Chapter 3: All For Falafel

“Adam, Habibi, let’s go.”, the woman said to me softly. I felt short.

Correction, I was short.

I looked up the voice. The woman was applying makeup.

“Baba is already waiting for us.”, she added again.

“But I don’t wanna go to grandma, Ummi. It’s so boring there,” I replied. ‘I’ would be inaccurate. That wasn’t my voice, it was a child’s.

Oh, I was the child.

I recognized this. I was dreaming. It was one I had many times before. It was before everything - before my life changed forever. People say that when you know you’re in a dream, you can control it. But not this dream, it always had the same ending.

I could never change it. No matter how much I’ve tried.

“Look, if you come quietly and behave, I’ll buy you that toy car,” the voice - my mother’s voice - said to me sweetly. She kneeled down to my level and was looking me in the eye.

“Really?”, I asked eagerly.

“Really,” my mother confirmed. Seeing my joy my mother added, “Yallah, go.”

Leaving my mother behind, I went to my room. I grabbed my cleanest thobe and ironed it (I was always a very clean and immaculate boy). Donning my bright white clothes I walked out of my room to see my parents talking. My mother laughed at something my father said.

“All praise be to God, you look so handsome, my son,” my father said to me happily as he came towards me. He lifted me up easily, regardless of my being small my father was a strong man and put me towards the sky.

“You ready to see grandma?”, he asked me.

“Yes.”, I replied.

More like ready to see my toy.

“Let’s go,” my father said to us as we both left the house.

With my hand in my father’s, I walked alongside him down the street. The streets were alive - always. Even now, sunset had occurred mere minutes ago and the call for prayer had begun, street vendors called out their respective dishes, clothes, groceries, and other amenities. I could smell strong incense and all kinds of food.

“Baba, I want falafel,” I said to my father, tugging at his long garment.

“Not now, Adam. We can eat at grandma’s house,” he said to me simply.

“No Baba, I’m so hungry now. I’m gonna die if I don’t eat now.”, I said to him eagerly, tugging at his thobe more frantically now. My father just sighed loudly before looking at my mother who simply frowned her approval.

I could laugh at my naivete. People use the word ‘death’ so lightly. Could you blame them though? Death is such a difficult concept to fathom unless you’ve seen it firsthand; to know that someone is gone forever, and nothing will bring them back.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Some people say that people live on in the memories of others.

Bullshit.

A good notion to have, but a memory and flesh and blood don't compare.

“Okay, I know a good place just around the corner.”, my father told me in a defeated voice. I had a bad tendency to throw tantrums. It seemed that my parents wanted to avoid that at all costs.

He steered us towards a side alley. The lighting was bad here. It was night, and the alley providing no cover, was too dark to see clearly.

This was the first time I experienced that gut feeling - the feeling that you’re being watched. But what can an eight-year-old make out of such a feeling?

I also remember being scared.

Here’s the thing about fear, if you don’t know how to use it, it’s not very helpful.

As soon as we left the alley - things happened so quickly - someone stabbed my father in the chest with a knife. Before my mother could even scream, with her face turned to my father, someone stabbed her in her back.

Should I have done something?

Could I have even?

The assailants looked at me for a second, deciding what to do, before turning and running like cowards. I remember them so well, sandals, black khakis, and a turbin used as a makeshift mask.

Ridiculous, they looked like something out of a bad movie.

I was startled - I simply did not know what to do. I was so utterly confused that I did not scream, cry, or run.

I just stood there.

“Adam,” a faint voice called out to me. I looked to my left, at my feet. My mother reached her hand over to me. She looked for a second at my father, causing me also to turn my head.

He was dead; stabbed through the heart. His thobe, which was a crisp white, was now slowly being engulfed in a dark, red color.

No, red would be inaccurate. It was a maroon almost.

His blood began to puddle around him, slowly creeping its way towards me. Reaching for me even in death.

Now I think that at least he died a quick and painless death.

A favor that I often grant upon my targets in honor of my father.

“Adam, look at me, my child.”, my mother called desperately.

A mother has a different effect on you. Now I was beginning to grasp the situation. Tears began to roll down my eyes.

“Ummi, what’s happening,” I asked, now sobbing.

“What God intended. Everyone has a time, place, and destiny. Remember Adam, you have a great destiny. I know it,” she said, tears also escaping her eyes. It’s a faint memory, one which I try not to think about, but it gives me chills even know.

I did think for a while why my mother didn’t say something like, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ It sounded cliche but not far fetched. I think that in her last moment, she did not want her final words to me to be a lie. She had accepted her circumstances, so she tried to give me hope in some other way.

When she said ‘what God intended’, I think it meant that everyone had to die. So did it really matter how or when?

My mother was wearing a black abaya, so thankfully I could not see her blood. I don’t know how I would have handled it.

“Go to grandma, Adam,” my mother told me. But I would not leave her.

“Go,” she repeated.

“I want to stay with you,” I said, my voice cracking. My mother began closing her eyes. She was no doubt, as I realize now, losing too much blood to stay conscious.

With my mother’s last act, she raised her hand towards me, touching my face, and saying, “Be good, my dear child. God is with you.” I grabbed her hand mere seconds before it went limp, and in that moment I lost my mother, and any semblance to that kind of love, forever.

I sat there for quite a while actually, looking at my mother’s now cold face. I was lost in myself. I was alive, but really dead. I wasn’t even crying. The strangest thing happened that day though, besides my parents dying. I faintly heard footsteps coming towards me. I recognized them as a woman’s, I was very perceptive even then.

She came up to and looked down upon me, all without a single word. I did not bother turning around. She bent down and grabbed my hand, I did not refuse. Truthfully, I was not fully in control. She got up, getting me up with her, and led me down the alley.

My clothes, which I had kept clean and ironed, were wrinkled and covered in my parents’ blood mixed with dirt. I walked away with that woman quietly. Not knowing who she was. Not knowing what she had intended for me. Not knowing that my world would change forever.

That woman was who I was going to meet now, after so long, in a city to which I had not been to in for almost a decade, to do something which I did not know.

The funny thing was; I never found out who murdered my parents or why. I suspected it was for political reasons. I never asked, and I was never told. The past was best kept that way.