Country of Origin by Dalia Azim

Author:Dalia Azim [Azim, Dalia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing

as Khalil was scratching Amena’s head to put her to bed that night, he noticed a small leather-bound Quran peeking out of the drawer of Halah’s old nightstand. After Amena’s breaths turned deep and even, Khalil slipped off the bed and took the Quran from the drawer, returning to his room next door. There, he turned on the lamp on the nightstand and sat at the edge of the bed and then gently opened the palm-sized book to the first page. He expected to find something different from his previous encounters with the holy book, because it had belonged to Halah, but at first glance it looked like every other Quran he’d seen.

Flipping through the pages, Khalil came across a passage that was underlined. His heart started racing, as if he’d found a secret message from Halah: It is not possible for the sun to reach the moon, nor for the night to overtake the day, for neither can swim outside of its orbit.

Khalil had to read the statement twice to make any sense of it. Like the poetry he used to study in school, the language was beautiful but slippery, hard to grasp. His mother used to read him passages of the Quran when he was a child, and he’d had the same experience then. Dog-earing the page with Halah’s markings, Khalil continued to carefully flip through, page by page, looking for more evidence of his wife’s journey through this book. Each time he found an underscored passage, he read it twice and turned down the corner of the page, until he had a slew of poetic/prophetic lines swimming through his head.

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