When the Apricots Bloom

by Gina Wilkinson

“Don’t feel guilty, my dear. Living a full life, not dwelling in sorrow, that’s the best way to honor the dead.”

“The great poet Rumi said sorrow sweeps everything out of your house violently so that joy has space to enter.”

But she’d learned that in Baghdad, truth was like a blister. If you pricked the surface, you only made the pain worse.

Huda didn’t understand the birds. Did they not harbor the urge to fly toward the sun, to eat wild rice, and drink from a babbling stream? Born in a cage. Raised in its stinking confines. Was a handful of seed and a saucer of dirty water really enough to keep them in place? Was that all it took to change the nature of a bird, to extinguish its need to be free?

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you? Two can keep a secret only when one of them is dead.”

No matter how much they suffered, Iraqis couldn’t let go of the glorious past. They refused to admit that Mesopotamia was dust, that Babylon was desert. Was it inner strength that kept them hoping? Or was it shame that kept them from admitting the truth? Maybe both.