It was only a few years earlier that Ella had stopped hating her aging mother, and though the two of them had been on good terms lately, the truth was, deep inside she still felt ill at ease when she remembered the past.
“Mom! … Earth to Mom! Earth to Mom!”
Ella heard a ripple of giggles and whispers behind her shoulder. When she turned around, she saw four pairs of eyes watching her with amusement. Orly, Avi, Jeannette, and David had for once all come to breakfast at the same time and were now standing side by side inspecting her as if she were an exotic creature. From the way they looked, it seemed they had been standing there for a while, trying to get her attention.
“Good morning, you all.” Ella smiled.
“How come you didn’t hear us?” Orly asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
“You seemed so absorbed in that screen,” David said without looking at her.
Ella’s gaze followed her husband’s, and there on the open screen in front of her, she saw Aziz Z. Zahara’s e-mail shining dimly. In a flash she closed her laptop, without waiting for it to shut down.
“I’ve got a lot of reading to do for the literary agency,” Ella said, rolling her eyes. “I was working on my report.”
“No you were not! You were reading your e-mails,” Avi said, his face serious, matter-of-fact.
What was it in teenage boys that made them so eager to detect everyone’s flaws and lies? Ella wondered. But, to her relief, the others didn’t seem interested in the subject. In fact, they were all looking somewhere else now, focused on the kitchen counter.
It was Orly who turned to Ella, voicing the question for them all. “Mom, how come you haven’t made us any breakfast this morning?”
Now Ella turned to the counter and saw what they had seen. There was no coffee brewing, no scrambled eggs on the stove, no toast with blueberry sauce. She nodded repeatedly as if agreeing with an inner voice that spoke an undeniable truth.
Right, she thought, how come she had forgotten the breakfast?
PART TWO
Water
THE THINGS THAT ARE FLUID, CHANGING, AND UNPREDICTABLE
Rumi
KONYA, OCTOBER 15, 1244
Bright and plump, the gorgeous full moon resembled a massive pearl hanging in the sky. I got up from the bed and looked out the window into the courtyard, awash in moonlight. Even seeing such beauty, however, did not soothe the pounding of my heart or the trembling of my hands.
“Effendi, you look pale. Did you have the same dream again?” whispered my wife. “Shall I bring you a glass of water?”
I told her not to worry and to go back to sleep. There was nothing she could do. Our dreams were part of our destiny, and they would run their course as God willed it. Besides, there must be a reason, I thought, that every night for the last forty days I had been having the same dream.
The beginning of the dream differed slightly each time. Or perhaps it was always the same but I entered it from a different gate each evening. On this occasion I saw myself reading the Qur’an in a carpeted room that felt familiar but was like no place I had been before. Right across from me sat a dervish, tall, thin, and erect, with a veil on his face. He was holding a candelabrum with five glowing candles providing me with light so that I could read.
After a while I lifted my head to show the dervish the verse I was reading, and only then did I realize, to my awe, that what I thought was a candelabrum was in fact the man’s right hand. He had been holding out his hand to me, with each one of his fingers aflame.
In panic I looked around for water, but there was none in sight. I took off my cloak and threw it on the dervish to extinguish the flames. But when I lifted the cloak, he had vanished, leaving only a burning candle behind.
From this point onward, it was always the same dream. I started to look for him in the house, searching every nook and cranny. Next I ran into the courtyard, where the roses had blossomed in a sea of bright yellow. I called out left and right, but the man was nowhere to be seen.
“Come back, beloved. Where are you?”
Finally, as if led by an ominous intuition, I approached the well and peered down at the dark waters churning below. At first I couldn’t see anything, but in a little while the moon showered me in its glittering light and the courtyard acquired a rare luminosity. Only then did I notice a pair of black eyes staring up at me with unprecedented sorrow from the bottom of the well.
“They killed him!” somebody shouted. Perhaps it was me. Perhaps this was what my own voice would sound like in a state of infinite agony.
And I screamed and screamed until my wife held me tight, drew me to her bosom, and asked softly, “Effendi, did you have the same dream again?”