The cold of it bruised through my jeans as I collapsed.
I stayed there until I could breathe again.
Then I stood up and ran back to the gate.
Closed.
The men had retreated from their post—a deliberate absence, a message of its own.
I sat down on the cold ground and pressed my face against the painted metal bars, peering through them, trying to see the house, trying to see any movement, trying to work out whether Runa was still inside or whether he had taken her away while I was at the cemetery talking to her brother.
??????
The shivers wouldn’t stop. The canopy of trees could only hold off so much of the rain and the wind had begun driving it sideways, finding me regardless.
The car returned. Men held me back as it passed through the gates without slowing. I watched the taillights disappear up the drive.
Time passed.
No one came.
They stayed away from the gates entirely—a wall of deliberate absence that communicated everything without a single word.
Rain trickled down my face. I raised my head to the camera anyway.
I wasn’t going anywhere without seeing Runa.
Darkness came. I didn’t move.
Another car approached, its lights cutting through the rain, and I gripped the iron bars and hauled myself upright. The cold had locked into my joints and muscles, stiffening everything, the kind of cold that stops feeling like cold and starts feeling like nothing at all. A shadow emerged as the door opened. A man. Drawing closer.
Ruslan.
I staggered toward him and he caught me, wrapping his arms around me before I could fall.
“He has Runa,” I sobbed into his chest.
“Sestra, you must come away from here. We will try to sort this out,” he said, his hand moving in slow circles on my back.
I shook my head.
“He won’t. I have to make him see,” I said, gripping his shirt with what was left of my hands.
“It’s two in the morning. You will freeze out here,” he said, pulling me gently toward the open car door.
I dug my heels in.
“Nooo.” The sound that came out of me wasn’t a word. It was something older than words, something that came from the same place as the howling in the Istanbul apartment, the animal sounds that had no language in them. Again and again and again.
It made no difference.
My father climbed out of the car. Between them they lifted me—not unkindly, but without hesitation—and folded me into the back seat.
I lay there and cried.
All the way to their home.
Back to where it all started. Back to the table where they handed me over and called it family duty. Back to where I signed my fate away with a pen someone else had chosen and ink that had never dried.
