“She’s your problem now,” Malik snapped, with the sound of a door slamming shut after a lifetime.
The man, Yusha, didn’t speak. He led her away from the only home she had ever known, his steps firm even through the mud. They walked for what seemed like hours, leaving behind the scent of jasmine and polished wood, replaced by the briny rot of the riverbanks and the thick, damp air of the outskirts.
His home was a shack that sighed with every gust of wind. It smelled of damp earth and old soot.
“It’s not much,” Yusha said. Her voice was a revelation: low, melodic, and without the harsh accents she expected from men. “But the roof will hold, and the walls won’t fight back. You’ll be safe here, Zainab.”
The sound of his name, uttered with such quiet gravity, struck her harder than any blow. She collapsed onto a thin mat, her senses hypersensitive to the surrounding space. She heard him move: the clinking of a tin cup, the rustling of dry grass, the striking of a match.
That night, he didn’t touch her. He threw a heavy, wool-scented blanket over her shoulders and retreated to the doorway.
“Why?” she whispered into the darkness.
“Why what?”
Why are they taking me? They have nothing. Now they have nothing, except for a woman who can’t even see the bread she eats.
She heard him stir against the doorframe. “Perhaps,” she said softly, “having nothing is easier when you have someone to share the silence with.”
The following weeks were a slow awakening. At her father’s house, Zainab had lived in a state of sensory deprivation, obligated to be still, silent, invisible. Yusha did the opposite. She became her eyes, but not through mere description. She painted the world in her mind with the precision of a master.
“The sun isn’t just yellow today, Zainab,” he said as they sat by the river. “It’s the color of a peach just before it bruises. It’s heavy. It’s the feeling of a hot coin in the palm of your hand.”
He taught her the language of the wind: the difference between the whisper of the poplars and the dry rattle of the eucalyptus. He brought her wild herbs, guiding her fingers over the serrated leaves of mint and the velvety skin of sage. For the first time in her life, the darkness was not a prison; it was a canvas.
She found herself listening to the rhythm of his return each night. She found herself reaching out to touch the rough fabric of his robe, her fingers pausing on the steady beat of his heart. She was falling in love with a ghost, a man defined by his poverty and his kindness.
But shadows always lengthen before they disappear.
One Tuesday, emboldened by her newfound independence, Zainab carried a basket to the outskirts of the village to pick vegetables. She knew the way: forty steps to the large stone, a sharp left turn when she caught the scent of the tannery, and then straight ahead until the air cooled by the stream.
“Look at this,” a voice whispered. It was a voice like broken glass. “The queen of the beggars went for a walk.”
Zainab froze. “Aminah?”
Her sister invaded her personal space; the scent of expensive rosewater was cloying and suffocating. “You look pathetic, Zainab. Really. To think you’ve traded a mansion for a mud hut and a man who smells like a sewer.”
“I’m happy,” Zainab said, her voice trembling but confident. “He treats me like I’m made of gold. Something our father never understood.”
Aminah laughed, a high-pitched, sharp laugh that startled a nearby crow. “Gold? Oh, you poor, naive blind fool. Do you think he’s a beggar because he’s poor? Do you think this is a tragic romance?”
Aminah leaned closer, his hot breath against Zainab’s ear. “He’s not a beggar, Zainab. He’s penance. He’s the man who lost everything on a bet he couldn’t win. He doesn’t stay with you out of love. He stays with you because he’s hiding. He uses your blindness as a cloak.”
The world fell silent. The sounds of birds, water, wind… all faded away, replaced by a roar in Zainab’s ears. She staggered backward, her cane striking a root, nearly collapsing.
“He’s a liar,” Aminah whispered. “Ask him about the Great Eastern Fire. Ask him why he can’t appear in the city.”
Zainab fled. She didn’t use her cane; she ran on instinct and in agony, finding her way back to the cabin with her feet in despair. She sat in the darkness for hours, the cold earth seeping into her bones.
When Yusha returned, the air felt different. Its scent of wood smoke now smelled of burnt deceit.
“Zainab?” he asked, noticing the change. He placed a small package on the table: bread, perhaps, or some cheese. “What happened?”
“Were you always a beggar, Yusha?” she asked. Her voice was hollow, like a reed rustling in the wind.
The silence that followed was long and heavy, laden with things that were left unsaid.
—I told you once—he said, his voice devoid of its poetic warmth—. Not always.
My sister found me today. She told me you’re a lie. She told me you’re hiding. That you’re using me—my darkness—to keep yourself in the shadows. Tell me the truth. Who are you? And why are you in this cabin with a woman you were paid to take?
She heard him move. Not moving away from her, but coming closer. She knelt at his feet, her knees hitting the hard earth with a dull thud. She took his hands in hers. They were trembling.
“I was a doctor,” he whispered.
Zainab backed away, but he held her.
Years ago, there was an outbreak in the city. A fever. I was young, arrogant. I thought I could cure everyone. I worked myself to the bone. I made a mistake, Zainab. A miscalculation with a tincture. I didn’t kill a stranger. I killed the provincial governor’s daughter. A girl no older than you.
Zainab felt the air leaving the room.
“They didn’t just strip me of my title,” Yusha continued, her voice breaking. “They burned down my house. They declared me dead to the world. I became a beggar because it was the only way to disappear. I went to the mosque looking for a way to die slowly. But then your father arrived. He spoke of a daughter who was ‘useless.’ A daughter who was a ‘curse.’”
He pressed his hands against her face. She felt the dampness of his tears; not her own, but his.
I didn’t take you because I was paid, Zainab. I took you because when he described you, I realized we were the same. We were both ghosts. I thought… I thought if I could protect you, if I could show you the world through my words, maybe I could get my soul back. But then I fell in love with the ghost. And that was never part of the plan.
Zainab froze. The betrayal was there, yes—the lie about his identity—but it was wrapped in a much more painful truth. He wasn’t a beggar by fate; he was a beggar by choice, a man living in a self-imposed purgatory.
“The fire,” she whispered. “Aminah mentioned a fire.”
“My past burns,” he said. “I have nothing left of that man, Zainab. Only the knowledge of how to heal. I’ve been treating the sick in the village at night, in secret. That’s where the extra copper comes from. That’s how I bought your medicine last week.”
Zainab reached out, her fingers trembling, tracing the contours of his face. She found the bridge of his nose, the dark circles under his eyes, the moisture in his eyes. He wasn’t the monster her sister had described. He was a man broken by his own humanity, trying to piece it back together with hers.
“You should have told me,” he said.
“I was afraid that if you knew I was a doctor, you would ask me to cure the one thing I can’t,” he said, his voice breaking. “I can’t give you sight, Zainab. I can only give you my life.”
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