The cops were at my door. The day before, I had sat at the Deputy Superintendent’s office, waiting for news. Watching them put out citywide alerts, then nation-wide alerts again. I watched them on walkie-talkies, handphones, go in and out of endless tea breaks. I had become a pest. I questioned and harangued them, a miasma of busybody-ness and persistence, an embarrassment perhaps. But I didn’t care. My daughter was gone and it seemed that they were doing everything, but after one week, there were no leads. They had found nothing.

I opened the door and the first thing I heard was this—We need you to come with us to the station, we just need to ask you some questions. So they took me away in a police car, just like that with enough time to send an SMS to my father, Papa they’ve come to take me, they think I am a suspect, help me.

* * *

I remember the time when Alba had bronchitis. She was four months when it started with a terrible cough. I remember trying to give her medication, She keeps spitting it out, Omar what do we do? We tried antibiotics in a syringe, slipping it into her tiny mouth, in teaspoons, miniscule amount after amount, nothing worked, she kept spitting it out. Her little lungs kept getting more and more clogged up and we had no choice but to take her to emergency in a late-night panic.

At the hospital, they wrapped her up tightly into a cocoon and thumped her little chest with cupped fists—thump thump on her back, thump thump on the side and front in cycles, hoping to loosen the phlegm. And when it got really bad, they stuck a tube down her throat and sucked up the mucus that looked like old porridge, the oats yellow and thick from exposure. She had to be put on a nebuliser, her little face covered by the plastic mask, covering her nose and mouth, her breathing sounding like a clogged, gurgling sink. It was horrific. I stayed with her in the hospital for three days. My birthday was on the second day of the hospital stay and Omar showed up after work with some cheese, crackers and a bottle of wine.

We ate brie and drank the merlot quietly while she slept in quiet submission after screaming her lungs out when the tube went down her throat. It’s good, it’s good, don’t worry, it’s loosening up the phlegm. When the mucus was drained for the final time, she fell into a deep sleep and Omar and I snuck out, found the rooftop and shared a cigarette.

Happy birthday, darling, sorry it had to be like this!

I was woozy from the nicotine and the wine and swung drunkenly into him. I had slept only hours so I was giggly and dazed. He kissed me back and then pushed me against the wall.