Between the Grapevines

11. Ahda 'Ashar

Hamza raised a curious eyebrow. "What's unusual about her?"

Riyad fell silent, pursing his lips in thought. Somehow everything about the girl was unusual yet, when he considered it more deeply, nothing was. He hadn't retrieved his answer by the time Hamza spoke up again. "Is she the one you find unusual or are you?"

"What does that mean?" Riyad asked, his brow knit when he turned to the man grinning beside him.

"It means is it her behavior that is unusual or your feelings for her?" Though the dimple between his eyebrows deepened, Riyad sat in silence, keeping his eyes on the road stretching ahead of them. "I will not overstep, ya akhi, but I will offer one statement that I had learned to be true. Often when our mind becomes complicated because of a person, we assign them that complication rather than seeing it within ourselves."

Riyad ran his fingers over his jaw in thought. "And what is it about my mind that is complicated?" He asked, half of his tone defensive and the other half wishing that Hamza might provide him a genuine response.

But the man only shrugged. "I can't do your homework for you, can I? You should figure it would yourself and realize what it is that your wife stirs within you that makes your mind 'unusual' as you defined in your words."

Once they arrived in Jinen, Hamza took a different path at the beginning of the town and left Riyad to drive along the outskirts on his own until he found the camp grounds—hidden between rising olive trees that threw a protective shade over them. He was invited in swiftly and offered his first meal of the day as a lunch while four other men stripped the car's interior for the materials he'd smuggled through the military checkpoint earlier. He watched them work while feasting on the small duck that had been plated in front of him, sharing with the little girl sitting on the rocking chair to his right. Riyad didn't speak with her. It was clear enough that a child so young should not have been at the camp in the first place, so he pretended as if the pieces of duck he placed in the plate near her were simply ones he did not find appealing. She fell for it and ate each and every one.

"Arwa," a man Riyad quickly identified as the leader of the group approached with a deep scowl on his face. "Didn't I tell you to go with your mother? You cannot be at the camp today."

Riyad's eyes widened at the address, realizing that the girl who'd been sitting with him was the daughter of the Resistance member. He looked up at the man whose expression dissolved into a smile when the girl shoved a final piece of duck into her mouth, keeping her fingers buried in her mouth to hide the fact that she'd been eating with the guest from her father. "Run along, yalla. Tell Mohammed to take you to your mother, understand?"

The girl nodded and hurried out, waving happily at Riyad before she disappeared into the surrounding bushes. Riyad placed another piece of sesame-covered bread into his mouth, his eyes watching the approaching man until he sat on the couch beside his chair. "How are you?" He asked.

"All thanks to God," Riyad murmured, rightfully caught off guard by the friendliness of the man. Normally, exchanges such as these were carried out with minimal conversations to keep identities hidden and secured between one another. But in just a few short minutes, Riyad had met this man's daughter and broke the first rule of the military exchange.

He nodded. "Is the tea to your liking?"

"It's good," Riyad replied, ignoring the lack of sugar that had made him purse his lips at the first sip he took. "Thank you."

"Your gratitude is appreciated, my brother," he smiled. "The men will finish unloading the products very soon so you can return to your camp before sunset. There is heavy security placed around the southern edge of the town so I recommend you take the eastern path then distantly round back toward your town. It will decrease your chance of running into the troops."