pulled the camera toward her and frantically searched for more. But the screen displayed only those three images of the village. The remaining shots were of the factory and the old potters and the souk and the sandstorm and the room they now sat in—the only photos she remembered taking since they first arrived in Bahla, which now seemed so very long ago.
“Let me see that one again.” Miza held out her hand for the Leica. “The one of my uncle’s house.”
Rachel returned the image to the little screen.
“Can you make it bigger?” Miza watched as Rachel zoomed in on a tighter frame of the little cinderblock building. “Lower.” Miza poked at a button with her finger. “On the ground. To the side of the doorway. That is what I want to see.”
Rachel made an adjustment, this time focusing on the bottom part of the frame, and again handed the camera to Miza.
Miza gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
“What?” Rachel grabbed the camera and looked again. “I don’t see anything.”
“There. The lion, drawn in the sand. My sister and I used to leave that as a sign for each other, right there beneath the window, when something was wrong inside the house.”
“A lion?”
“From the old tales. The lion was always the boss, the bully. He would demand that the other animals bow down to him. He would terrorize their villages, just like our uncle. So if our uncle was in a mood to take out his anger on us, we would give the other a warning.”
Rachel looked at the image again. “But I don’t even see a lion.”
“Look,” Miza insisted as she pointed to the screen. “There is one leg. And there is another. And the tail.”
“I still don’t quite—”
“Nobody knew about the lion but us. My sister is there, in that house. I know it. And something is very wrong.” The tears began to escape from Miza’s eyes. “I have not been able to reach Sabra for days. I know something terrible has happened.”
Ariana pulled a handful of tissues from the box at her side. “I’m sure everything is fine, Miza. It must be difficult being so far away, am I right?”
Miza shook her head. “My uncle is a very bad person. He has done unspeakable things to me. And Sabra, she is only fourteen.”
Ariana paled a little as she tucked her arm around the weeping woman’s shoulders. “I’m sure there is some sort of an explanation for all this,” she said with a rocky confidence that wouldn’t fool even a child. “Honestly, you really do need to calm down a bit.”
Rachel turned her eyes to Hani’s father, who remained silent on the sofa, his attention riveted to the screen of his phone, either oblivious or indifferent to the drama around him. Rachel wasn’t sure which.
“What if Miza’s right?” she asked Ariana.
“Rachel!” Ariana glared at her from behind Miza’s back.
“No, really. I can’t totally explain it, but I have a feeling that what Miza says might be true. Her sister needs help.”
“Please, Rachel.” Ariana cocked her head toward Miza, who was clutching her belly as she slowly rocked back and forth.
“I’m serious, Ariana. And you can’t tell me I’m wrong, or crazy. You said it yourself that there have to be things in life that can’t be explained, that we can’t necessarily see, didn’t you?”
A soft moaning from Miza silenced both women. Rachel flipped quickly through the shots in the Leica once again and then shut her eyes, struggling to summon an image of the girl she had seen the night before. After a minute a spindly form appeared in sharp focus, as clearly as if it were a photo. Rachel zoomed in on the girl’s ebon face, her skin smooth and creamy, her teeth straight and white. How young she looked. And then a close-up, her eyes filling the frame like two deep, dark pools that seemed to lead into a sea of despair.
Suddenly Rachel jerked back with a start, the eyes of a thousand children and women, men and boys, each soldier and refugee and prisoner, all the wounded and the hungry, every desperate person she’d ever seen through the lens of her camera looking right back at her through the eyes of this young girl.
“I need to go to her,” she heard Miza say.
“No, love, you really can’t.” Ariana took Miza’s hand in her own. “There’s no way you should be flying in your condition.”
Rachel turned again to Hani’s father, her heart pounding. “Can’t you do anything about this?”
Hani’s father looked up from his phone. “Me?” He smoothed the front of his white robe with one large hand. “I am not the one who can be of help in this situation.”
“What do you mean?”
Hani’s father didn’t answer.
“Tell me. What do you mean?” Rachel pleaded. “There’s something I’m not getting here.”
“What’s to get?” he responded.
Rachel looked up at the ceiling, her head and her heart still reeling. But even as those images from her past began to slowly fade away, she was left with one that remained in crisp, sharp focus—the tall, dark girl wrapped in the orange and blue cloth. The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to think.
“I’m going.”
“You’re going where?” Ariana asked. “I hardly think this is the time for us to be dealing with your issues, Rachel.” She pointed her chin toward Miza.
Rachel felt Miza’s hand clamp down on her wrist. She turned to face the woman and slowly nodded. For the first time in ages she could feel the fire that came with a sense of purpose. And for the first time ever, it wasn’t about the attention and admiration that came from appearing brave or noble, it wasn’t about the accolades that came with landing a front page. It wasn’t even about her at all.
“You must go to the village, to the ocean, and look for the seaweed women,” Miza told her. “Ask for Bi-Zena. She will help you.”
“What?” Ariana’s head turned from Rachel to Miza and back again. “What’s going on?”
“Ariana.” Rachel stood and reached for her backpack, wrapped the strap around her camera and placed it carefully inside. “It looks like I’m going to Zanzibar.”
The traffic slowed as they approached the outskirts of Muscat. “Hani, can you explain it?” Rachel asked.
“What is it that you would like me to explain for you?” He checked his watch and craned his neck to peer over the lanes ahead.
“How did those images get in my camera? How could I be in a place, let alone a place that’s a five-hour flight away, without even knowing?”
Hani shifted his eyes from the road to Rachel for just a quick second, as if debating whether to answer.
“Seriously, how long was it between when we left your house and you guys found me? A half-hour? Maybe a little more?”
“It was two hours.”
“Two hours? Where the hell was I, Hani? I mean, if I had gotten hit in the head or something, if I had been unconscious or dreaming, I could maybe understand imagining a place I’d never seen. But the images are right here!” She patted the backpack on the seat beside her. “Tell me how that happens.”
The traffic had come to a standstill. “There are some things we cannot completely understand.”
“Apparently.” The hairs on Rachel’s arms rose a little just thinking about her experience with the man’s father the night before. “But I can’t help but wonder.”
“It is good to wonder.” Hani took a deep breath. “It is like this, Rachel. One cannot live their life with everything in black and white, right or wrong, true or not true. A life like that, what is its purpose? If we think we know everything, then we know nothing. And we think there is nothing left to learn.”
“I guess. But shouldn’t we try to figure out the things we don’t understand?”
“Who knows? Maybe not. Sometimes it is the things we cannot explain that make life beautiful. Because you never know what might happen.”
Rachel stared into the trail of red lights ahead.
“Think about it. You and I have met. Was that just an accident? How do we know? And now we are friends, are we not? That is a good thing, and perhaps one that was meant to be, for a reason. And was it an accident that you met Ariana? Or Miza?”
“I’m not sure, but—”
“And what is it,” Hani continued, “that causes a person to connect with another, what makes them determined to do something they never dreamed of doing before, even if it makes no sense, even if it goes against everything they ever believed? What makes a heart say one thing when the head is saying another?”
Hani turned off toward the airport exit and again checked his watch. “You should be fine. The last flight for Zanzibar City leaves in one hour.”
“You’re going back to see Ariana, aren’t you?”
Hani smiled.
“Ha! I knew it!”
Hani’s smile grew wider.
“I’m rooting for you, Hani. I want you to know that.”
“And I am rooting for you as well, Rachel,” he said. “But somehow I think you will be fine without my roots.”