Salt Houses by Hala Alyan

Author:Hala Alyan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Souad

* * *

Paris

August 1990

Souad wakes with a start. The sound of a French news channel trumpets through the rooms. She has been sleeping fitfully since the invasion, at odd hours. Everyone in the house has been doing the same, Khalto Mimi and her brother Ammar taking long naps after lunch, Lara sleeping through the afternoons and waking at night.

She blinks against the pillowcase, squinting toward the open curtains. The streaks of setting sun stain the wooden floors red. From the television, the newscasters’ words drift through the room in bursts.

“Troops . . . vacillating . . . the borders.”

Not a nightmare. Each waking, there is this moment—the clearing when she remembers everything, realizes once again what has happened.

Souad sighs and turns, pulling the thin blanket around her. She is a messy sleeper, the sheets always twisted when she wakes. Shutting her eyes, she buries her face in the pillow.

“Sleep, sleep, sleep,” she whispers to herself. She wishes to sleep for hours, until it is midnight outside. But it is too late, her mind is already crowding with everything, the invasion and Elie and her mother’s dreaded phone call. Of the three, the invasion feels, ironically, least pressing.

Souad sits up in bed, wincing at a twinge in her back. She is thirsty, her muscles sore.

An image of Elie comes to mind, his silhouette beneath the streetlamp last night, after the whiskey and dancing. He’d shrugged. Think about it.

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