Read Online In the Language of Miracles by Rajia Hassib - Free Book Online Page B

next to a dozen or so others. She would have to pick them all up before Samir saw them.
    â€œWhat did you do? To make things better after
Baba
died?”
    â€œOh, I had no time for anything but worry.” Ehsan sipped at her tea. “He left me with
koom lahm
, a heap of meat: five kids and barely enough income to afford bread and fava beans for all of us. I did not quit worrying till you got married. Worried all day, prayed and cried myself to sleep at night.”
    Nagla put the window screen back, stared at the warning:
Screen will not prevent a child from falling
.
    â€œYou know what you can do, though?” Ehsan asked. “You could stop torturing yourself.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Nagla turned around to face her mother.
    â€œYou think I don’t see you? Up there in that attic all the time?”
    Nagla crossed her arms, rested her back against the screen.
    â€œWhat use is that? Keeping his stuff up there like it’s some sort of shrine to
sidi
Al-Hussein?”
    â€œThat’s not what it is.”
    â€œThen what is it?”
    â€œI just—I’m not ready. I don’t know what to do with his stuff.” Nagla’s eyes watered.
    â€œYou go through it. You keep a thing or two and give the rest away.
Sadakah garyah.
A good deed in his name to ask Allah for mercy upon his soul. Nothing better than a donation to do so.” Ehsan paused, took a sip of her tea. “I’ve been telling you for some time, Nagla, and I’ll tell you again: You cannot grieve forever. It’s been a year,
habibti.
You can’t go on walking around the house like a ghost, passing by your kids and husband as if you don’t see them. I don’t mind doing the housework, butthere are things I cannot do for you. I cannot be a mother to Khaled and Fatima. They need you back,
habibti
.”
    Nagla nodded, and with every nod she could hear the wire screen give a low, screeching rattle.
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    She waited until her mother settled in the kitchen and started preparing tonight’s dinner before she ventured out in the hallway, stared at the folded-up pull-down stair.
    Her mother was right. She had walked up there often. Whether this was a bad habit, though, was a matter of opinion.
    She could go through her son’s things. She could open the drawers, sift through the boxes, flip through the magazines, the notebooks, the leaves of paper that the police had not taken away.
    She walked into Fatima’s room and grabbed the chair she always used when she needed to reach the pull-down chain. She climbed on the chair, reached out, and held the chain, wrapping the cold metal around her fingers, letting her hand warm it up before she pulled.

5
    ENGLISH : Birds of a feather flock together.
    ARABIC : Birds fall upon those similar to them.
    G arrett lay on the floor, texting Hailee. Khaled stretched out on Garrett’s bed and, leaning against the headboard, browsed the Internet on Garrett’s laptop. He liked sitting on Garrett’s bed because it was so different from his own: bright, not encumbered by an upper bunk, not claustrophobic. The shades were drawn, yet strips of sunlight still shone directly at him, the glare making the screen flicker in dazzling stripes. He fidgeted until he found a spot where the sun would neither shine directly on the screen nor in his eyes. He was not comfortable, but stayed put. He preferred the bed to Garrett’s swiveling desk chair, and he refused to resort to the floor, Garrett’s new favorite spot. If Garrett’s mom hadn’t been home, they would have lounged on the living room sofas, watching TV. Today, however, she had come home early and brought a friend. Both women sat in the kitchen, their incomprehensible murmurs occasionally interrupted by laughter.
    The computer desk hutch was buried under dozens of books. In one, Garrett had read that Buddhist monks slept on low, hard beds. In an attempt