She was twenty-one, and in her father Malik's eyes, she was a broken vessel. For him, her blindness wasn't a handicap; it was a divine insult, a stain on the immaculate reputation of a family that traded in aesthetics and social status. Her sisters, Aminah and Laila, were the gilded statues in his gallery—all shining eyes and sharp tongues. Zainab was merely the shadow they cast.
The hook did not come with a word, but with a scent: the acrid, earthy smell of the streets brought into the sterile house.
"Get up, 'thing'," his father's voice grunted. He never used his name. To name a thing was to acknowledge its soul.
Zainab stood up, her fingers brushing against the velvet upholstery of the armchair. She sensed a presence in the room — a smell of wood smoke, cheap tobacco, and the layer of a coming storm.
“The mosque has many mouths to feed,” Malik said, his voice dripping with cruel relief. “One of them agreed to take you. You’re getting married tomorrow. To a beggar. A blind burden for a broken man. Perfect symmetry, don’t you think?”
For the complete cooking steps, go to the next page or the Open button (>) and don't forget to SHARE with your Facebook friends.The silence that followed was visceral. Zainab felt the blood drain from her extremities, leaving her fingers icy cold. She didn't cry. Tears were a currency she'd exhausted by the age of ten. She simply felt the world shifting.
