They traipse off into the night, and the kinder one looks back at me. He is older; perhaps he has—or had—a daughter my age. Perhaps he too knows what would happen to me, and is seeking to spare me in the only way he can. I nod at him, a silent thanks. He flicks his fingers near his knee, a quick, quiet gesture telling me to go.
I turn and run through a side street, turning blindly until the sound of their laughter fades. I stop running, turn in place to find my bearings. The buildings are all the same, tan walls dark in the moonlight, shop fronts shuttered and barred closed. The city is deserted, it seems. It is not, though, not really. People are shut in their homes, where they have at least the illusion of safety.
Alone, lost, I have no such illusion. I walk aimlessly, toward noise, toward the light of fires. I pass clumps of men with the ever-present rifles. I stay away from them this time, searching the groups hunched over orange tips of cigarettes for a smaller figure.
I pray to Allah, even though I promised myself I would not. "Allah, the all-compassionate, the all-merciful, please, let me find Hassan. Let me find him alive, please, Allah."
Perhaps it is luck, perhaps it is Allah answering my prayer, but I find him. He is pretending to be a man, hanging his gun over his shoulder by the strap, the awful weapon almost as tall as he is. He stands with a group of men, laughing at a joke someone has told. He does not get it, though. I can tell by the way he looks around to see if everyone is laughing, stopping when they do.
I march up to him, fear forgotten beneath the river of white-hot anger. I grasp him by the shirt back and haul him around. I snatch the rifle from his thin shoulder and shove it into the arms of the man next to Hassan. I slap Hassan across the face, once, twice, as hard as I can.
"You foolish little boy!" I scream, loud. "You ran away, you little idiot! I have spent the entire day looking for you."
The men are laughing, and Hassan is angry, embarrassed.
"Leave me alone, Rania! I am a man, not a boy. I do not need you for my mother. I am a soldier." He takes the gun back from the man beside him and shoulders it resolutely. "I am a soldier. I have killed a man today. I shot him. I, Hassan. I will drive the infidels from our land, and you cannot stop me."
I take him by the ear and twist it, pulling him into a walk. "You are coming home. You are not a soldier—you are a twelve-year-old boy."
He wrenches free and slaps me across the cheek, hard enough to spin me around. "Fuck off!"
I stop, touching my cheek, stunned. "Hassan! What would Mama say if she heard you talk like that?"
His eyes fill with angry tears. He does not stop them. "I do not care! Mama is dead! Papa is dead! There is only you, and you are a girl. And Aunt Maida, but she will die soon—"
"She died last night. While you were gone. I had to deal with it alone."
He has the decency to look chagrined at least, deflating. "I am sorry, Rania." He sees the relenting in my eyes and puffs back up, dashing the tears from his eyes at last. "She was already dead. She just did not know it. Her body had to catch up to the rest of her. I am still not coming home."
One of the men crosses the circle and draws me aside, speaks to me in low tones. "You will not win this way, girl. You have gotten him angry, and he cannot back down without losing face. Just go home. We will take care of him. He is a good boy. He will be a good soldier."
"I do not want him to be a soldier!" I say, too loudly.
The man only shrugs. "You cannot stop it. It is war. He is willing and able to wield a rifle, so he becomes a soldier. If you drag him home now, he will just run away again as soon as you are asleep."
I slump and draw a deep breath. He is right, and I know it. "He is my brother. I have to protect him."
The man shook his head. "You cannot. He will live, or he will die. You cannot change it. At least this way he gets to choose his fate."
"So I am just supposed to walk away and let a twelve-year-old play soldier?"
"He is not playing. He shot real bullets from a real rifle at real soldiers. Real bullets were shot back at him. That makes him a real soldier in any book."
Hassan comes over to me, his hands in his pockets. He looks like a strange cross between a man and a boy. The look in his eyes is serious, with that distance and coldness of men who have seen war. His posture, however, is that of a boy, hands in his pants pockets, foot kicking the dirt with the toe of his battered shoe, yet he has a rifle slung on his shoulder, casually comfortable with the weapon.
"This is my choice, Rania, not yours," he says, not looking at me but at the ground between his feet. "They will feed me and give me somewhere to sleep. Less for you to worry about, right?"
"What will I do?" I hate how petulant I sound.
"Take care of yourself. I do not know." He shrugs, a gesture clearly picked up from these other men. "Stop worrying about me."
He turns away, clapping me on the back as if I was a friend rather than his sister. He is trying so hard to be a grown-up. I push him away.
I am just a girl, dismissed.
I stalk away, not looking back, angry, fighting empty tears for the brother who will likely die soon.
"Rania—" Hassan's voice echoes from behind me. He knows me well enough to see the anger in the set of my shoulders.
I do not stop, but fling the words over my shoulder, still walking. "Be a soldier, then. Get killed. See if I care."
He does not respond. I hear one of the men slap Hassan on the back. "She will come around, son. Give her time."
I keep walking, knowing the man is wrong. I will not come around. Hassan is right about one thing, though.
Only having to feed myself will make things easier.
I make my way through the dark city, gunfire silenced for now. I am not sure exactly where I am going, but I eventually find my way home. The small box that is my home is dark and smells of death. There is no food, no coffee or tea, only running water in the tap and gas from the stove.
I collapse in bed and let myself cry for my brother.
* * *
Days pass. I do not hear from Hassan, or see him. I spend my days looking for work, some way to earn money so I can eat. I find nothing. No stores want to hire a girl, or they simply cannot afford to pay another person. I find an old woman who gives me money to help her do her laundry and clean her house. That sustains me for some months. It is pleasant. She has me come to her house every other day to wash her clothes in her little sink and hang them to dry, and wash the floors and sink and toilet, and then she give me a little money, enough to buy food until the next time I come. I begin to have hope that I will be okay. And then one day I go to her house, and she is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her dark eyes are cloudy and still, her sagging br**sts still, her hands still. I stand in the doorway of her bedroom and stare at her body, yet another person who has died.