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“Well, you could. But you aren’t. Because you’re a decent person.”
“Yes, I am. At least, I am trying to be.”
“The thing is, though, eventually, you have to listen to what she wants. She’s in love with you?”
“She said she was. But I...”
“You’re angry with me, aren’t you?”
“Of course not. What you told me has nothing to do with this.”
“I think you’re lying, my brother. I think you’re angry with me. You were very calm. When I told you.”
“What is the alternative?”
“Throw some fists. Rage. For God’s sake. You’re a monster that has been kept in a dungeon for sixteen years, and you can’t pull together a little bit of barbarian fury?”
“I don’t want to,” he said. “What is the point of it? I never raged. I never... I never cried. Nothing. Because what would the point be? Everyone was dead and I was in chains.”
“Yes,” he said. “Everyone was dead and you were in chains, so what was the point? And yet you have feelings about it. You are not in a dungeon anymore. You’re allowed to have feelings.”
And suddenly, a nameless rage inside of him boiled over and he grabbed his brother by the throat and pinned him to the wall. “Well, why did you tell him? Why did you tell them how to get into the palace?”
“Because I was foolish. I made a mistake.”
“Yes, you did,” said Riyaz. “Yes, you did.”
“You’re allowed to be angry.”
“I am,” said Riyaz, pounding his fist hard against the stone wall. “I am furious. But Father... He should’ve known. He should never have trusted him. He should never have put you in that position. Or me. And Mother... He was supposed to protect her.”
“Yes,” Cairo said. “He was. He didn’t. She paid the consequences for that. So did you.”
“So did he,” said Riyaz. “And this rage is pointless. Because it solves nothing and it brings no one back. Because... The only blame that is to be laid is on the people who... The people who destroyed us. The people who destroyed our family. Our country. Me.”
“You’re not destroyed,” said Cairo. “If I’m not destroyed, then neither are you. I tried. In the back of my mind I knew I needed to come back, I needed to save you. And in the meantime, I tried to self-destruct with excess. I figured even if I limped back here, freed you, but was little more than a shadow of myself, it would all be fine. But I found something better. I found something better than self-destruction. I found love.”
Riyaz closed his eyes. “But...” Everything felt painful. Sharp. But suddenly, just suddenly, he realized he didn’t hate the wordsI love you. He craved them. It was just that his heart, which had been frozen solid out of the need to survive, hadn’t been able to tell the difference. Between a desperate desire and a deeper unrelenting fear. Because they were the same. Because wanting anything had been his enemy. And he felt... It was as if truth was pouring from his chest like blood. And he could scarcely manage it all. He could scarcely understand himself. “I need to go,” he said.
“All right. If you need to hit me...”
“I don’t,” said Riyaz.
Because it was as if that blockade of emotions was suddenly becoming clear. What started as anger, the kind that sent him on blind rages when he had those flashbacks, the kind that had overtaken him just now... They were deeper. And they were more. It was grief. The grief he had never been allowed to have.
And he knew he could have no good thing without allowing the pain out as well.
And because he could, he opened the doors to the palace and he ran. Into the desert, he ran as far as his legs would take him. Because he was free. And then he sank to his knees and he cried out at the unfeeling sky. And a sob tore itself free from his chest, tears falling from his eyes. The tears he had never allowed himself to shed. Sixteen years of them. For the loss of his mother. The loss of his father. The loss of sixteen years of his life.
For all that had been taken from him, all of it. Until he had poured out the unrelenting grief onto the sand.
Until he was emptied of it. These years of pain. All of them.
But there was still something there, a restlessness. A memory.
The love he used to have for his family. And now that the rawness of grief had been removed... That love was still there. But where would it go? And that created a deep sadness within him.
For her. For them.
