It was now four days since Aya had been taken from me, and every hour, every minute, every second had been an agony of despair for me. I was sure that the driving desire for revenge, and the duty I felt to Aya’s … to my family, were the only things that had kept me from diving headfirst into a bottle and losing myself in a maelstrom of drunken madness. But I had an old motto from my younger days: “I drink to forget, but when I’m drunk, I remember.” And I was already remembering every single little detail of our life together without amplifying the pain with alcohol.
We’d taken Aya home two days later and carried out the bathing ceremony the following morning. I’d watched as a procession of family and close friends had symbolically poured water over one of her hands, before she was lovingl
