Strings - Capstone Amal Al Shamsi (1)

Detour
The desert only gets hotter the longer you stay away from it. He could barely open his
eyes for the first few days. That was okay as he was spending it all cooped up inside, vainly
making up for lost time.
It was just as he imagined, he was moving around in someone else’s skin. It was
ill-fitting, both too tight and too slack. There were no strings to keep it up, only pull him in
different directions.
But there was Haya, who would look at him smiling sometimes without immediately
looking away. There was also Qasem who held him for a long time without saying anything. His
wife stood with her hands behind her waist.
Upon seeing her, he had forgotten how he had imagined her to look.
When he had the chance to, he walked out of the living room. Haya caught him, holding
him still for a moment with her eyes before she turned away. Outside, Lamya was standing in
the garden. Her arms were still tucked behind her. She was looking in the direction of the gate,
somewhere, quiet.
Hamza felt he had been so incredibly lonely.
When she turned to him, she seemed to want to apologize. “I didn’t see you there,” she
told him. “Are you already running away?”
Hamza kept his hands by his side as he moved towards her. “And what about you?”
“Haya will be sad if the cat leaves again,” she said.
He could see it now. By the gate, the cat scraped against the iron gate, its elegant white
tail floating after it.
“Lady,” Lamya said softly. That was its name, perhaps.
The neighbor’s rooster cried out, making him jump. She laughed beside him.
“How did I ever forget that devil?” he asked, smiling a little at her.
His wife shrugged. He felt like an imposter calling her that.
“Lamya,” he said, so that she would look at him again.
She turned towards him, but her eyes kept flitting over to the direction of the cat.
“What will you say if I ask you to marry me again?”
Lamya turned her shoulders away. The shawl fell off one shoulder and she let it hang.
“You always say such things,” she said, eventually.
“What things?”
106