Free Come Back To Me by Melissa Foster Page B

way to the bathroom where she pulled off her bike shorts and stepped into the shower. Lather slid down her chest. She washed her stomach, the heel of her hand feeling a tiny bulge. She looked down and froze. There it was. She tried to wrap her mind around the idea that there was a little person inside of her. A fact she’d successfully ignored. What did it feel like to be inside a person’s body? she wondered. Even with the baby inside of her, she felt hollow, alone. If Beau had been there he’d hold her, tell her he loved her. If Beau were there, she wouldn’t be wondering how she was going to raise a baby alone. 
     
    Iraq
     
    Samira and Zeid made their way to the river and trudged back toward their shelter across the dark, arid desert. Zeid tried his mother’s patience during the long, hot trek.
    “But, Mother,” he said in his high pitched, pre-adolescent voice. He spoke only Arabic, though now that they were living with Suha, Samira had hopes that he might learn English.  “I want to fight. I am a man,” he pleaded.
    Samira, scared for their safety, shushed him and ignored his relentless plea to return to the city. Her heart swelled with pride that her son would want to protect their people, though the attitude he showed toward Suha was deplorable. She was shamed by his words, though he’d acquired them by no fault of his own—a remnant from his bully of a father.
    Zeid had given up his arguments or was simply too exhausted to put forth the effort. He walked a few feet in front of Samira as they neared their temporary shelter. He carried two containers of water, and when Samira looked at him, his feet dragging, his shoulders hung low, she felt the weight of sadness upon her. She’d taken him out of one hell and led him into another. Although she did not mind the temporary shelter, she worried how living in constant fear would impact Zeid and the other children. Zeid was a child, and yet he’d been thrown into the role of a young man.
    She sent Zeid inside the tent. Samira needed a moment to refocus her mind before seeing the handsome man inside. Over the past few weeks, she’d stolen many glances at the injured foreigner. What was his life? Did he beat his wife? Oh, how she wished she knew! She was embarrassed by her schoolgirl infatuation, but could not deny the excitement of her rapid heartbeat as she stole those peeks, or her adulation of the man who lay helpless in a bed that she had hastily thrown together.
    The day after they’d found him in the sand, she’d gone out and scoured the area, looking for clues of his life. All she had found was a broken camera, which now lay hidden amongst her things.  It was not her intent to keep the jewel hidden, but she had been unwilling to relinquish it. Having that small token of the intriguing stranger brought her happiness, and she hadn’t had much joy in her short life.
     
    Samira’s life had been one of sadness and great pain. She had never forgiven her parents for giving her to Safaa, her husband, when she had been just a girl. Safaa was twenty years her senior and well versed in the ways of men and women. Samira had pleaded with her parents not to be made a bride at twelve years old. She promised to help her mother, to cook, clean, sew, to do whatever was necessary, although she had already been doing those daily chores for years. It was not the way anymore , she had told them. Girls no longer married so young! Her father would not hear her. He demanded her marriage, ignored her pleas without so much as an explanation. He’d turned his back on her for money, and to Samira, for what seemed like a pittance when compared to what she’d be losing. Prior to the war, Iraqi brides bid a much higher dowry, and Samira was no different than those brides, though much younger than most.
    A smooth-skinned girl, blessed with dark tendrils that fell to her waist, small, fine features, and a willingness to work hard in the home, Samira was a relative gold mine for