Under the Olive Tree

17. Sab'a T'Ashar

He placed the clipboard down and closed his eyes. He hated the way his name sounded from her. "The bakery is closed. You have no business here."

"Girls like her do not want to marry. I'm not sure what lies she has told you but I care about you. That is why I came here to tell you this before you made a mistake like that."

"Get out."

She continued as if he hadn't spoke at all. "I only want to protect you from her, Muhsin. She's not-."

His palm stung from the force of its contact with the counter. The wave of shock it sent around the bakery drowned out the girl's voice. But he realized that she'd gone quiet when it passed. "I said, get out."

He heard her whimper before racing out.

Farouq's head appeared in the large window. He saw the girl run out of the door and turned to see Muhsin inside. A question asked itself on his features.

Muhsin sighed. "Astaghfirullah."

"What happened?" Farouq stepped in.

He felt the pounding of his beating heart in his temples and gripped his head in his fingers. His stitches ached. "Nothing," he whispered. Muhsin sat on the chair behind him.

"Are you still bleeding?"

It was the first of many questions he would receive that day. Many curious glances that tried to pretend they were not eyeing his bandage or cooing at his colorless skin. Many worried accents lifting the ends of every conversation he had on his way to the wedding. They were only the first of more that would come once he stood between the crowd of attendees.

He would stand in the back.

His head hurt.

The blaring music was loud so he felt every beat become trapped in his skull and reverberate against his brain. It bounced back and forth before joining with the next beat of pulsing music. He only saw enough of the bride's arrival to know the color of her dress. The dancing and changing lights burned holes in his pupils. Muhsin lowered his gaze onto the floor and closed his eyes. Farouq had been sitting beside him but was gone when Muhsin finally turned to him.

He squinted against the bright flashing lights to scan the decorated field in front of him for his cousin, mother, or siblings. He would leave. His head hurt.

Muhsin found none of them.

He found one familiar face near the stage but it did not belong to any of his family members. It belonged to a girl whose wide smile was brighter than the lights that blinded him. She held her cousin's hands and twirled to the music. His heart caught in his chest at the sight of her happiness. It quieted the screaming music and outshined the painful flashes. He should not have been looking at her.

Was it true?

Was he only a challenge to her?

Perhaps that was why she'd approached him the way she did. When she spoke like she knew exactly what to say. When she looked at him in a way so he'd think there was nobody else she wanted to look at other than him.

There was nobody else he wanted to look at other than her.

Was it all a game?

Her eyes caught on his when she twirled again. It seemed like her excited smile had been directed at him for a moment. But it began to slip and her dancing came to a slow stop. He saw something different build into her features. It was the same expression she'd worn after rejecting him in the bakery the first time. Just before he'd walked out.

It did not make sense to him.

How could she allow herself to look at him like that if she only approached him as a challenge? How could a person pretend so well?