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❝Angels don't lie, but you do. If I'm a devil, what are you?❞
When Burq loses his memory in an accident and doesn't remember his own wife anymore, Leyla finds it a chance to escape her beastly husband and pretends to be his friend...
Her beauty drowned me. As I sat in front of her I felt I would do anything mad for her, anything she asked of me.
— Anaïs Nin
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The flames from the fireplace in the living room twitch and twist in his eyes. He's sitting on the blanket in place of the rug, leaning against the couch. Without the coffee table in the center, the room looks empty but spacious. Waleed was quick to clean the area.
His dinner lies half eaten on the floor beside him. He forks at it absent-mindedly, his attention stuck on the woman praying in the corner. Burq has to force his gaze to stay on the fire— anything to occupy his thoughts but her. He fails miserably when he gives up and looks at her.
She's like a blurred photograph in his head, missing proper outlines. He tries to figure out her details but there's always something absent— something crucial to complete the image. She frustrates him in a way where he wants to hold her in his hands until he has figured out every detail, but then she slips through his fingers like desert grains, leaving him like an inferno with a consuming yearning.
"Stop destroying me, Leyla," he mumbles to himself.
She goes into prostration and his eyes follow her movements unwavering. She is using his keffiyeh again instead of a prayer mat since he still doesn't have one. Her forehead rests on the keffiyeh on the ground for a moment before she sits up.
He needs to buy a prayer mat, he thinks.
She raises her hands to her face as she prays. He cannot help wondering what she's asking God for. Does she pray for him?
He stares at her until she's done and gets up. She picks up his keffiyeh and folds it, tugging to loosen her headscarf and taking it off, folding it too. She walks towards him and places both the things on the couch before going to sit near the fireplace opposite to him.
Leyla finally meets his gaze and smiles.
He doesn't smile back— he cannot— too lost to react. Her voice pierce his reverie when she asks him, "Why are you not eating?"
He blinks, gathering himself, and looks down to his plate. "I'm done eating."
"You've barely eaten enough."
He ignores the unwanted discussion to come and questions her instead, "What did you pray for?"
She hugs her knees to her chest and rests her chin on them. "A lot of things."
He notices her hands rubbing her shins up and down through the material of her clothing, the thin purple veins prominent under her pale skin.
"Does God listen to your prayers?"
She smiles at him again, softly as if amused by his query. "He always does, to everyone's prayers, even if they keep them in their hearts and never bring them to their tongues. Sometimes words are not enough for a prayer anyways."
