Tonight, I am bound to sin and sweat for the sake of my father. It may seem a waste of silken skin, to sell away for an intangible cause; but this—my longing for him to be well, it is too much to overtake with selfishness.
It’s when I weave throughout the hanging tapestries and heavy drops of roaring merchants that I hear his heartbeat growing stronger. On each bearded man’s dark face, I see him smiling once again, and imagine myself in a safer place—the room in Jericho marked by the garnet cord. By Allah, I breathe, I must endure.
Only as a man approaches do I fear; he is tall, laden with oxen shoulders that remind me of my father, but his face is shadowed by his Ghutra. By my dove’s wrist, he wrenches me from the street and seizes me into the darkness where both light and sound are held captive by the throat.
Between heated breath and the razing grip of his scimitar fingers, I resign myself to Rahab’s sanctum, to safety until a glint of light reveals his face and my haven crumbles.
Father.
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