It was late in the afternoon when Amani's eyes were no longer too heavy to open. She turned onto her back to stare up at the painted ceiling of butterflies above her with a heavy sigh, counting them the same way she'd grown accustomed to doing every day. Identifying each pair of fluttering wings had become a morning ritual that pushed her mind to softly pull Amani from her sleep.
As she counted the twenty-seventh wings, her mind finally woke enough to remember the dream she'd just dreamt in her last moments of rest. Amani abandoned the numbered mission and allowed her thoughts to play out the only scene she could remember.
She'd been standing in an empty street of aged travertine tiles, freshly washed in a way that left the crevices damp with the darkened residue of past dust. Cerulean blue doors and window panes lined the beige home to her right and two motorcycles were parked behind one another opposite of them. Amani's footsteps followed the dark line of stone that followed the street's center.
Her eyes scanned the wooden chairs near the end of the walkway before rising to the colorful lights hanging from the wooden covering stretching between the homes. Each round bulb hung from the thick vines growing from the roofs of both homes, across the covering, and dangling down a few inches above her head.
Amani's heart grew more in her chest with every step she took forward. The sound of her own sandals against the tile joined the rustling of the leaves and jingling of the lights were the only reminders of life filling the night around her.
She'd smiled at the overwhelming feeling in her breast, knowing it was sweet and full, but knowing nothing else. Whatever it had been, she savored every string in her heart it tugged on and, even as she lay in her bed, felt it fading beneath her covers.
Then, she remembered that she'd turned around to find that she wasn't alone. A man was following behind her wearing a white thobe that illuminated him in her eyes. Once she looked closer at the approaching figure, Amani saw Bread Boy.
He was smiling at her a full smile that he didn't even try to hide and his eyes were on hers like all he needed was her gaze. Amani saw the lights' reflecting in his colored irises more clearly with every step he took closer to her. She pulled in a sharp breath to pass oxygen to her weakening muscles because she'd wanted Bread Boy to look at her but, if this was how his attention felt, she wasn't sure she could hold her strength in front of him.
It was unlike anything she'd ever felt. A feeling that filled her chest but left a dangerously massive abyss in her stomach. The confusion made her fingers ache.
His lips parted and she didn't hear his voice but saw the single word melt into his smile. "Amani."
The gulp that raced down her throat was involuntary as he stopped in front of her, peering over her features with an overflowing softness in his gaze. He glanced down and Amani followed him to see him pull his hand from beside him, reaching for hers.
She froze and he paused, watching the hesitation on her features. Amani met his gaze then looked down again, unsure what to do with his sudden desire to touch her.
If she was awake, he would never do such a thing. This was a dream though, wasn't it? So, she could do what she wanted.
So Amani had suppressed her racing heart and-.
A loud boom rocked the house and tore Amani out of her daze. She gripped the blanket as her bed creaked loudly under the sudden impact, unsure if she was still dreaming. But her Aunt's scream wasn't a creation of her imagination and Amani realized that whatever she'd just heard hadn't been in her mind.
"Get down! Amani!"
She pushed her blankets off hurried onto the floor as another blast rocked the village. The frame hung by the wardrobe fell to the floor and shattered behind her. "Auntie!" Amani cried out, feeling as if the entire world was vibrating with the force that blew through her.
Her Aunt raced into the room with her hands pressed onto her ears. "Down! Down-," she shouted, pushing Amani lower and shielding her head with her hands. "Bismillah, bismillah," her aunt repeated and pulled Amani against her chest. Another boom came and Amani closed her eyes, afraid that the house would crumble and kill the both of them. But her aunt continued praying, repeating the same words until the noises stopped.
As the silence filled the room again, Amani heard the shouts coming from the street. "...Abu Jabar's house!" A man yelled.
Amani followed her aunt across the house and into the balcony to see all the men racing down her street and toward the bakery. In the distance, a cloud of brown debris and smoke rose to the sky. "Auntie," she turned. "What happened?"
"Come on, Amani. We have to help."
They threw on the fastest clothes they could wear and hurried out the front door to follow the crowd. The bakery doors were left open and bread lay charred on the floor by the stove. Beside it, one window of the pharmacy had been shattered and the other cracked down the center from the power of the blast.
She ran after her Aunt without question but froze when they turned the street. In front of her, a tall home of three stories had crumbled to the floor. The neighboring building remained standing with a large hole in the ground level. The car parked in front was folded on itself and only a few spots of yellow could be seen through the black soot covering its metal and disintegrating its windows.
"Amani!" Fayza grabbed her arm, catching her breath.
"They- they bombed the house?"
She tugged her along. "Come on. We have to help!"
"Help what?" Amani shouted over everyone else's voices.
"His family! They're in there, come on!"
But Fayza's hand slipped away as she hurried toward the crowds lifting the debris off the mountain of destruction. Amani's feet pulled her back even as she tried to move forward, to help as everyone else was. She lifted her hands to both sides of her head as the smoke circled the street and filled her lungs with shards of the broken home.
One of the men shouted from the middle of the debris. "Here! Layla and Rayan," he called and, quickly, the other men raced to his side to lift the large blocks of what had been a pink-painted wall.
She'd heard that name before—Layla.
Amani forced her feet to move and approached the crowd. Her hands shook as they pushed her way through to find her aunt.
"Yalla, yalla."
"God is Great!"
She looked toward the loud shouts and saw the two children being pulled from the rubble, their skin stained with the grey and black dust of the explosion. They were passed down their wrecked home to the man crying on the floor. At the sight of his grandchildren, he rose from the floor to take them.
They were passed from beside her. The girl was unconscious, a dark stain on her forehead. Her brother's eyes were wide and panicked at all the hands he was moved between. "Yaba," he shouted, wiping his head around in search of a face that was both familiar and comfortable. "Yaba!"
Their grandfather cried and held the two children. Beside him, his neighbors assured him that the paramedics should be on their way and it would only be a few more minutes. Rayan hugged his neck tightly out of fear, but Layla laid motionless in his lap.
"Inna Lilla wa inna illayi raji'un." Amani turned in time to see two men laying a white sheet over their mother's body.
"I'm sorry."
She turned back to the children as a similar cover was placed over the little girl in her grandfather's arms. Amani took a step away from the weeping man as she recognized the name.
She'd been watching Bread Boy when his little brother gloated excitedly about their win at his preschool's soccer game. 'I played with Ra'fat, Musa, and Layla. We had one person less bas we won them when we kicked into the goal.'
Amani covered her mouth and took another step back.
A preschooler.
"Where's Layla?" A little boy raced past her.
She gulped, forcing the acidity rising up her throat down, and spun around. Her shoulder collided into another as Amani ran away from the crowded members of the town to seek shelter from the blood pounding against her skull and dizzying her world.
An older man ran past her. "Did they get my sister out? Her kids?" He shouted the question at anybody who might have the answer. Amani had the answer but it was a reality he would be okay to live without for a few more minutes. It was a reality that made her turn into the next alley she met and drop onto the floor as the vomit poured through her fingers and onto the ground between her legs.
"Amani," a hand rested onto her shoulder.
"They're dead," she heaved.
Fayza settled beside her, her fingers firm around Amani's arms to steady her. "Here, sit back," she led her to the wall. "Are you OK?"
Amani buried her face into her hands and shook her head, trying to gaslight herself into believing this was a dream. She hadn't woken up yet. Bread Boy's dream had just taken an alarming turn in an entirely different direction but it was still imaginary. Those people were still happily living within the strong standing walls of their home.
"It isn't something you get used to," Fayza's voice was quiet in comparison to the shouting still distantly heard a few streets away, but it was all Amani let herself hear. "The death in this place."
She pressed her palm into her temple, blocking out the view of all the villagers racing toward the sight of destruction and scent of death. Amani wanted to hold her breath but the sorry attempt at evening her lung's contractions was the only thing keeping her from heaving and retching again. Her other hand slipped onto her stomach as she turned to Fayza, keeping her head tilted back. "How long?"
Fayza hummed and lifted her head to watch the brown cloud rise toward the white ones. "I'm not sure exactly. Longer than I've been alive for sure. Longer than Gidy has too."
Amani's eyebrows knit in curiosity at the name she hadn't heard until now. By the lack of mention, she'd assumed Fayza's older relatives had been deceased. "Your grandfather's alive?"
She nodded, chuckling at the question.
"I'm sorry- you've never mentioned him so...."
"It's alright," Fayza waved her off like she'd received the question more than the acceptable number of times but never minded it. "He was detained by the occupation... a few months after Yabawas killed, I think. He was an activist, you know, that's why they took him. We're a family of activists." She grinned. "That's why most of us are either detained or dead."
Amani watched the girl's expression complicate between pride and regret because her family's role was far from simple. "Your father was an activist?"
Fayza's smile softened when she nodded. "That's why he was targeted. They said it was an accident, that he fell, but Gidy never believed them. They've killed too many of his children for Yabato have been nothing more than accident, like they tried to say."
"What about your brother? He knows what happened."
"Muhsin? He's never talked about it."
"But he knows the truth."
"It doesn't matter because he won't say, that's what my mom says. You don't know Muhsin. If he knows that it'll hurt those around him to know something, then he'll keep all the pain to himself." Fayza didn't seem happy with the fact. It was evident in the way she sucked her teeth and sighed.
Amani sat straighter on the floor once her tailbone began burning against the harsh edges of the ground beneath her. "What do you think happened?" She finally asked Fayza.
The girl fell silent for a moment then looked Amani deep into her eyes with a fire of tamed revenge in her expression. "They killed my father. Whether or not he did something to them, I don't know, but the fact that they murdered him is what I'm sure of." She turned away and continued with a deep exhale, letting her body melt against the sandy home behind them. "I'm going to avenge him. A life for a life, that's how it is. Once I do that, I'm going to avenge all the innocent lives they took. Inshallah."
"What if you get hurt?" Amani asked.
"Then I should pray God grants me strength."
"What if you get killed?"
"Then you should pray God grants me heaven."
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Fayza is giving... girl boss? She's kind of a queen and we love that. We love representation of strong female characters who don't need a man. 💅🏼