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Afra loved, she hated, and she inhaled the world like it was a rose. All this was why I loved her more than life.
But in Syria there is a saying: inside the person you know, there is a person you do not know.
But what I loved most was her laugh. She laughed like we would never die.
Name—My beautiful boy. Cause of death—This broken world.
That laughter. I can hear it. It flies above the land and disappears into the distance with the birds. I think this is his soul, it is free now. O Allah, keep me alive as long as is good for me, and when death is better for me, take me.
I wished that there was someone to guide me, to tell me what to do and which way to go, but I felt completely alone.
What was lost would be lost forever. The Crusader castles, mosques and churches, Roman mosaics, ancient markets, houses, homes, hearts, husbands, wives, daughters, sons. Sons. I remembered Sami’s eyes, the moment the light fell away and they turned to glass.
And that’s when I looked back. I shouldn’t have, but I turned away from the crowd of people and looked back into the darkness at the land I was leaving. I saw the opening between the trees, the path that could take me back the way I came.
“When you belong to someone and they are gone, who are you?”
People are not like bees. We do not work together, we have no real sense of a greater good—I’ve come to realize this now.
“You see, you have to relax and turn into nature. Then you will be fine.”
I believe I am unwell. I have no dreams left.
It’s amazing, the way we love people from the day we are born, the way we hold on, as if we are holding on to life itself.
Every king who ever ruled this place was so blind, in one way or another, that they left it full of riches and devoid of life.”
I could see Afra’s soul in the lines on the paper, the way they appeared to move with light and life.
away to the moon, away to another place, another time, another world, anywhere but here. But we cannot escape this world. We are bound to it, even in death.
