Chapter 37 · Chapter 37

The silence of Bab El-Rambla did not break with cries; it deepened like cold well water settling over stone. The guards tightened their hold upon Saad, forcing him down into the dust where the dark stain spread beneath his shoulder, but he did not utter a sound. He kept his chin lifted, his breathing shallow and measured, refusing to yield to the square the spectacle of his ruin.

I stood upright beneath the gray mantle, my hands folded together within the linen of my sleeves. The scent of burned cedar and damp mortar drifted from the perimeter of the plaza, carrying the sharp, medicinal trace of the crushed leaves still dried into the creases of my palms.

They had stripped the courtyard of my grandfather Abu Jaafar’s house bare; they had overturned the stone mortars where I ground rue and bitter almond, yet between my ribs there remained the unyielding quiet of our locked threshold.