“Why take me away? You have nothing. Now you have nothing left, and a woman who can’t even see the bread she eats.” She heard him move against the doorframe. “Perhaps,” he said softly, “having nothing is easier when you have someone to share the silence with.” The weeks that followed were a slow awakening. In her father’s house, Zainab had lived in a state of sensory deprivation: she had been told to stay still, to be silent, to be invisible. Yusha did the opposite. He became her eyes, but not through mere description. He painted the world in her mind with the precision of a master.
“The sun today isn’t just yellow, Zainab,” he would say as they sat by the river. “It’s the color of a peach just before it bruises. It’s heavy. It’s the feel of a warm coin pressed in your palm.” He taught her the language of the wind—how the rustling of the poplars differed from the dry clicking of the eucalyptus. He brought her wild herbs, guiding her fingers over the serrated edges of mint and the velvety skin of sage. For the first time in her life, darkness wasn’t a prison; it was a canvas.
She found herself listening to the rhythm of his return each evening. She caught herself reaching out to touch the rough fabric of his tunic, her fingers lingering on the steady beat of his heart. She was falling in love with a ghost, a man defined by his poverty and his kindness.
But one day, Zainab ran away. She didn’t use her walking stick; She ran instinctively and in agony, her feet finding their way back to the cabin out of sheer despair. She sat in the dark for hours, the cold earth seeping into her bones.
When Yusha returned, the air was different. The wood-smoky scent of him now reeked of burning deceit.
“Zainab?” he asked, sensing the change. He placed a small package on the table—bread, perhaps, or a little cheese. “What happened?”
“Have you always been a beggar, Yusha?” she asked, her voice hollow, like a reed snapping in the wind.
The silence was long and heavy, thick with unspoken words.
“I told you once,” he said, his voice stripped of its poetic warmth. “Not always.”
“My sister found me today.” She told me you were lying. She told me you were hiding. That you were using me—my darkness—to keep yourself in the shadows. Tell me the truth. Who are you? And why are you in this hut with a woman you were paid to bring?” He knelt at her feet, his knees striking the packed earth with a dull thud. He took her hands in hers. They were trembling.
“I was a doctor,” he whispered. Zainab recoiled, but he held his ground.
“In the city, years ago, there was an epidemic. A fever. I was young, arrogant. I thought I could cure everyone. I worked myself to exhaustion. I made a mistake, Zainab. A miscalculation in a dye. I didn’t kill a stranger. I killed the provincial governor’s daughter. A girl no older than you.” “Zainab felt the air leave the room.
“They didn’t just strip me of my title,” Yusha continued, his voice cracking. “They burned my house. They declared me dead to the world. I became a beggar because it was the only way to disappear. I went to the mosque to find a way to die slowly. But then your father came. He spoke of a girl who was ‘useless. A girl who was a curse.’” She reached out and pressed her face into her palms. The moisture of her tears—not hers, but hers—fell.
“You should have told me,” she whispered.
“I was afraid that if you knew I was a doctor, you would ask me to fix the one thing I can’t,” he choked out. “I can’t restore your sight, Zainab. I can only give you my life.” The tension in the room broke. Zainab…
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