Zainab fled. He didn’t use his cane; he ran instinctively, driven by agony, and with desperate steps found his way back to the hut. She sat for hours in the dark, the cold earth penetrating her bones.
When Yusha returned, the air was different. The smell of wood smoke now smelled of burnt deceit.
“Zainab?” he asked, noticing the change. He left a small package on the table: perhaps bread or cheese. What happened?
“Have you always been a beggar, Yusha?” he asked. His voice was hollow, like a reed crackling in the wind.
The silence that followed was long and heavy, laden with unspoken words.
“I told you once,” he said, his voice devoid of any poetic warmth. Not always.
My sister found me today. He told me you are a lie. He told me you are hiding. That you use me—my darkness—to keep yourself in the shadows. Tell me the truth. Who are you? And why are you in this cabin with a woman you were paid to be with?
She heard him stir. Not move away, but move closer. He knelt at her feet, his knees pounding dully against the compacted earth. He took her hands in his. They trembled.
“I was a doctor,” he whispered.
Zainab recoiled slightly, but he held her tightly.
“Years ago, there was an outbreak in the city. Fever. I was young, arrogant. I thought I could cure everyone. I worked myself to exhaustion. I made a mistake, Zainab. A miscalculation with a potion. I didn’t kill a stranger. I killed the governor’s daughter. A girl no older than you.”
Zainab felt the air leave the room.
“They didn’t just take my title,” Yusha continued, her voice choked with emotion. “They burned down 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 appeared. He spoke of a daughter who was ‘useless.’ A daughter who was a ‘curse.’”
He pressed his hands against her face. She felt the dampness of his tears; not hers, but his.
“I didn’t adopt you for money, Zainab. I adopted you because, in describing you, I realized we were the same. We were both spirits. I thought… I thought that if I could protect you, if I could let you see the world through my words, maybe I could recover my soul. But then I fell in love with the spirit. And that was never part of the plan.”
Zainab froze. The betrayal was there, yes—the lie about her identity—but it was veiled by a far more painful truth. He was not a beggar chosen by fate; He was a beggar by choice, a man living in a self-imposed purgatory.
“The fire,” he whispered. Aminah had mentioned a fire.
“My past is burning,” he said. “I have nothing left of that man, Zainab. Only the knowledge of how to heal. I secretly treated the sick in the village at night. That’s where the extra copper comes from. That’s how I bought your medicine last week.”
Zainab reached out, his fingers trembling as he traced the contours of her face. He found the bridge of her nose, the dark circles under her eyes, the moisture in her gaze. He wasn’t the monster his sister had described. He was a man torn apart by his own humanity, trying to rebuild it from his own fragments.
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