Strings - Capstone Amal Al Shamsi (1)

They continued to discuss the future of the tortoise house, but Hamza was not listening.
He was tracing the pattern of the carpet, pulling at the loose threads. He could tell his wife was
observing him, but he could not spare the energy to be part of the conversation. He was ready to
go home.
They never came to a decision about who would keep the house. Hamza bid them all
goodbye, but paused in front of Qasim. The way that his brother was looking at him made him
feel like he was a pane of glass. “How long will you be gone this time, ha?” He said, but it was not
a question. His brother stood up to hug him, unlike everyone else, and then hugged Lamya, too.
Hamza drove back home, Lamya was speaking about his sister’s baby and he was
nodding along.
It must have been then that Lamya realized that Hamza was not returning.
In the car, as she drove him to the airport, Lamya told him that she packed some good pens in
his briefcase. “From a conference, so you can display them at your desk.”
“There are only children to impress,” Hamza said with a laugh. “Thank you.”
Lamya hummed.
“Are you embarrassed of what I do?” He didn’t know why he felt that he had to get under
her skin.
She thought about it for a while. From the radio came a jingle about stovetop counters
that practiced self-hygiene. They cleaned themselves, essentially. She turned the volume down,
he thought she had gotten tired of the terrible tune but she had wanted to say something. “I am
only embarrassed that you would rather do it somewhere else than here.”
She climbed out of the car when they reached the terminal. A hand held his even as they
walked the short distance to the doors, both sighing at the cool air that came their way. They had
a few minutes to spare, so she came with him to get a coffee. In his mind, he felt it would be rude
to go right to the check-in desk.
“Will you be able to manage? Just ignore what they say, if they ask you to take the
house,” Hamza said.
“I thought you’d want it.”
“I’d rather it make someone happy, or at least have someone live in it, it’s miserable how
it is,” he told her. “Unless you want it.”
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