Ina

“Tell me something beautiful,” you said.

I opened my mouth and out came the only thing that I had ever known to be as beautiful as it was true: that I had once met a woman who knew how to fly.

You clasped my chilled hand in yours and lowered your gaze to our fingers. I hoped I’d said the right thing. My mother always used to say that people in mourning prefer not to talk about the earth.

“What a wonderful thing,” you said, “for just one instant, to be so close to God.”

The breeze tugged your hair across your lips. When my father had been injured in the revolt, I’d dreamed a flock of starlings had passed over our village, and their tears turned to pomegranate seeds. The seeds fell to the ground, but the earth was weary, and the seeds wouldn’t take. The starlings circled, coaxing the earth toward fruitfulness. As they passed, the birds sang a psalm my mother had quoted to me many times, a line from the Song of Songs. I thought of it then, standing on the corniche so close to you that I could feel you breathing.

You are altogether beautiful, my darling. There is no flaw in you.”
― Zeyn Joukhadar

“Tell me something beautiful," you said.
I opened my mouth and out came the only thing that I had ever known to be as beautiful as it was true: that I had once met a woman who knew how to fly.”
― Zeyn Joukhadar, The Thirty Names of Night