The silence that followed was overwhelming. Zainab felt the blood run cold in her extremities, leaving her fingers numb. She didn’t cry. Tears were a resource she had exhausted at the age of ten. She simply felt the world sway.
The wedding was a muffled echo of footsteps and short, staccato laughter. It took place in the muddy courtyard of the local magistrate, far from the prying eyes of the village elite. Zainab wore a coarse linen dress, a final insult from her sisters. She felt a stranger’s calloused hand take hers. His grip was firm, surprisingly secure, but her sleeve was in tatters, the fabric fraying against her wrist.
“Now she’s your problem,” Malik snapped, with a sound like a door slamming shut on a life.
The man, Yusha, didn’t speak. He led her away from the only home she had ever known, his steps steady even in the mud. They walked for what seemed like hours, leaving behind the scent of jasmine and polished wood, replaced by the salty, rotten smell 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: deep, melodic, and without the harshness she’d grown accustomed to in men. “But the roof will hold and the walls won’t budge. You’ll be safe here, Zainab.”
The sound of his name, uttered with such quiet gravity, struck her harder than any other blow. She sank down onto a thin mat, her senses hypersensitive to her surroundings. She heard him move: the clinking of a tin cup, the rustling of dry grass, the crackling of a match.
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