Page 95 of Eternally Yours


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“Oi,” the woman next to him snaps when he leans toward the window. And then the girl is gone, and Driss is leaning away, as impatient as everyone else on this old thing until they hit his stop and he shoves his way to the pavement.

The sun is starting to set when Driss reaches their apartment complex. He can smell Aziza’s cooking before he even thumps up the stairs to their door.

“I have something for you,” he tells her when she pullshim down for a hug. He tugs out his Rubik’s Cube. A single row of red stands against two rows of white, the way it always does before he gives it to Aziza for the final turn. She solves it with a grin and scrambles it again on her way to the kitchen, returning with dinner because she knows he’s famished from another day of selling the usuals to starry-eyed tourists in the souk. He spreads the worn rug, helping the woman who raised him set the meal.

There was another bout of rainfall today, and Driss hefts open the window, scrambled cube in his hand, barely noticing the stench of their neighbor’s cigar beneath the sweet petrichor of the rain wafting through. A few doors down, Larbi Batma belts out a tune, bendir drumming through someone’s speakers.

Aziza turns on the radio, then she and Driss share the platter. It’s half couscous, the grains soft between his fingers, and half last night’s rice, clumps scraped from the bottom of the pot. They hum along to a silly ad, a good end to a normal day. The beef is melt-in-your-mouth tender, and the flavors burst across his tongue—the nuttiness of slivered almonds, the heat of the layered spices, the tang of olives.

“Amazing, Aziza. Just like you.”

She smiles.

“Two more men have met their demise in a series of fatal drownings,” the news reporter says through static. “The investigation is ongoing. No suspects have been taken into custody, but officials are rankled by the eerie similarity of each of these horrific murders.”

Aziza freezes. Driss hurries to the radio and switches it off, but the damage is done. Aziza launches into a speech. She blames it on the River Tensift, on the rain. She makes him promise not to go, don’t,pleasedon’t.

Driss says nothing.

Aziza is kneading dough by the light from the window. Beads of water twinkle on the glass like little drops of magic, daring him to be as free as they are.

It’s summer, the season of in-betweens. College halfway behind him, decisions ahead. The future’s pressing too close, demanding him to choose a path. It’s more fragile now. It felt fickler when he heard the news report last night.

Aziza calls him across the silence.

“Yeah, I’m here. I have to leave soon,” he calls back. “Karim’ll kill me if I’m late again.” It’s not entirely a lie. He makes another set of turns in his Rubik’s Cube as he heads into the kitchen, and when he presses a kiss to Aziza’s cheek on his way out, she grabs his arm, dusting trails of flour on his skin. Again, she tells him not to go to the river, no matter what, promise me.

With a sigh, Driss snatches up a warm bun from the tray she pulls out of the oven, and he’s biting into it as he mumbles anothergoodbyeandbeslamaandI love you, and heads outside.

Someone’s motorbike hums in the parking lot below. The neighbor’s daughter, with dimples on her cheeks and lungs full of tobacco, waves and skips down the rusty stairs,backpack full of summer school homework. Cars honk their way down the street and the shouts from eager vendors carry on the dry breeze.

Driss can almost hear the river beneath it all. It’s a song, he thinks, wrapping red silks around his body and tugging him to the water’s edge. Was it really murder, or did the men drown themselves?

He shakes his head free of the strange thought.

The sun has all but lapped up the last of the rain, quickly searing Driss down to his bones. The motorbike hums like a warning.Go back inside, that guzzling purr tells him. Silence, that haunting melody. But when he thinks of Aziza and banes and blessings, Driss realizes he cannot.

He takes the stairs two at a time. He scrambles his Rubik’s Cube again on the way down, the only way he can sort through the mess in his head.

He takes a breath. Holds it. Looks around. Kicks the stand off the idling motorbike and hops on, revving the thing up to a roar before looking up one floor to his apartment window. If Aziza is watching him, he can’t see her, only the beads of water, remnants of a joy now fading away as Driss disappears, stirring dust in his wake.

He follows the bus route, the one that’s long and winding. He doesn’t know if he’s going because it’s finally time to talk to her, or because he’s imagining her voice—theriver’svoice.

“Because I’m going insane,” he mutters at the red light.

By the river, he kicks off his flip-flops and carefully meanders down to the water. It’s still new, the sight of the water in the riverbed after months of drought. Tiny waves tumble.Down here, he can’t hear the traffic on the parallel street.Weird, he thinks. The street isn’t that far off. He looks back, but he doesn’t spy a single car. He doesn’t see anything but river rocks and tufts of green. He doesn’t hear anything but the song, the voice, that melody.

And there she is.

His heart jiggles like it’s made of jelly, plopped down on ice.She can’t be real, he tells himself. He’s seen the way women paint their faces with makeup, altering a blank canvas into one of utter beauty. This isn’t that. This is something else.

“Who are you?” he asks, barely above a whisper.It’s not the voice a man should use, Karim would tell him.You never had a father figure in your life to know, Karim would remind him like it’s a bad thing. There’s a way to behave, a way to not feel, a way to dominate. Driss isn’t like that. He refuses to be something he isn’t, despises the way society forces boys to grow thorns and sharp edges when the wordmanwas never meant to be synonymous withmonster.

The girl smiles.

“That song,” he blurts out with a cringe. Now’s his chance to stop talking to her in his head and start talking to her for real, and he can’t even manage a full sentence. “Can you hear it?”

She’s suddenly closer, or maybe he’s moved. She smiles again, and it’s detached, in a way. Just like this moment, just like his thoughts. Then the melody changes, painting a vibrance to the world he could only dream of capturing on paper himself. The swell of the little waves sound likechimes. His feet slip between rocks and touch the silt simmering in the water.