He steps toward me gently as if approaching a wounded deer. “No, you’re not.”
My arms fall heavily to my sides. “Excuse me?”
Kenan reaches for my hands, enveloping them in his warm ones. “Salama, no one’s here. There’s no Layla. I can’t see her.”
ILAUGH.
Kenan’s expression is a mix of sadness and panic.
“Of course you can’t see her,” I say. “I’m standing in front of you, silly.”
He runs a hand through his hair. “Standing in front of me isn’t really hiding the couch.”
I whirl around to see Layla perched on said couch, her hands hugging her pregnant belly. Her hair auburn and her eyes ocean blue and I canseeher. I can smell and touch her.
“Layla?” I say in a panicked voice.
She smiles sadly. “I’m sorry, Salama.”
A newfound fear drags my heart through a black abyss and I stumble forward, collapsing to my knees in front of her.
“Kenan,” I say in a hollow voice. “I’mbeggingyou. Please tell me you see her. Please tell me you see her face and the blue dress she’s wearing.”
Kenan shifts behind me. “I don’t,” he says softly. “It’s just the couch.”
Layla brushes my cheek. “I’m real in your heart.”
A strangled sound escapes me. “No.No, you’re not.”
She bites her lip, tears trickling. “Remember the shooting in October?”
I am hollow. A burnt-out tree.
As she continues, each word she says pulls a thread, and another and another until I wholly unfurl. “I went to the grocery at the end of the road. There was a sniper. I didn’t survive. I was bleeding but I was able to be carried home during my last moments. I died outside the front door.”
My hands shake, agony splintering through my skeletal system, and I let out a choked scream.
I was at the hospital when it happened. Layla died without me there to hold her hand.Fragments of my memories come in splashes, seeping through the ones I’ve fabricated for myself.I had run back home but it was all over. She was walking back from the supermarket when a military sniper’s bullet went through her head. And the other through her uterus. The trail of blood outside on the cracked pavement is hers. It was thick, unwilling to dissolve into the soil. Just like that, she was taken away from me. And my niece was taken away. And I was all alone.
Layla’s burial was hurried, that very same day. Some of my neighbors helped me wash her and wrap her in white, and she was tucked beside her parents.
But I forgot all of that.
I woke up the next day to find her sitting on my bed with her cheeky grin and I… forgot.
No. I changed reality.
Layla’s hands are on my cheeks and I shiver. I canfeelher hands. “It wasn’t your fault, do you understand me? Youdidn’tbreak your promise to Hamza.”
My sobs are dry, heaving painfully through my chest, and I can’t form coherent words. I’ve been livingalonesince October. For five months my mind has been spinning a fiction to keep my agony sealed away.
I gaze at her face, trying to commit her to memory. I needed her in my life. I needed that comfort and safety after I lost my whole world. The small moments of happiness I experienced with her were a lifeline. I know I’m owed so much, so I forged my ownmightlife. She let me heal bit by bit. She’s as real to me as anything.
Her thumbs stroke my cheeks and she smiles, blue eyes brighter than a star. “You know I’m in Heaven. You know I’m safe and happy. So is Baby Salama.” She presses a hand to my chest. “You have your faithhere. You will live for me, for your parents, and for Hamza. You’ll keep your promise to him by saving yourself.”
“Don’t go,” I beg. “Please.”
She takes my hands in hers and kisses my knuckles. “You have a family now, Salama. You’re not alone.”
