Still, she was an insolent woman before her tragedy, and she did not change in her wordless mourning. For years, on the rare occasions you would see her wandering silently through the village, she would be wearing a black roza without a stitch of embroidery, not a dot of red on the shoulder, nor a hint of sunshine yellow on the sleeve, nor a misplaced flower on the hem. Her grieving was somber gloom and she carried it too far, ordaining herself the village martyr. I mean, finish. We must accept the will of God, not get strangled by it. If everyone were to act as Um Khalid in the face of grief, our village would be as quiet as death itself. If every tragedy I lived through showed, I would be wailing all day long, for my dead son, may God have mercy on him, my lost sons, my dead husband, my daughter who cannot be taught the right way. Finish. This is God’s will and we must accept it.

At the very least Um Khalid should have come off her mountain of self-pity for the sake of that stupid girl Lubna, as if being retarded isn’t a hard enough burden to bear, but to have a mother whose ways are also retarded, now that is just too much.

It was hard to be nice to Lubna because she was such an ugly, ugly child with eyes wandering around in their sockets and a mouth that always dribbled. She even walked crooked. Worst of all, and probably because of her mother’s sulking silence, Lubna never perfected talking. She could say the easy everyday things like hello, how are you, may God lift your burdens from you, say hello to your family, but beyond that—and a few odd songs that she would sing over and over and over—she tended to trip over her tongue, which spent too much time on the outside of her lips.

There were some in Nawara who took pity on her and would try to help her or feed her, especially when she was younger. I told them what fools they were to bring a clearly possessed creature into a house of healthy children—how would they know if Lubna’s condition was contagious or not, or if she could hurt their children. Besides, people had problems of their own without adding to them the ugly face of a drooling retarded girl.

It was some time after my youngest son had left for the United States, and my daughter had married and moved to the city, that I first noticed a difference in Um Khalid. One day I was at Abu Khuder’s vegetable stand and I saw her, though I thought maybe it wasn’t her because she had embroidered strips running down the back of her dress. I didn’t pay much attention to her until I heard a clear and very feminine voice speaking.