Between the Grapevines

26. Sitta Wa'Ishrun

"Muhsin is here?" She asked.

"Of course, have you not been listening? Follow me." He snorted, nudging her with the edge of his flashlight before beginning to lead them down the only available path. Fayza trailed behind Farouq, her mind flooded with what would have been the grief of her family after the Occupation had killed her. She was not surprised by the foulness of such a cruel lie, but what seemed to shake her most of all was greater. It came from the realization that they had killed her the moment they'd detained her eight years ago, they had never planned to release her.

They'd planned to keep her imprisoned forever. Not even until she died, they'd refused to let her die when her soul had clung to her body by a fluttering thread. They were going to keep her alive, starved, deprived, tormented until she aged and wrinkled and died of her old age.

Fayza's past worries had grown and began to eat at her mind when she saw the light reflect off of a heavy door. A man opened it from within, welcoming Farouq and Fayza into an illuminated room with walls of compacted earth and thin carpets laid out before them. Her eyes roamed the long desks and couches as they moved deeper into the carefully constructed rooms, concealed, and protected by all the Fighters sitting within. Some with their weapons and others with the respected books they recited from.

Her curiosity ceased when they stepped into the third room. That was when her roaming eyes landed on the man sitting at the table in the corner, his chin on his palm, and his feet bouncing impatiently against the ground. Within a moment, Fayza recognized the anxious hazel eyes that stared down the hall beside him, searching for his sister on one side while she appeared from the other. His face had thinned with his gaze, his hair cut the exact same way, his skin cleanly shaven.

"I told you they'd be here, didn't I?" One of the Fighters sitting across the room murmured as he rose. Muhsin's attention turned to him on his way out of the room before snapping to the two who stood in the doorway.

He rose too quickly, the front of his legs hitting the table and making him stumble, and stepped out before he fell back onto the chair. His sister watched him, but Muhsin hardly seemed to notice his momentary imbalance. His eyes were wide and only appeared to grow even more when he saw Fayza before him, his gaze expanding to take in her presence in front of him. He blinked, doubting his own vision, but found her still in her place.

"Peace be upon you," he breathed, always the first to offer the greeting. All three of them heard the faintness of his normally clear voice, the gentle crack at the last word that came accompanied with the tightening of his jaw. Her older brother forced himself to breathe.

Fayza could not muster the strength.

It was not just her heart that tightened at the sight of Muhsin, but her entire body rocked when her eyes met his. Fayza found herself pulled back to eight years before. When she looked at her brother, it was as if all that time, all the tears, all the wounds and struggles, had never even happened. But the aches and scars across her body were a harsh reminder of the horrors that had befallen her the moment she was removed from his protection.

The first time she'd escaped the prison, she had not remembered her brother. She had never seen him. Now that she stood in the room, only a few steps between their lives that had diverted since that single defining moment, it all felt different. Now that Muhsin was here, she would never be returned to the cruel, heartless animals.

In her brother's presence, she was guarded the same way she'd been when she was nineteen years old, fleeing from his worried scolding.

Whatever she'd missed in her years away, whatever she'd been forced to endure, had all brought her back to Muhsin. The sentiment that settled over her body, bringing with it an air of tranquility and youth, was one that Fayza had not felt in far too long.