SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 71
overhead, circling endlessly. The soldier stretched an arm out and hooked it over a stone. A
pistol in his hand. On the bridge overhead, a truck pealed by, close to the parapet, kicking
up dust, buck-shooting stones. The soldier guarded his face in his armpit, so she used the
moment to bolt. Up the embankment, round the side of the bridge, and behind the truck.
Maybe the driver saw her in the mirror, maybe they didn’t, but they slowed. Just enough for
her to hoist herself up onto the flatbed, her skinny legs dangling off the edge.
The truck rattled on past transit zones, and Qamariyyah watched the sky over the Beqaa
valley heave and sag, threatening a tempest. Rain dripping from the rusty gutters of passing
storefronts made a curtain between the rooves and the road.
When the towns became bigger and she began to recognize familiar corners, she knocked
the cabin roof of the truck. It did not stop, as expected, just slowed, so she jumped and
tumbled to the dirt.
“Thank you, Ummi,” she whispered as it rattled away, backfiring and spitting. Soaked
with mud and sweat, she walked down a road she had taken many times before. It pointed her
in the direction of the Starbucks, still there. Lights on at this late hour. Clean floors reeking of
antiseptic wash and chairs made of plastic, no one took notice of her as she climbed the step
and opened the glass door. No one thought twice about the young woman with the wounded
shoulder and the stinky mariner shirt striking quite the picture as she sat down next to the
man in the collared shirt on his laptop.
As she sat on the bench, her body made the fabric whooooosh as it pushed out the air.
To her left and to her right, it was evident that Beqaa had not just been spared, it wasn’t even
a target. Life there was as it ever was.
Qamariyyah bent and put her head between her thighs. There, under the bench, she
plugged in the dead woman’s charger, branching the end to her phone. The screen, long
midnight black, turned a moon-white, and she waited quietly and without moving, hoping
to soon hear the delightful clang of the pings.
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