Parisian summer afternoons illuminated their path.
My phone beeps as I reach our landing.
It’s another text from Zaid:
Miss you
I slip the phone back into my purse and reach for my keys with shaky fingers. Part of me knows that Zaid is texting me again because he’s jealous, so I’m not sure why I’m both annoyed and nervous.
Lately I think Zaid is at war with himself. The lovable, charming nerd versus the dude bordering on bro. And it’s been pretty clear which part is winning. Almost inexplicably, I still want to be in his life. Also, it’s hardly fair for me to call out other people for their internal contradictions.
Here we are, playing games. I put out a little trap, and he took the bait. He still has feelings for me. I still have feelings for him, too, even if they aren’t the clearest or smartest feelings I’ve ever had. But Alexandre is creeping into my thoughts. And into my heart. And into an abandoned old building with me tonight.
Alexandre is here, in Paris. Present.
Zaid is thousands of miles away. And we’re not even together anymore.
I need to be present, too. But the past still has its claws in me.
Leila
I step into the night, veils secured tightly around my hair and mouth. Pasha’s banal cruelty has provided me the opportunity for escape. But before I go to the poet, I go to my Giaour. Down the steps, winding, through the darkness, I clutch my opal while a prayer rises from my lips: “Thee alone I worship. Thee alone I seek for help. I fall upon your mercy to save me. To free me from this bondage.”
Si’la glides along the final steps with me as I approach the courtyard of the hollow trees. “I will pray for you, too, but I fear for you on this journey. I fear you will not escape wholly as yourself. I saw to it your message was delivered. He awaits you.”
“Si’la, your protection has kept me alive all these years, but there is no life for me here. I am cast out even as I remain in the serai.”
“This I know. We all know. And the Valide Sultan will face my wrath. But understand I am beholden by borders in the promise I made to your father. For there are limits even I cannot breach. Never could he, nor I, have anticipated the passage you would undertake. I cannot accompany you.”
“Your love for my father was boundless, wasn’t it?”
“As was his love for your mother.”
I smile, touched by the sadness in Si’la’s eyes. I place my hand on my heart. “As is your love for me. I will carry you with me, always, the only protector I have known.” My opal blazes from its setting in my necklace.
“God has made you humans out of clay. Your form is too easily shaped and bent to the will of others. And you can break. Crumble back into the dust from which you came. There is little of perfection in humankind; indeed you are the one creation that destroys the very world created for you. But more than any other being, you are capable of a love perfect and pure, and in honor of that do I freely give you my troth to protect you in all the ways I am able. To watch over you. To bear witness to your courage. Peace be with you, child. Always.”
I watch as Si’la fades from sight, my eyes blurring. What the future holds is not for mere mortals to discern, but what I do know, what I grasp with my entire being, is that in this palace prison, I can know no peace in a life that is not my own. I must endeavor to do what I can, to risk this life, so that I may live another.
If we succeed, escaping into the night, into the dark seas with the poet, my beloved and I will be strangers in a foreign land, without home or nation. But of that prospect I am not afraid. I have been an orphan all my life. And I have survived.
Khayyam
“Are you nervous?” Alexandre whispers.
His breath warms my skin