He hated the noises that brought memories in the blackness of night, when he longed to be strong as he had been, stronger than the night that covered him in its heavy blanket of still pictures.

Rain, then silence in a boy’s ears, and suddenly all is lost before it begins. On that night, long after it began between the too young girl and the running man, he told her his story, which was also her story:

One clear, black, after-the-rain night when he was a boy in that big house in that little village, some men came and took his father—her grandfather—away and killed him in the valley, “practically beneath my mother’s window.” He saw their faces, for they were faces he saw every day, but he was so young, he could not cover his tongue with their names.

It ate and ate his soul away. For a time, he stopped seeing. And then he taught himself to run and run and almost fly. He ran and ran, forever and faster than anyone and then he ran across the ocean, but not before he painted the sky with the blood of those men who took everything away.

Rain, then silence pounding on the rooftops over his sister’s broken face that stared out into the valley. Huda, why have you opened the window? Yama, what has happened?

“But who were they? Why did they do that?”

He held her tighter, trying to be a blanket for her with his running body, now so very, very still.

“I’m sure your mother, my sister, with her golden tongue, has told you stories of our father. He had land and ideas. He brought so much into the village from outside and there were those who did not want that. I have done an awful thing. So long ago, and still it seems like yesterday.”

“I can glue sins and secrets under my tongue,” she said.

“I have told this to no one else, and you are so young to bear this burden.”

Her tiny body holds him close, her tears like holy water spilling. “I will love you always,” she whispers and he feels the years of running whispers and the relief of a burden going away.

Very clear, the shapes in the bedroom, and the fear blanket is pushed slowly, slowly to the end of the bed, at least for now.

28 KHADIJA Mothers

28KHADIJAMothers

Even though it’s summer, it’s raining so hard that it sounds like big men running back and forth on our roof. I hate the rain.

Baba’s mother died twenty years ago today.

“Maybe that’s why it’s raining so hard,” I said.

“Maybe.” He seems sad today, quiet and gloomy.

Ma feels bad too. I know that she’s thinking about her own mother.

I have never met either of my grandmothers.