Chapter 7 Zainab #2
We slid into the booth across from each other. Mehar’s eyes never left my face, studying me like she was trying to memorize every single detail.
“It’s been so long,” she said. “But I still know my sisters. I still know you.”
“Do you though?” I tilted my head, watching her carefully. “It’s been over a decade, Mehar. We were sixteen. You were twelve. And we’re identical twins. You really think you can still tell us apart after all this time?”
Confusion flickered across her face. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying…” I leaned forward, lowering my voice. “Zainab isn’t dead. I’m Zainab. Zahara is the one who died.”
The color drained from her face so fast I thought she might pass out.
“No.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not—the police in California told Baba that Zainab was found dead in an apartment. They said Zahara ran off. That she might have known the killer—”
“The police got it wrong. They identified the body based on the ID that was left at the scene.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat. Even after three years, talking about this still felt like swallowing broken glass. “I left my ID with her. Took hers. Became her.”
“Why would you do that? I don’t—” Mehar’s voice broke. “I don’t understand.”
“Because somebody was trying to kill me.” I kept my voice low and steady even though my insides were shaking. “I witnessed something I shouldn’t have. A murder. The man tracked me down, came to our apartment, but Zahara was there alone. He thought she was me.”
Mehar’s hand flew to her mouth.
“He killed her, Mehar. Murdered my twin sister because he thought she was me.” My eyes burned but I refused to cry. Not here. Not now. “And the only way I could survive—the only way I could protect her son—was to become her.”
Mehar stared at me. Her lips moved but nothing came out. Then her face crumpled and she started sobbing right there in the booth.
“Zahara’s dead?” she whispered through her tears. “She’s really gone?”
“Yeah.” The word came out rough. “For three years now.”
Mehar covered her face with both hands, her whole body shaking. The grief was pouring out of her in waves, and I felt it hit me too. All that old pain I’d been carrying, buried under layers of survival and secrets.
“Baba didn’t even care,” she choked out between sobs.
“When the police called, he just… he hung up. Didn’t ask no follow-up questions.
Didn’t try to find out who did it. Didn’t tell nobody.
” She looked up at me, tears streaming down her face.
“I only found out because I heard him talking to Khadija about it. He said y’all were dead to him anyway, so what difference did it make if one of you was actually dead? ”
My jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth might crack.
Of course. Of course that’s how my father would react to finding out one of his daughters got murdered. Same cold, cruel, evil man he’d always been.
“He hasn’t changed,” I said flatly.
“No. He’s worse.” Mehar wiped at her face with shaking hands. “He married me off two years ago. To one of his business associates. A man old enough to be my father.”
My stomach dropped. “Mehar…”
“My husband isn’t as strict as Baba, which is the only reason I’ve been able to travel. To look for you.” She laughed, but there wasn’t nothing funny about it. “But I still hate him. I’m sneaking birth control pills so I won’t have his baby. I can’t—I refuse to bring a child into that life.”
“Can you leave him?”
“And go where, Zainab?” She shook her head, looking defeated. “I don’t have money. Don’t have education. Don’t have no skills. Baba made sure of that. And my husband won’t let me go. To him, I’m property. Just like I was property to Baba.”
I reached across the table and grabbed her hands. They were ice cold and trembling.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I ran. I’m sorry I hid from you when you came looking. I just… I wasn’t ready. Seeing you meant dealing with everything I’d been running from. Baba. What happened to us. What happened to Zahara. I couldn’t face it.”
“I understand.” She squeezed my hands tight. “I do. I’m just…” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’m just so glad you’re alive. Even if Zahara isn’t. Even if everything is different now. My sister is still here. You’re still here.”
Something cracked open in my chest.
I slid out of my side of the booth and moved to sit next to her. Wrapped my arms around her and held her while she cried into my shoulder. Her hijab was soft against my cheek, her body warm and fragile in my arms.
We stayed like that for a while. Two sisters who’d been separated by years and trauma and a monster who called himself our father, finally finding their way back to each other.
When she finally pulled back, her eyes were red and puffy but there was something new there. Something like hope.
“Can I have your number?” she asked. “I want to stay in touch. I want to know you again. The real you.”
“Of course.” I pulled out my phone and we exchanged numbers. “But Mehar—you gotta be careful. If Baba finds out you’ve been talking to me—”
“He won’t.” Her jaw set with a stubbornness I recognized real well. That was the same look me and Zahara used to give each other when we was plotting our escapes. Apparently it ran in the family. “I’ve been hiding things from men my whole life. I can hide this too.”
I almost laughed. “Look at you. All grown up.”
“I had good examples.” She reached out and touched my face, gentle. “Even if I didn’t get enough time with them.”
The bell over the door chimed and Cookie’s voice cut through the moment.
“Z! Table 4 needs a refill, girl!”
Real life. Always interrupting.
“I gotta get back to work,” I said, not really wanting to move. “But we’re gonna talk soon, okay? I wanna hear everything. And I wanna tell you everything too.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.” I squeezed her hands one more time. “No more secrets. No more hiding. At least not from each other.”
Mehar nodded, wiping the last of her tears away. She stood up and smoothed down her hijab, putting herself back together piece by piece. Becoming the woman she had to be when she walked out that door and back into her life.
“Zainab,” she said softly.
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you made it. Zahara would be too.”
My throat got tight. “Thanks, Mehar.”
She gave me one last look—full of grief and hope and the promise of something new—and then she walked out of the diner and into the morning light.
I watched her go, and something loosened in my chest that I ain’t even know was wound up so tight.
For three years, I’d been running. Hiding from my past. Avoiding anybody and anything that reminded me of who I used to be. But Prime was right. The running had to stop.
Maybe it was time to start rebuilding instead.
“Z! TABLE FOUR!”
“I’m coming, Cookie, damn!”
I grabbed the coffee pot and got back to it, but my mind was somewhere else.
On Mehar. On Zahara. On the family I’d lost and the pieces I was slowly, carefully, starting to put back together.
One broken piece at a time.