29. Men
الرجال
The knowledge that Sam(a) could not click her heels three times and return to Brooklyn sent her into a panic. She fell into the brush, thorns and nettles tearing the fine, silken fabric of her dress — one of two of Lilia and Ghozala’s hand-me-downs that she owned. She slammed her hands against the soil. It failed to accept her. Alexandria of the 1930s had become a trap, she thought.
When Sam(a) came to her senses moments later, her thoughts turned to Hawa. Hawa was gone. Sam(a) thought on the missing women in the papers. She leapt to her feet, ran to the apartment at the garden’s centre and knocked gently on the unvarnished wooden door. There was no answer, so she gingerly opened the door, and a cloud of smoke poured out. There, in a single room, the size of her cramped s
