Between the Grapevines

23. Thalatha Wa'Ishrun

"Immy," Fayza called out, moving slowly through the dark and blurred home around her. Still, she recognized the short narrow hall, the bathroom always left ajar for her fingers to instinctively tug to a quiet close in her passing, and the couches to her left as she paused by her bedroom door. She called out to her mother, feeling suffocated by the impending feeling that this would be her last time. "Immy," her voice shook as she pushed the door open and stepped into the space.

Within the unlit room, the girl let her eyes roam over her wardrobe and stripped bed. Where were her sheets and blankets? Why was her pillow no longer at the head of the mattress? Before she could find an answer to her questions, Fayza's ears caught a hushed voice speaking quietly in the room with her.

She turned at the familiarity and asked again. "Immy?"

"I am here, my soul," her mother sat, speaking to the open window and stretching night sky in front of her. Fayza remained in her place, watching her mother's subtle movement and the creak of the aged wood beneath her. Not once did she turn toward her daughter. "I can hear you, Fayza. Don't be afraid."

She could not move, her legs as stiff as wood beneath her at her mother's voice. How long it had been since she saw the dip of her mother's shoulders and heard the love of her voice? "Immy," Fayza whispered. "I am here."

"Come back to me, my daughter. Come back to your mother's arms," she heard the pained sigh buried in each word. Pain she had caused on her family.

"I cannot...," she breathed, her voice thickening and pouring a quiver into her chin at her own weakness. "Forgive me, ya Um Muhsin. Forgive me for what I have done to you and my siblings."

Her mother shook her head. "I forgive you until the end of times, ya qalbi."

"Immy-," tears swelled in the girl's eyes as she watched her mother, seeing her before her eyes but feeling as if two separate worlds stood between them. So many years of her life she'd stood beside her mother and not held her hand, smiled at her mother but not hugged her, all those opportunities to have felt the touch of the only person who given Fayza her entire life and asked for nothing in return. "Immy," she lifted her hands to wipe her tears as they fell.

Her mother's voice grew even softer. "Eh, ya rouhy?"

"I have nobody, Immy... I'm scared."

"Don't be scared. My daughter cannot be scared."

Fayza dropped her head forward, lifting one hand to cover her eyes as her tears poured from deep within her broken heart. Her cries tore through her throat in the silent room around them, echoing in the darkness and spanning into the never-ending night. She did not try to wipe her tears as they rolled between her fingers and splattered onto her dirtied, bruised bare feet. If she tried to compose herself, she would only further shatter the already broken child within herself. Her lungs contracted for breath and, the moment they were satisfied, pushed through another sob that scratched her throat and relieved the suffocating weight that continued to pull her down.

"Where have you gone, ya Fayza?" Um Muhsin asked curiously into the night, not hearing her daughter's soul-crushing tears behind her. Her question only made the girl cry more because it reminded her how far from her mother she really was. She wanted to utter a word to tell her mother she was right here, but Fayza could not muster it anymore.

All the strength she'd held within her for the past eight years had blistered apart and crumbled to her feet, no longer able to be forged into a pretend determination. She could not withstand the weight of the unjust world that had torn her from her mother's arms when she was just a teenager and thrown her into years of torment away from the only love she'd ever known.