Strings - Capstone Amal Al Shamsi (1)

Familiar
While they were young, most of them teen hermits, Dalida sat her children down
together in the living room. In those days, she had worn her hair long like a young girl’s. “What
do you think?” she asked them. A slim gold band lay in her palm. A sliver of pearly gloss ran
across the surface.
“What do we have to do with it?” Hamza’s youngest sister asked.
Qasim picked up the ring and passed it from one hand to the other. Hamza watched him,
sitting on his hands.
“I want your help, that’s all,” their mother told them. She neither smiled nor frowned. If
she cared that any of them were angry or uncomfortable, she did not show it.
Hamza reached out a hand from beneath him to hold the ring. It felt like it would melt at
his touch, it was so thin.
You already know what you want. Better to do it now, mama,” Qasim said. He was trying
to be polite about it, Hamza could tell. “You decided, are you just asking to make yourself feel
better?”
“The ring is nice,” his other sister said. She would know, she just got one herself.
Now Dalida smiled. Slowly, she got up to her feet. “Thank you, Sara.”
The smell of soup leaked in from the kitchen. “We can have a party here,” Hamza said.
“Right? Nothing to take the attention from Sara, of course–”
Sara laughed and shook her head. “You couldn’t even if you tried, sorry, mama.”
“But it’ll be good for him to at least see the house,” Hamza continued. It had been
obvious that the man would move in with them, they all knew just by looking at him. Arnaud
was a doctor, otherwise handsome and with big bright eyes, but he worked at a pharmacy and
lived in an apartment.
“I don’t want a party,” their mother said. “Come, let’s go eat.”
“Don’t forget this,” Hamza called out. He stood up, holding out her ring. The rest of her
children trickled out of the room around them.
She waited for him to walk over to her then held his hands together. One of them, that
had been nestled beneath him, was numb so it felt like three different hands.
“I learned a lot from you, you know,” she told Hamza. She was talking about his stomach.
She leaned in to kiss his cheek but he pulled away. She smelled like chamomile and the smell
reminded him of being sick. “But still, I can’t be like you.”
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