*Written using authors style*

Chapter Twelve

Two decades later Nadia returned for the first time to the city she spent her young-adult life escaping. This time, wandering the streets of her childhood with a newly formed bump on her stomach that just starting to develop after twelve weeks of finding out that she was pregnant. The damage she once saw in her youth was still under repair, but on the turn-around. The city was no longer one of tragedy but one of potential, not seen as a dead-end but surely struggling in the light of recovery. Nadia walked around slowly, hand perched gently on her lower stomach, taking in everything she once thought she would never see again. She found herself to be more surprised than anything that many of the same places she once remembered still stood, battered down, but holding true to their structure and place. It had only been three months since she found out that Saeed had passed away in a hospital while trying to fight cholera, which he contracted at one of the refugee camps they had spent time at together. Nadia never questioned why it wasn't her that got the disease or wished to have taken his place, but she felt a deep sadness to his death. A sadness she had not ever felt before. His death, however, was not what had prompted her return home but did serve as an inspiration to reflect on her past life for her child. The first place Nadia chose to visit was the impromptu graveyard site that Saeed's mother had been buried at and where Saeed's father now lie too, right next to her just like he had wanted. She sat near the edge where a pile of dusty rocks lined the enclosure of the patch of government land that held beneath the surface a lifetime of memories. She felt a sudden and quick kick from the inside of her lower abdomen, only the third one so far that she had noticed and couldn't help but smile. She thought to herself how she hoped her child to one day have the same courage that Saeed's father showed her when he decided to stay back instead of fleeing with his son. Nadia never told Saeed this, for it was not her place, but even though she grew very fond of his father during their stay, she knew his choice to keep back was for the better, as it proved to be. As Nadia sat on the ground of the burial site, far away in the United States a little girl was saying goodbye to her father who was being deployed off to war for six months. The child wore a pale pink shirt with mickey-mouse on the front and held an American flag in her left hand. Her mother stood by her, grasped in her father's arms, trying to fight back her tears and be strong. It was his third time being deployed but the risk always remained the same. Her mother wasn't ready for the feeling that always came with his distance, one of abandonment. The father walked over to the girl, kneeled down so that his eyes were level to hers, grabbed her right arm tightly and said "it might not seem this way now, but I am doing this for you and for your future. Goodbyes are always tough, but you will always be daddy's little girl and I never want you to forget that." He calmly pulled her in and gave her a soft lasting kiss on her left cheek. The father knew there was always a possibility he would not return and miss out on all the little and big moments of his daughter's life but that was the sacrifice he chose to make as a parent who was in service to his nation. He gently wiped the tears from the inner corners of her eyes as she managed to stop crying just enough to ask if he can promise that when he gets home, they will go to Disney Land together. "I promise," said the father as her mother looked down on the two of them with a warm yet broken smile. She wanted nothing more than for him to stay home, help raise their child, and be somewhere she was comfortable he would be safe. However, she knew he had to leave and even though his departure never got any easier, she understood why he had to go. While this event was happening in America, Nadia was interrupted in her silence by a woman and a man, who seemed to be about the same age that she and Saeed had been when they first met, laughing together while picking flowers in a patch of green that she had never seen bloom there before. She thought about their innocence and how the young couple probably had no idea that just years before these grounds knew nothing other than dirt and at times human feces when there was no longer working bathrooms to use. A sudden feeling of relief came over Nadia as she felt assurance that her daughter would too not know that same reality. She watched the young couple with hope in her eyes and started to remember other things, not just the bad, but memories of her time spent with Saeed before they chose to flee the country. Memories she hadn't thought about in a while, even upon Saeed's death. Nadia's thoughts danced around in her head, replaying situations she believed to be what once defined her and Saeed as young lovers and compared, as she should, to what she feels now of her child's father. She felt another kick and believed her baby to be telling her that she is not alone. Nadia was thankful and even more excited in that moment than she had ever yet been to soon be a mother. She hoped her child to be a girl but would not tell anyone out loud she felt this way. There was nothing more that Nadia wanted then for her daughter to learn from her and get to experience things, such as a first love, like Nadia had with Saeed. She placed her palm flat on the ground for a short moment above where she believed Saeed's mother and father to be and then stood up slowly. Nadia looked up to the sky and felt the sunlight beaming down on her face, the warmth trickled down her body and she took a moment to just feel. There was a time where standing like this would have put her in direct danger of passing gunfire or explosions. She opened back up her eyes, took one last look at the gravesite, then at the woman and the man, and started to walk in the direction of the house her and Saeed lived in with his father.

Nadia hummed out loud the tune of a song she once listened to when she used to live alone in her flat above the store. She knew she wanted to visit there too but felt an obligation, one that she did not mind having, to go first to the places that spoke more to Saeed's past life. Nadia laughed, thinking about how she once had to sneak Saeed into her place with a black robe and how somehow they never got caught doing so. She rubbed her stomach slowly and continued to hum the song as she approached the street they used to live on. Nadia knocked on the door of the same house she once knew so well while feeling a sense of familiarity and unfamiliarity all at the same time. A woman answered, one of whom Nadia had never seen before, and they looked at each other for a short second. "Hello" said the woman, "can I help you?" Nadia took a minute before she spoke, not having thought yet about what she would say, and softly responded, "Hello. My name is Nadia. I used to live here and haven't been back in a while. Sorry to bother you." The woman, who seemed to be in her seventies, smiled at Nadia, "Come in please, please. Let me get you something to drink." Nadia walked in the house, not knowing what to expect of the inside, and was somewhat happy to find nothing much had changed. "That used to be my old room for a little while," Nadia spoke while pointing towards the room Saeed gave up for her to stay in. "Do you mind if I take a look?" "Of course not, it might be a little of a mess, if you don't mind," said the woman as she handed Nadia a cup of water. As Nadia walked in the room, she was instantly filled with a strong emotion of happiness, because she saw, laying on a desk next to the mattress, her old music-player that she had left behind before fleeing with Saeed. She looked around more while walking over to the desk. "This used to be my daughters' room before she passed away," said the woman, "she loved to listen to music." Nadia paused in her steps and stood motionless as she felt a tear form in the inner corner of her eye. After looking around the room, the woman invited Nadia to stay for a while, and she did, and they spoke for an hour or so in the living room about the woman's daughter and Nadia's baby. It was now around seven o'clock and Nadia had decided it was time for her to go and they said they're goodbyes. She started to walk towards the door before the woman called out for her, and then disappeared into her daughters' room, coming back out with a record of music the was her daughters favorite. "Take it and play it for your daughter one day, please" She smiled and took the woman's words as a sign her baby was, in fact, going to be a girl.

Nadia soon approached the old store-front and had a sense by the looks on the outside that no one had lived there in years. She tried her hand at the gate of her flat but it was locked. She stood there for a moment, not knowing what then she should do, and looked over to see a coffee shop that had not once been there and chose to end her night with a meal. Above her the sky was now dark and filled with stars. Stars so bright they made Nadia remember the times her and Saeed used to sit on her balcony while doing drugs together and simply just enjoying the company of one another. For the first time since hearing the news of Saeed's death, Nadia felt the same sadness she first did. She entered the coffee shop and asked to be seated in the booth that had the best view of her old place. She sat for a while, imagining how much different her life would be had her and Saeed stayed together, as she was sure Saeed himself had thought about too. Nadia laughed, remembering the times he had asked her to marry him. She was lucky, for many people cannot say the same, that the relationship she had with the man who taught her how to love and what she wants out of love was not destroyed by wounds of experience and instead one that she could appreciate for what it was. In the first few months after she and Saeed split and stopped reaching out to each other, she questioned that had his mother not have died if she would have ever moved in with him and his father. She questioned if that was the event that created their relationship as she herself knew they were not together because of her feelings. She took another sip of her coffee and it was already cold. Nadia called to the boy working if she could have another. Just outside the window of her booth, she could see the dim lit road leading up to her old gate and felt happy for how her life has turned out. Nadia loved the man she was with now and knew that what she felt for him she had never felt before with Saeed. The boy set the coffee down and she took a big sip, the drink hot enough that it burned her throat, and she let out a cough that startled the person who sat in front of her. "Are you okay?" said the guy who was now turned around facing her. "Yes. Thank you. The coffee was very hot."

The next morning, Nadia woke up at the place she was staying in a heavy sweat. That night she had dreamed that her and Saeed visited the deserts of Chile, as they once said they would, and it felt so real that she was confused herself in the morning of what was reality. In this dream, Saeed visited her in an angelic like form and brought her, through a door like the ones they used to travel by, to Chile. They were alone in the vast desert, Nadia not having questioned how Saeed was alive and there with her, and for the first few moments sat in silence taking in everything surrounding them. "I would not have felt complete if I had not yet seen this place with you," Saeed said in a soft yet direct tone. Nadia sat there with a content feeling, one she imagined Saeed as having too knew by his face that he was happy. She closed her eyes for a moment before taking a deep breath. Nadia looked around for a while and then looked over to Saeed. In that moment she felt so much appreciation for her friendship with him and how much they got to experience together. With a sudden and soft smile, she looked him in the eyes and said, "Thank you."

"For what? Taking you here was nothing." "Not that," she spoke quietly, "thank you being who you were during some of the hardest years of my life, I will never forget that." Saeed paused for a brief moment before responding, in the distance they both could hear the repetitive chirping of nearby crickets throughout the evening sky. "We are lucky," said Saeed, "we found each other during the right time, we needed each other, and I know we are both thankful." Nadia stared at Saeed as he spoke to her and too knew how lucky they were. She was happy now and could not picture her life having turned out any other way. In that moment she knew, for some reason in the reaction of Saeed's words, that she wanted to marry her child's father. She felt an assurance and sense of security she had never felt before in that thought. She looked down, at her pregnant stomach, and looked back up to ask Saeed if he wanted to feel it. As her head rose and her gaze lifted, he was no longer there, and she felt a panic overcome her body. That was the moment she had woken up. Nadia laid in bed for what felt to her as hours. She did not believe in ghosts but did feel as if Saeed's spirit truly had visited her in her sleep that night. She knew her time home needed to come to an end and was happy to feel complete from her journey back. She made the bed she was in, brushed her teeth, and departed out the door.