Between the Grapevines

24. Arba'a Wa'Ishrun

Riyad sat in front of the fence gate left open, chewing lazily on a rigid piece of sugarcane skin and watching townsfolk come and go in front of him. From his place near the base of the steps, he sat at a shared eye-level with the children being pulled along by their parents. Some of them turned his way, their curious eyes large and wanting to take in every part of the world around them. Others were too occupied with their own unending words to their attentive mothers.

His fingernails brushed against the course hair that had grown above his lips and over his jaw. His hair had grown too. Riyad did not like how longer hair felt on the top of his neck or his forehead, but his physical discomfort was nothing to the anguish in his mind. To all the fear and worry that had grown in its power and eaten at him the first few weeks that he searched all through the town, all through the prison records, everywhere for a sign of the girl who'd disappeared. It had taken bite after bite of his conviction until he was left to sit in his silence.

Now, he sat in the streets and watched the children.

Every time he sat outside, one of them managed to break from their distracted mothers. Then they would race over and tell him their father had a beard like his or ask him why he was sitting alone. They would ask if he had no friend to sit with him.

There was one little girl specifically—Reem—who always ran up to him and tugged on his beard without a mind to how short it was. She would tell him that her grandfather had a beard like his and her grandfather let her pull his beard so it must be okay to do the same to Riyad. Her mother used to scold her away but they had seen each other often and Reem had grown comfortable with Riyad. Now, she threw her arm around his neck and sunk against his chest while her mother conversed with the shopkeeper across the street. When he extended his hand forward to shake hers, and his palm swallowed her small fingers, Riyad wondered how it might be to hold the hand of his own daughter.

It was a relatively new desire that had developed in his life. Before, he'd had no interest in having children. He wasn't sure when it'd changed.

"Ya ami," Amer frowned, pulling the sugarcane skin from between Riyad's lips and tossing it to the ground. "If there is real sugarcane beside you, why do you chew on the tasteless skin?" He asked, joining him on the steps and in the shadow of the high sun.

"I don't have an appetite for it," he replied, glancing down at the long piece of green skin now sitting covered in dirt between his feet. He plucked it from the ground and placed it beside him, out of the way of all the people moving through the street around them.

Amer watched him in silence for another moment. Riyad tried to pretend like he did not see the pity with which Amer and Farhan looked at him since that day, it suffocated him. Instead of sulking with his natural urge, he now had to focus on showing them that there was nothing of his to pity. He was the Riyad he'd always been, untouchable. Unshakeable.

"We can always tell when you're thinking of her, you know," Amer leaned closer to nudge his shoulder, his words carrying a lighter energy to make up for the weight that they truly bore. Perhaps his attempt was to keep them from dropping on Riyad like steel anchors that would drag him to the deepest depths of the ocean. Perhaps his lighter tone might reduce the weight to one only of a toggle bolt. It would still drag him but not so harshly.

"Can you?" He offered with a breath of a lazy chuckle.

The boy nodded. "Yes," he replied. "Your soul is drained from your eyes and the corners of your lips drop as if you've seen a ghost. She is not a ghost, Riyad. Do not give up on her."

Riyad lifted his head to meet Amer's gaze, his gaze softening when he peered into the eyes of the younger boy. "Who says I have given up on her? The heart of a believer, Amer, never falls into despair."