The Road from Raqqa by Jordan Ritter Conn

Author:Jordan Ritter Conn [Conn, Jordan Ritter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2020-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

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ONE AFTERNOON IN EARLY 2006, a little more than a year after Bashar returned to Raqqa, Riyad got a phone call while he was at work. It was a nurse, a kind woman he’d gotten to know over his years of visits to the hospital. She told him, in a gentle and sweet voice, “You need to come to the hospital.” His father was dead.

Riyad stepped into the room where he’d spent so many hours of so many days, and he saw his yahba at rest. He did not cry. He shook. His mind worked to process the image of the man who’d marched him through the Eastern Market as a boy, who’d kissed him goodbye on the bus before he left home all those years ago. Here was the man he’d seen as his guide through this life and his protector from its dangers, now lying before him, dead. The shaking started in his fingertips, running along his father’s still-warm skin, and soon it moved up through his arms and all the way into his shoulders, until his whole body was trembling, just slightly, as he leaned in to kiss his yahba’s head.

In his pocket, Riyad carried a scarf that had belonged to his grandmother, his yahba’s mother. Riyad had been there when she died, and he’d watched his uncle tie it around the bottom of her chin and up to the top of her head, securing it so that her mouth would remain closed. He didn’t really know why. He knew no religious or cultural significance. But this was the ritual of death that he’d learned, and so now he grabbed the black and white scarf, which he’d been saving for just this moment, and wrapped it around his father’s head, tying it at the top, gently, until his yahba’s mouth closed.

He realized he needed to call the local mosque and to tend to final matters with the hospital. He thought back to a moment when his father had still been alive, when he’d been sick but functional, not yet on life support, still able to speak. Riyad had leaned over to kiss him, and his yahba had reached out and grabbed his son’s head. He pulled Riyad’s ear to his lips, and he whispered, “My son.”

“Yes?”

“Take me home.”

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