Chapter Four: The Grave That Still Breathes
266 Words
They buried her beneath the olive tree.
No one wept.
No one spoke.
Only the wind cried for her—wild and full of questions.
The villagers stood in silence, eyes lowered,
Not in shame, but in defense.
They feared truth more than death.
Because truth had come too late…
And wore the face of a girl they chose not to believe.
Her grave was shallow, as if the earth itself resisted swallowing her.
As if it, too, knew injustice had touched something sacred.
The father didn’t speak.
Didn’t cry.
He just stood there,
A broken statue carved by his own hands.
Each night after, he sat beside the grave.
Sometimes he spoke to her scarf, still in his pocket.
Sometimes he placed food near the dirt,
As if her soul still hungered.
But Huda never answered.
Not in dreams.
Not in signs.
Only silence spoke now—and it spoke loudly.
“I killed my child,” he whispered one night.
“Because I listened to mouths, not hearts.”
His voice cracked.
“I should have held her…
I should have waited just one more moment.”
But time, cruel as it is, listens to no one.
It never moves backward.
And so the days passed…
Her name slowly faded from lips,
But her wound?
It spread like rot in the roots of the village.
No flower grew near her grave.
No birds sang in her tree.
As if nature itself refused to forget what they did.
Because some stories…
Don’t end with death.
Some wounds…
Keep bleeding.
Even after the body is gone.
- Writer
