When Yusha returned, the air seemed different. The smell of wood smoke from him now smelled of burnt deceit.
"Zainab?" he asked, sensing the change. He placed a small package on the table—bread, perhaps, or some cheese. "What happened?"
"Have you always been a beggar, Yusha?" she asked. Her voice was hollow, like a reed snapping in the wind.
The silence that followed was long and heavy, laden with unspoken things.
"I told you once," he said, his voice stripped of its poetic warmth. "Not always."
“My sister found me today. She told me you were a lie. She told me you’re hiding. That you’re using me—my darkness—to keep yourself in the shadows. Tell me the truth. Who are you? And why are you in this hut with a woman we paid to bring?”
She heard him move. Not far from her, but towards her. He knelt at her feet, his knees striking the hard-packed earth with a dull thud. He took her hands in his. They were trembling.
"I was a doctor," he murmured.
Zainab retreated, but he held firm.
“Years ago, there was an epidemic in the city. A fever. I was young, arrogant. I thought I could cure everyone. I worked myself to the point of madness. I made a mistake, Zainab. A miscalculation in a dye. I didn't kill a stranger. I killed the provincial governor's daughter. A girl no older than you.”
Zainab felt the air leave the room.
“They didn’t just take away my title,” Yusha continued, his voice breaking. “They burned down my house. They declared me dead to the world. I became a beggar because it was the only way to disappear. I went to the mosque to find a way to die slowly. But then your father arrived. He was talking about a girl who was ‘useless.’ A girl who was a ‘curse.’”
