Behind You Is the Sea

by Susan Muaddi Darraj

The trumpet is the most outrageous of all instruments. In your face. Such a diva. Give me a cello, big and sad, any day.

Destiny put everyone on a stage, to play a role, and sometimes the spotlight slipped off you to give you a break. At other times, it burned into you directly, relentlessly, as you stumbled through a soliloquy of exhaustion.

“You’re our rock,” everyone told her, but that reputation didn’t feel like a compliment anymore. It felt like neglect.

“Behind you is the sea. Before you, the enemy.” I glance at him then continue. “You have left now only the hope of your courage and your constancy.”

The Arabs were a people that knew life could be horrifically unjust and unfair—and yet they cherished it.