Under the Olive Tree

32. Itnan Wa'Ishrun

All the emotions she'd kept in check since the night the soldiers had torn into their home and stolen Muhsin away had finally become too powerful for her. That night Amani spent in the wardrobe, crying and begging that Muhsin and Fayza would be returned to their family so that everything could go back to how it was.

She prayed that they were both okay where they were.

That, for Muhsin's sake, they were together and that they would come back with one another. Muhsin would never forgive himself if anything happened to his baby sister.

Ever since then, she'd developed a habit of spending the night in his wardrobe. She would cry all night at first then gradually she began to sit in silence when there were no longer any tears to be cried.

Perhaps Amani never thought that his scent might flee from the wardrobe after all the nights she left it wide open. Or maybe she thought he would come back before it did. But Amani never wondered for the slightest of moments that he might never come back.

That he might be....

No, she never thought it.

So when the moon was high in the late night, she never expected to hear the knock on the front door. It stirred her from her silent daze and pulled her from the comfort of Muhsin's room. Amani glanced toward Fayza's room but the lights had been turned off and Um Muhsin's snores could faintly be heard past the closed door.

Amani glanced at the time. She'd spent the night the same way she'd been doing for what felt like years. Missing Muhsin. Basking in the only remainder she had of him.

She turned toward the balcony, finding the grapevine standing in the same place it had been since she scooped the spilt soil into it after it had been knocked over in the events of that night. Its color had begun to fade away. Muhsin wasn't here to take care of it while it was small and delicate and Amani was never good at caring for plants.

Another knock came.

Amani turned back to the front door, wondering if it had actually come or if she'd imagined it the same way she'd been imagining far too many things in the silent home. She took careful steps closer and placed her hand on the doorknob. Had she heard it?

A heartbeat passed.

It knocked again.

She turned the handle and opened the door.

In front of her, a man with dirtied and torn clothes stood with his gaze lowered to the ground. But she'd seen the top of his lowered head enough times to recognize him by the lower half of his masked features. Amani's breath caught and her life seemed to blossom back into her chest at the mere sight of him.

Her voice broke with all the hope and desire to finally be able to say his name once again. "Muhsin," she gasped.

She searched past him but he was alone.

He lifted his gaze to meet hers, catching the way she looked behind him before she turned to him. His shoulders were slouched in defeat, his hair longer and unwashed, his face smeared with dirt, his nose red, and his eyes empty.

Amani's voice was struck with worry. "Muhsin."

"They took her," he spoke so quietly Amani almost didn't hear him. It was as if he was afraid speaking it loudly would make it all the more real. "They took her from me. I fought but they...," he whispered.

Muhsin's attention slipped away.

Then he lifted his hand to show her a black plastic bag he held. "They gave me her clothes. I think...," he met Amani's gaze again, his voice trembling. "They sent her away like Yaba."

"Muhsin!" Amani tried to catch his weight as he crumbled to the ground but they both fell together. He felt thinner. Weaker.

He cried into her shoulder, repeating the same muffled phrase over and over. "...wa na'mal-wakil, hasbi...."

Amani looked past Muhsin again, realizing that he'd walked all this way alone with nothing but a bag of his sister's clothing. As he broke down in her arms, no longer able to keep himself as composed and proper as he always had, Amani held him as tightly as she could.

Behind her, she heard Um Muhsin race out of her room at the sound of her son's voice. But her footsteps ceased when she came upon the sight that awaited her at the door. Her eldest son fallen to the ground, completely broken, and her absent daughter. "La," the mother shook her head, her voice faint as she covered her mouth and held her chest. The entire time she'd been waiting, refusing to give up hope that her children would be returned to her.

They'd taken Fayza away from him just as they'd taken his father. All his life, he'd done all he could to protect her from the same fate but her story had come to the same ending as the father she'd wanted so desperately to be like. Now, Muhsin and his mother were the ones left to live on in the absence of both of them.

"They took her," he tightly held onto Amani as if afraid they might pull her away from him, too. His grasp on her desperate and terrified. She'd never heard his voice so unguarded, never felt his body tremble so weakly, never seen such despair in his expression. "They took Fayza."

They took her, it hit Amani harder than she'd expected.

It hadn't really hit her until now.

Fayza, with all her loud determination and refusal to back down and fearlessness in the face of dozens of men who were far more armed and trained than she ever was. With her excitement in defending her people and humble beliefs that she was only nothing more than one step toward a coming freedom. With her unbreakable spirit. With that fearlessness of hers that scared the entire Occupational Force and marked her a threat as a teenager. She'd really been stolen from her house, torn from her brother's hands, and taken.

This time, she wouldn't come back.

Muhsin cried. 

"They killed Fayza."

          "وَيَمْكُرُونَ وَيَمْكُرُ ٱللَّهُ ۖ وَٱللَّهُ خَيْرُ ٱلْمَـٰكِرِينَ"

         "But they plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is The Best of Planners."

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Before you get upset, remember that ^^^^ verse and TRUST!

Epilogue coming SOON along with my BIG ANNOUNCEMENT.

Superrrr excited. Love you all!!!