My body rebelled in here too. My muscles shrank to the point that I could close the fingers of both hands around one thigh. Eventually it became too difficult to get up. That’s when the guards began taking me out of the Cube, blindfolded. The first few walks were brief and assisted, until I could walk on my own. I take these blindfolded walks regularly now, but I don’t know how often or for how long. As I’ve already said, time is immeasurable in here. I can, however, tell you that sometimes I am taken outdoors, other times somewhere indoors. The light and darkness of this earth are different from that of a building. The first time I felt the sun on my skin, I thought I would sell my soul to feel it again. But I didn’t have to. They let me visit the sun again. Even blindfolded, it is glorious. But most of the exercise times are indoors, though I admit I often worry that Attar might arrive while I’m away.

Money Softens the Heart

MONEY SOFTENS THE HEART

JEHAD WAS WAITING for me when I emerged from Jordanian customs. We held each other in an embrace made of love and our unspoken yearning for something lost and gone. For home, perhaps, or innocence. For Baba. Or a sense of security, or just to be close the way we were before our secrets and traumas wedged between us. “We’ve missed you, Sis.”

“I missed you more, donkey.”

“Aaaah … she’s back!”

My brother and I chatted on the way back from the crossing, but my mind kept returning to Palestine as he made his way in a rusted 1980 Peugeot through Amman’s awful traffic. I hadn’t slept well the night before, lying in bed with the fresh memory of the past hours with Bilal and his unfinished story, and I had left early for the border crossing. Bilal had driven me, risking arrest for being outside his designated perimeter. But we hadn’t spoken much, our journey to the border oppressed by the weight of much still unsaid.

My brother wanted to hear about my trip, about Bilal, and most of all about my sense of Palestine. Unlike me, he had always felt his roots and longed for the home that was his birthright.

“I have some news. But I’ll tell you later,” he said. First he wanted to know whether I loved the landscape. Had I gone to Jerusalem and prayed in Al Aqsa or been inside the Dome of the Rock? Did I like Bilal’s friends? He said I looked good. He wound his way through the narrow streets of our neighborhood, which felt both familiar and alien. I still disliked Jordan. We had gone there as refugees, and I thought I would forever hold that against the country. Maybe that’s how my parents and grandmother had felt about Kuwait.