Zainab froze. “Amina?”
Her sister approached her, the scent of luxurious rose water becoming suffocating and unbearable. “You look pathetic, Zainab. Really. To think you traded a villa for a mud shack and a man who smells like the streets.”
“I’m happy,” Zainab said in a trembling but firm voice. “He treats me like I’m made of gold. Something our father never understood.”
Aminah burst into a high-pitched, shrill laugh that startled a nearby crow. “Gold? Oh, you poor blind fool! Do you think I’m a beggar because I’m poor? Do you think this is a tragic love story?”
Aminah leaned toward Zainab, her warm breath against her ear. “He’s not a beggar, Zainab. He’s a penance. He’s the man who lost everything in a gamble he was destined to lose. He’s not staying with you out of love. He’s staying with you because he’s hiding. He’s using your blindness as a veil.”
The world fell silent. The birdsong, the lapping of the water, the whisper of the wind—it all faded, replaced by a deafening roar in Zainab’s ears. She staggered backward, her walking stick hitting a root, nearly knocking her over.
“He’s a liar,” Aminah muttered. “Ask him what he thinks of the ‘Great Fire of the East.’ Ask him why he can’t show himself in the city.”
Zainab fled. She didn’t lean on her stick; she ran instinctively and painfully, her feet, driven by desperation, carrying her back to the hut. She sat in the darkness for hours, the cold earth seeping into her bones.
Upon his return, Yusha found the atmosphere changed. The smell of woodsmoke now had a taste of burnt deception.
“Zainab?” he asked, sensing the change. He placed a small package on the table: perhaps bread, or cheese. “What happened?”
“Have you always been a beggar, Yusha?” she asked. Her voice was hollow, like a reed snapping in the wind.
The silence that followed was long and heavy, heavy with all that had not been said.
“I told you before,” he said, his voice devoid of any poetic warmth. “Not always.”
“My sister found me today. She told me you’re lying. She told me you’re hiding. That you’re using me, that you’re using my darkness to stay in the shadows. Tell me the truth. Who are you? And why are you in this shack with a woman they paid you to kidnap?”
She felt him move. Not away, but closer. He knelt at her feet, his knees hitting the hard ground with a dull thud. He took her hands in his. They were trembling.
“I was a doctor,” he muttered.
Zainab retreated, but he stood firm.
“Years ago, an epidemic broke out in the city. A fever. I was young, arrogant. I thought I could cure everyone. I worked myself to death. I made a mistake, Zainab. A miscalculation with a dye. I didn’t kill a stranger. I killed the provincial governor’s daughter. A girl barely older than you.”
Zainab felt the air leave the room.
“They didn’t just strip me of my title,” Yusha continued, her voice breaking with emotion. “They burned my house. They declared me dead to the world. I became a beggar because it was the only way to disappear. I went to the mosque to find a way to die slowly. But then your father arrived. He spoke of a ‘useless’ girl, a ‘cursed’ girl.”
He pressed his hands against her face. She felt the wetness of his tears—not hers, but his.
“I didn’t get you because I was paid, Zainab. I got you because, when he described you, I realized we were alike. We were both ghosts. I thought… I thought that if I could protect you, if I could make you see the world through my words, maybe I could get my soul back. But I fell in love with the ghost. And that was completely unexpected.”
Zainab stood still, transfixed. There had been betrayal, of course—the lie about her identity—but it was hidden beneath a far more painful truth. He wasn’t a beggar by fate; he was one by choice, a man living in a purgatory of his own making.
“The fire,” he murmured. “Aminah mentioned a fire.”
