Believers of Paradise

Z A R A

My tears dried up. How long could I have cried anyways?

     My feet were sore from walking for this long. Ameera was by my side, barely speaking a single word. We have been walking like this for almost five hours now.

      Ameera decided to break the silence. "We should be at the train station in just about ten minutes,"

     I sniffed and nodded. The only thing I had in my mind was one word that felt like it was made for me. I title I seemed to be born with.

     Culprit.

Using one of my hands, I draped the scarf loosely over my head again since it fell off. My head hurt badly while my heart thumped hard.

     It took about fifteen minutes until right in front of our eyesight were tall poles holding up a roof. I looked over at the place we were heading over to.

     The train tracks were a couple of feet away from us. Ameera and I walked over them and made it to the other side where the actual train station was. The ground here was made of thick cement. It was rough against my sandals that I had purchased from the marketplace about six months ago. I looked down at my feet, to see the straps on the sandal, with colorful beads woven together nicely. These were my favorite footwear.

     Ma had bought this for me.

    I gulped and looked back up again, blinking away the tears that were about to form in my eyes. A bunch of people roamed around, busy in their own lives. Some ladies were chasing down bored children playing with each other. You can't blame the kids. They were woken up early in the morning to catch the train. A little bit of playfulness doesn't ruin anything.

The sky was cloudy, grey, and still. Ameera and I are lucky it didn't rain last night. Otherwise, we would've caught cold by now.

     "Zara," Ameera called. I looked over at her.
"Let's go but the tickets okay? We can't miss the next train that is coming. Otherwise, who knows how long we will have to wait,"

     I nodded. With a hoarse voice, I said "Yeah,"

     Ameera lead me to a huge table where a happy-looking man sat. He was old. Very, very old. Three thick books sat in front of him at the desk. He picked the middle book and looked over it for a whole minute. After talking to the customers in front of Ameera and me, it was finally our turn to buy our tickets.

     "Tickets to where?" He asked, with an unfamiliar accent.

     "The capital city," I said.

 For some reason, the man laughed hard. Ameera and I looked at each other and gave a questioning look.

     "You young ladies," he said. We turned back to him. "Are crazy people to be going to the capital,"

     "What do you mean?" Ameera asked.

    "My daughters," he spoke, and this time, looked at us both seriously. "just be careful. It's a big place. So many types of people,"

I was about to look at Ameera, but couldn't move my eyes from this old man. He didn't notice. Instead, he picked the book with his right hand and opened it to some page and inspected it.

My legs were about to drop me to the ground. I felt weak just waiting. The man looked through the book for a good five minutes, until Ameera and I were dying to just go.

"One hour," he finally said. "There is a train coming here in just less than an hour,"

"Hmm," Ameera nodded. "How much will it be,"