I reach for the journal, and Jesse doesn’t resist when I draw it back across the table.
Inside the worn leather cover, my mother’s name remains one of the few unchanged parts of the journal. I trace the letters, a bitter smile twisting my lips.
Nadine Haikal.
“Women rarely take their husband’s last name in Masr,” I tell Jesse. “It’s not common practice. I never really thought much of it, her taking my dad’s last name when they moved. I suppose I’m not surprised she wanted to leave Haikal behind.”
I flip the page, turning to the first of three entries. It’s two pages, and one of those pages is simply a list.
“Can you read it?” Jesse asks. I would bet every dollar in my pocket that if I glance up, I’ll spot his hand hovering over his phone, ready to press open his translation app.
I sigh. “Yeah, but it’s in rika’ah, so there’s no tashkeel. It’s harder to read without the grammatical support.” No hamzas or kasras to help me out. My reading skills in Arabic are decent, but nowhere near sophisticated enough to read rika’ah with ease. Back when I was a kid, Baba and I would sit together every Saturday afternoon to work on my Arabic composition and grammar. I’d complain each time, because what do you mean I have to spend a chunk of my weekend reading about permanently down on his luck Goha and his donkey or trying to enunciate qaf and kaf? Now, I wish more than anything Baba had fought me harder when I turned thirteen and demanded to stop.
I fill my lungs with the scent of grease and burnt coffee, my nails digging into the laminated tabletop.
I already know the truth about her. It can’t possibly be worse.
Clearing my throat, I begin to read.
AUGUST 17, 1977
The shadows keep following Safa.
Mama gets annoyed when I laugh, but it’s hard to resist. They follow Safa to the store, to school, even to the shower. I’m laughing just thinking about it. Mama and I have tried to explain to her that the shadows will go away if she just stops looking at them, but Safa has always been so bullheaded. Wave a red flag, and she’ll come running every time.
Mama thinks I need to be kinder to Safa. She says my sister holds grudges, and how I treat her now will determine how she treats me in the future.
I think she’s just jealous that I fed the door the first sacrifice of the year. She thinks I cheat because I lure the children to the door instead of dragging them kicking and screaming like she does. No elegance to Safa’s methods, and worse, it takes its toll on her. Why else would the shadows be hovering around, haunting her?
I wonder what she sees inside them.
The only shadow I’ve ever pulled was for Janna’s mother, and it hasn’t followed me since the day we found her body hanging outside. I see other ones lurking sometimes, but like Mama says—guide your eyes forward and point your feet straight, and they won’t follow you. In her uncle’s journal, he gives the shadows a bunch of names. A side effect. A tangle in time for every life we cut short. The stripped pieces of our soul for each child we feed to the door. Bla bla bla. If you ask me, they’re just a bad aftertaste that needs to be spit out.
Anyway. Another doorwoman and her husband quit last week, and Mama hired a new couple this morning. The woman seems skittish, so I can already tell she’s smarter than her husband, who’s walking around like the only rooster in a hen house.
Let’s see how long they last.
A tear lands on the faded blank ink and sinks into the page.
“They called the shadows side effects,” I remark without looking up from the first page. “Do you think that means they’re not necessarily part of the curse?”
Jesse considers. “Maybe. They seem more interested in scaring you than actually hurting you.” To his credit, he picks up on my silent signal and doesn’t address the tears collecting in the corners of my bloodshot eyes. “Plus, I don’t see how it would benefit the curse to have these shadows hanging around, haunting the people in charge of keeping the curse alive.”
I hear Mama in my head with crystal clarity, as though she’s sitting beside me in the booth.
Everyone always underestimates guilt. They think fear is the fastest way to incentivize someone, but fear disappears when the danger does. Guilt… guilt never goes away. You can’t undo time and fix your mistake. Guilt, ya eyun Mama, is a hole in the ground, and time is the shovel.
A shudder works through my shoulders, traveling to my knees. Mama died when I was nine—most of my memories of her have been worn away, the little details fading with each recollection.
This memory is pristine. Complete. It sits away from the others, as though its proximity might taint them.
“Mansour?”
I startle. Jesse leans forward, head tipped to the side as he scrutinizes my face. “You should go home. Sleep, eat—”
“She has around twenty or so time entries here,” I interject, ignoring the absurd suggestion. How can I sleep when every shadow sends my heart plummeting to the ground? How can I force down a single bite? “Some of them are only a few minutes apart. Do you think she was keeping track of the shadows?” I shake my head. “She says they followed Khalto Safa a lot more than her. Why would she go hunting them herself?”
“She could have been trying to figure out their movements. When they come and go. How long they stay.”
