Chapter Nineteen
THE HOSPITAL SMELLEDlike antiseptic and death—the same smell that clung to my scrubs long after I’d leave. I hated it instantly. The sterile lights, the drone of machines, the shuffle of nurses who looked like they’d forgotten how to rest. It wastoofamiliar,tooclose to my own world, yet entirely different.
Khalifa walked ahead of me, shoulders squared, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. He didn’t say a word the entire drive there, and I didn’t press him.
His mother stirred when we entered, her eyelids fluttering open at the sound of the door. The faintest smile tugged at her lips when she saw him.
“Habibi,” she whispered, voice thin beneath the hiss of the oxygen. He went to her side instantly, his fingers trembling as he smoothed a strand of hair from her cheek.
She whispered something to him, motioning toward me. Khalifa hesitated, his eyes flicking to mine. Then he leaned close and kissed her forehead.
“I’ll be right outside,” he murmured and slipped from the room.
I walked to her bedside. She looked so frail up closely, her skin pale and papery, her eyes still full of an impossible kind of light.
She reached for me, and with visible effort, lifted the oxygen mask away. I started to protest, but she only shook her head.
“Take care of him for me, habibti,” she rasped in Arabic, her accent lilting, the endearment tender enough to break my heart.
It took me a second to understand. “Khalifa?”
She nodded weakly, her eyes glistening. “I know he can be stubborn sometimes,” she said, pausing for breath. “But he’s in so much pain. He went through so much. Be patient with him, habibti. Love him.”
Love him.
The words hung there, too big for the small space, making my throat tighten. I didn’t know what to say, what kind of vow she was asking me to make. I barely knew how to process the fact that Ilikedhim, and now she was asking me tolovehim? But something in her eyes—something pleading and full of trust—made me nod anyway.
“I will,” I promised.
Her hand relaxed in mine, her lashes lowering. Then she replaced the mask, her breathing shallow, and I stood there for another long moment, watching her chest rise and fall. When I finally stepped out into the hall, Khalifa was leaning against the wall, arms folded. His expression was unreadable again, but his eyes searched mine, trying to gauge what she wanted to tell me, before going back into her room.
I hovered near the door, not wanting to intrude. Khalifa moved to her side and took her hand, his thumb brushing over her wrist like he could will her pulse to stay steady. He said something softly, his voice breaking halfway through, and I looked away. It felt wrong to see him like that—vulnerable, human, heartbreakingly helpless. I focused on the machines instead, the slow beeping, the IV drip. Things I understood. Things that didn’t hurt.
After a while, Khalifa stood. “We should go. She needs rest.”
The evening air was cooler now, the city whizzing in the distance. I followed him, neither of us speaking. Halfway down the street, he stopped and braced his hands on the roof of a car, his head bowed, the muscles in his back taut like he was fightingto hold everything in. I took a step closer before I could think better of it.
“Khalifa,” I whispered.
He didn’t look at me, just shook his head once. “Please, Lillian. Not right now.”
The way he said my name—it was almost...pleading.
So I didn’t say anything else. I stayed close, letting him know I wasn’t going anywhere, hoping it would be enough.
ONCE WE GOT BACK TOthe house, the sun had long since dipped below the horizon, the sky a dusky lavender that clung to the mountain peaks. Dinner passed in a blur. There wasn’t much talking as grief sat at the table with us. Khalifa barely said a word, retreating into that suppressed part of himself I still hadn’t figured out how to reach, but his family—they made space for me.
One of his aunts kept piling food onto my plate like she was on a mission to fatten me up, and every time I tried to refuse, she’d say,“You’re too skinny. Eat.”And I did, because saying no felt rude and, honestly, because the food was incredible. I wasn’t used to people insisting I eatmore. Dinners were usually a divided occasion—my brothers and father at the table, me at the counter with a separate plate, a subtle reminder that appetite was not a feminine trait. My mother never had to say it outright—even though she often did—but sometimes her glances did the work just fine:smaller portions, smaller voice, smaller presence. So when his family handed me seconds with a smile instead of a side-eye, it felt like some micro, healing act.
His cousins asked me about my career, if I liked Beirut, and Amina smiled at me like she already knew the answer. The cold awkwardness between us during my wedding was gone, and we were kind of, sort of, friends. I kept waiting to feel like anoutsider, but somehow, I didn’t. Everyone spoke freely over one another, voices layered in warmth and pain and humor. It felt so natural to laugh, to help with the chores, to be up to my elbows in suds, to be part of something that wasn’t mine but also didn’t feel borrowed either. After one day in this house, I felt more welcome here than I’d ever felt living under my parents' roof.
There were a few teasing comments about my broken Arabic, which I laughed off, leaning into the role of thewhite-washed Canadian who forgot her roots. It was easier that way—easier than explaining that I hadn’t grown up speaking Arabic because the people who were meant to teach me barely spoke to me at all.
Home had never been a place of stories or shared language. The only space where I could exist without feeling choked by silence and the relentless, pick-you-apart criticism was alone in my room, shut away from family conversations that never seemed meant for me. I knew almost nothing about where I came from—about my parents’ childhoods, the places they left behind, or the lives my brothers lived during their yearly visits before my grandparents died. It felt like a past everyone else had inherited naturally, and I’d somehow been left without the translation.
I was too Middle Eastern for white spaces and too white for Middle Eastern ones. I existed only as a contradiction caught in the narrow space between, belonging nowhere, claimed by no one.
When the dishes were finally done and Khalifa had disappeared down the hall, I wiped my hands and went to find him. His room was empty. I hesitated in the doorway before stepping in, curiosity winning out. There were books everywhere—history, poetry, fiction—and framed photos of him with his family. There were a handful where he stood beside another man I didn’t recognize but looked enough like him to raise questions—same dark curls, same familiar tilt of the mouth—and in those, his smile was the brightest.
