Years did not pass in the shattered household; they settled, until one evening, the cry of a child broke the curfewed silence that wrapped around the walls like barbed wire. And so, the arrival of Arzu was marked.
For a while, Sabira opened the chest more often, but never for me. She gently took out the shawls Shajaa had used with her, filling Arzu with fleeting warmth.
With restrictions and cautiousness, Arzu traded her crawls for steps. Unlike her mother, Arzu was curious and tended to breach the rules. Naturally, it wasn’ t long before she discovered the chest that concealed me.
Gently blowing the centuries worth of dust off me, Arzu gently lifted me and flipped open my pages. Her fingers traced the grooves Shajaa had once risked her life to carve. Her chapped lips formed the name which she stumbled on after not seeing words for so long.
“ Sha-Shajaa,” she whispered under her breath,“ Bibi?”
Arzu’ s little hands closed around her Baba’ s pen. With a quavering hand, she wrote the only words she remembered – names.
Shajaa: Courage Sabira: Tolerant Arzu: Hope
Gabby Huang
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