Strings - Capstone Amal Al Shamsi (1)

Deniz’s voice came from behind him. “Then you wouldn’t have it weighing on you like
this.”
“Maybe. But maybe it’s just the bittersweet fact that I’m not entirely a, well, a monster.”
There was no sky to be seen. He saw the reflection of the office against the window’s surface,
mixing in with the world outside. “It’s my right to live as I want, is it not?” Hamza believed this.
“I just really can’t face them all.”
“What about your wife?”
Hamza laughed a little. “She might be easier. She is good at hiding things. I wouldn’t
even know if she was disappointed.”
Deniz seemed to shift in the chair behind him. When he glanced back, she was facing the
window as well. “What goes on in your mind when you say that?”
He thought back to that time. Lamya had known that Jasem was bringing his
grandmother into his mess and said nothing. She was protecting the boy, or maybe she
genuinely believed that he was doing something right, somehow. Or maybe it was all to spite
Hamza.
“There was no one I admired more purely than my mother,” Hamza tried to say. His
chest burned. “The things she could do, they were beautiful. No one has ever done or will ever
have her strength. But that boy tainted it.”
He took some time to parse through the haze of anger, now cooled down into a thick
smoke. “She was so disappointed in herself, when the boy got into trouble. I found her at the
window, waving her hands outside. Frantic. She said that they were black now. Whatever that
meant. How could he use her like that? She was old and she trusted everyone completely.”
Deniz sat still.
Hamza shrugged. “That’s it.”
“It’s not.”
“It’s not.
“So what else?”
“I stood by her no matter what. I believed her, I was her boy, her gift. I still believe her.
But I hate that, because of the boy, for a moment––” Hamza saw his mother waving her arms
outside, terrified and frail, “I thought to myself, maybe she is…” It was difficult to say. “I thought
for a moment, this is a madwoman.’ And I can’t forgive myself. I hate the boy for making that
happen.”
“And your wife?”
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