“Why?” she asked the darkness.
“Why what?”
“Why take me?”
He paused before answering.
“Perhaps having nothing is easier when you share the silence.”
In the weeks that followed, Zainab began discovering a world she had never known. In her father’s house she had been told to remain invisible. Yusha instead filled her darkness with color and meaning.
“The sun today,” he told her one afternoon by the river, “feels like a warm coin resting in your palm.”
He taught her the language of wind, the difference between leaves rustling and branches rattling. He guided her fingers across wild herbs and rough bark, describing shapes and colors she could only imagine.
For the first time, her blindness felt less like a prison and more like a canvas.
Gradually, her heart changed.
She listened for his footsteps returning each evening.
She waited for the rhythm of his voice.
And without realizing it, she fell in love.
One afternoon, while gathering herbs near the village edge, Zainab heard a familiar voice.
“Look at this,” the voice sneered. “The beggar’s queen.”
It was Aminah.
The scent of rosewater confirmed it.
Her sister laughed cruelly.
“Do you really believe he is a poor beggar?” she whispered. “He’s hiding, Zainab. He’s a disgraced doctor who killed the governor’s daughter.”
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