The Shadow of the Choice 03

The Shadow of the Choice 03:
Part Three :03
In Oran, that city where the winds of the West meet the lingering fragrance of the East, where centuries seem to gather at the edge of the same shore, Daniel Müller and Anna María built a home that opened its windows to the sea. Beside it, they raised a large trading house—as though they were shaping a new promise for the life that still awaited them.
They often told themselves, half in relief and half in disbelief:
“Now… now we may finally settle.”
And then, whispering as though their words were meant only for the long silhouettes their bodies cast upon the wall:
“The sea is ours still, but the land… the land is what we must belong to now.”
Yet the sea continued waving at them from afar, unwilling to accept their departure. The land, however—this new land with its curious tongue, its cautious but warm faces, its people who greeted with words before hands—was drawing them in, inviting them to try again.
It was the early years of the nineteenth century, when Europe trembled under the weight of great intellectual shifts following the wars of Napoleon. Germany—the land they had left behind—was itself in painful transition, caught between the rise of the bourgeoisie and the restless yearning of philosophers who dreamed of liberty, knowledge, and a new order.
The thoughts of Kant, Goethe, and Fichte hummed through salons and cafés, where writers, merchants, and scholars gathered to debate questions of morality, politics, and the restless machinery of the human mind.
Hamburg, with its bustling port on the Elbe, was more than a mercantile city—it was a crucible where nations and ideas intertwined. Ships from London, Paris, and Berlin carried not only crates and fabrics but also stories, philosophies, and dreams capable of stirring the ambitions of a young man like Daniel.
On the quays, merchants exchanged tales of distant markets; in modest coffeehouses, students and thinkers argued over the role of the state, the value of freedom, and whether reason could ever truly grasp the full breadth of human experience.
Even the smallest bookshops overflowed with philosophical, historical, and literary works. Reading The Critique of Pure Reason or the writings of Goethe gave the youth of Hamburg a sense of participating in a larger movement—that their city was not a mere stopover in the journey of trade, but a living laboratory of social and intellectual experiments.
Walking through its streets, Daniel Müller could witness the contradictions of life itself: on one side, the polished homes of wealthy bourgeois families, each corner reflecting order and refinement; on the other, the narrow lanes of laborers and artists, where the city’s free and inquisitive spirit seemed to rest. Every alleyway, every café, every echo along the river murmured with the forming voices of Europe—revolution, thought, culture, change.
And yet something in Hamburg always pushed Daniel and Anna María away, kept them from truly staying. Even in its busy streets, even in its bright cafés filled with debate and youthful energy, the memories of 1783 rose before them like heavy shadows—shadows thick as the smoke that had devoured the house and the mill, that had swallowed their little child in moments their hearts could never erase.
The fire had taken Daniel’s parents in Harburg, leaving behind a hollow no comfort could replace, and a life stripped of the warmth of protection.
The weight of that loss never really loosened its grip.
As Anna María walked slowly along Hamburg’s cobbled paths, she felt the echo of her parents’ silence in every corner, in every window overlooking the river. It followed her like a faint breath she could neither escape nor answer.
In the quiet of her mind, she often asked:
“Can a city hold both kindness and cruelty at once?
Can death and memory hide behind the laughter of children in the streets?”
And in those unspoken questions, the heaviness of the past intertwined with the hope of something yet unrealized—something they hoped Oran, with its open sea and open sky, might finally allow them to mend.
As for Daniel Müller, he possessed a greater ability to hide his grief—to bury sorrow deep within his chest. Yet he could not bear to see the sadness rise upon Anna María’s face, not even for the smallest fraction of a second, without something flaring inside him: a double-edged feeling—an urge to protect her, and a fear that the city might exhaust her with memories she had already endured too long.
Often, a quiet question stirred within him:
“How can life continue between such brightness and such ruin?
How can thought flourish in the shadow of sorrow and loss?”
Thus Hamburg, for both of them, became a place woven with contradictions: a city of ideas and knowledge, of restless debate and bustling energy—and at the same time, a city of ghosts and painful recollections. Between the charm of the harbor and the vibrant markets, and between the silent echoes of a past that would not fade, they walked in a landscape where memory clung to every stone.
With each street they passed through, a question seemed to mingle with the wind:
“How can this city hold so much pain?
Can a human being live between light and shadow without breaking?”
Meanwhile, far from Hamburg—on a distant shore of Oran—time moved with a different rhythm. A rhythm swaying between sea tales carried by the waves, the clamor of markets, the hush of mountains, and the quiet dignity of the old town.
Oran was a place where Arabic met Spanish, where Amazigh roots intertwined with Ottoman and Turkish breaths. Its narrow streets held secrets of ancient ports, and every window, every stone pavement, whispered fragments of layered history.
Anna María, setting foot upon this foreign land, did so not as a transient resident, but as someone silently telling the notion of departure:
“I will not allow you to tear me away from those I love.”
She would observe the stone-paved roads of Ottoman design, the minarets rising beside Spanish towers, and the faces offering her half-curious, half-trusting smiles.
And she asked herself:
“I wonder… can a stranger truly become a child of this place?
Or do roots, no matter how settled, always remain packed in their first suitcase?”
Daniel, by contrast, resembled the sea in his changes—restless, never fully still, never fully anchored. A merchant skilled in weighing goods and setting prices, yet unable to measure the weight of his own longing for peace.
On Oran’s nights, he could hear at the harbor the mingling of European tongues—French, Italian, German—all drifting across the water. And in that polyphony he felt, strangely, like a bridge between worlds.
One evening, standing before the tightly moored ships, he murmured to himself:
“Perhaps we are all translating our souls the way I translate their languages.
Searching for a single word that matches what the heart holds…
A word that feels like home.”
The market was a place where craftsmen, sailors, and merchants drifted together as though each had shed his old world at the entrance. In that bustling square, nationality seemed to dissolve into a single common tongue—the art of bargaining. Tales overlapped, colours clashed in bold heaps of cloth and spices, and the mingled scents of roasted coffee, warm leather, and distant seas moved like invisible currents through the alleys. Women’s songs rose and fell with the rhythm of the day, blending curiously with the call to prayer from a nearby minaret, until the entire city seemed to breathe as a vast, unbroken symphony—played to the slow pulse of the sea and the eternal murmur of tide and wind.
As Anna María walked through the winding lanes, her steps light yet searching, she felt questions gathering quietly within her:
“Could such mingling truly be a source of strength? Or is it nothing more than the familiar unrest of a world forever shifting? How might a single heart hope to comprehend so many histories, so many voices layered upon one another?”
There was a trembling in Daniel Müller’s chest as well, though he carried it more sternly. Watching the tide of people—Berbers, French traders, Ottoman sailors, wanderers from every corner—he sensed a weight of expectancy pressing upon him. He asked himself in silence:
“Is this merely the instinct to survive? Or does fate play its games even in the marketplace? Can a city contain all these stories of loss and joy without its own spirit breaking beneath them?”
His thoughts drifted inevitably toward Hamburg—toward the Germany he had left behind. The world he had known there was shifting, almost imperceptibly, yet firmly: the rise of the Bürgertum, with its awakening sense of civic duty; the growing influence of philosophers who spoke of reason as a moral compass, of freedom as a discipline rather than a dream; and the political upheavals that hinted that every idea concerning order or liberty must be paid for with steadfastness, and perhaps with the quiet sacrifice of certainty.
“Is Oran so different from Hamburg after all?” he wondered. “Or do people here soften the weight of history, leaving more room for breathing—for reflection—for dreams unburdened by the strict gravitas of German thought?”
For Anna María, however, the city stirred a more tender unease. Its noise and colour reminded her of what she had lost, yet at the same time granted her a life that did not resemble her sorrow. The cheer of the markets, the laughter of children chasing one another between the stalls, the mingling of races and languages—all this forced another question to whisper within her:
“Is a city like this a lesson in patience? Or merely a theatre where the hourglass of fate is turned again and again?”
Thus Oran settled into the minds of both travelers as a city of double meaning—much like Hamburg itself had been to them. A city of everyday life and unspoken philosophies, of memory and fracture, of private dreams and public tides. A city with the heart of the sea, breathing between mountains, carrying a story at every corner and a question in every street: What becomes of a people who learn to live among differences? What becomes of a soul that carries its losses alongside its quiet hope for freedom?
And from that foreign corner—one that resembled none of the ancestral homelands they had known—their story began to unfold. It spread gently outward, as though the city itself offered its warmth, its noise, and its salt-carved winds to guide them forward while the sea, patient and ancient, watched from not far away—never tiring of repeating the tales of old harbours and the restless travellers who sought meaning upon their shores.
In the veins of the three children who would one day come into the world, the stories of the past would flow like hidden rivers—quiet, persistent, shaping their temperaments and the cadence of their speech. Their tongues would grow into a mosaic of languages: Arabic, Spanish, and German woven together until their voices became a living mirror of intersecting homelands and intersecting hearts.
Across the fragile pages of their souls, their traces would scatter through distant exiles—burned at times, forgotten at others—beneath the shadows of new lands that resembled nothing but the crumbs of memory. And yet, those scattered fragments would stand witness to all that came before: to the past, to the dream, and to the chapters of destiny that had not yet been written.
Anna María gave birth to the child she had long dreamed of holding. Yet in his eyes glimmered a shadow of the grandparents he would never meet—two souls taken by the storms that once ravaged their homeland, long before they could imagine that their grandson would be scattered like love and salt into the loaves of exile, his small life threaded with both loss and longing.
The birth came hard, as though it were the final test of fidelity between love and fate.
One of the attending physicians suggested a woman from Oran to care for the newborn—kind-faced, steady-handed, someone whose presence carried a quiet mercy. Daniel Müller agreed; there was no other choice.
The woman tended to the infant with a devotion that felt as though she were safeguarding him for the eyes of his mother.
As for Anna María, whose fragility had always been something she bore without shame, she clung to Daniel’s hand in the intervals between sharp waves of pain and whispered:
“Do not let me go… our dream is not yet complete.”
Daniel answered in a voice roughened by fear and hope alike:
“You will stay. The love that bound us cannot bear to lose either one of us.”
But fate had little patience left to offer.
Soon after the birth, the Italian doctor supervising her pregnancy entered the room with hesitant steps. There was something unspoken lodged between his eyes—a truth he carried like a weight he could scarcely hold.
He sat beside Daniel and withdrew a carefully folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket. His voice trembled with a sorrow that softened each word:
“I was obliged to tell you, sir… your wife knew the danger this pregnancy posed. I warned her, pleaded with her to delay it. But she insisted. She said to me: What meaning has life if I do not give him this child?”
He extended the paper with a shaking hand, as though offering not a document but a still-beating heart. Then, with a breath that nearly broke, he added:
“She wrote this herself. She signed it before me. I wanted it to be in your hands now. She understood the price. She chose to walk the path to its end.”
Daniel took the paper with trembling fingers, as if he were holding her last heartbeat.
He knew her handwriting well—the gentle slant of the letters, the softness embedded in each stroke. But this time there was no fragrance of familiar ink; there was only the scent of farewell.
He read the first lines in the silence of a man standing beside an open grave:
“I sign this of my own free will, for I wish to give new life to my husband and to my child, even if my own life must be the price.”
His eyes froze at the final word. The room seemed to circle around him. Even the air felt too heavy to draw.
He folded the paper slowly and placed it against his chest. In a voice that was scarcely more than a breath, he murmured:
“You knew… and you did not tell me. You wished to save the dream, even if it consumed you.”
Then he raised his head toward the doctor, speaking in a hoarse tone that did not sound like his own:
“Anna taught me that a decision is not a shadow we follow… but a fire into which we step willingly.”
After the doctor left the room, Daniel remained seated in a silence so profound that it felt as though all sounds had departed the house with her final breath.
He held the document for a long time, reading it again and again, as if searching between its lines for the faint echo of the last breath Anna María had woven into those few, fateful words.
He no longer saw the document as a medical declaration or an official signature. To Daniel Müller, it had transformed into a spiritual map—an intimate cartography of a woman who had sought to redefine love and compress an entire world into her own private vocabulary. A woman who had believed, with the quiet conviction of the German women of her age, that homelands were not drawn by borders but planted as good intentions in the hearts of those we dare to love.
He lifted his gaze toward the window. The wide blue of the sea brushed against the light with a calm that felt almost deliberate. Out in the distance, French and English ships moved slowly across the horizon, dragging behind them the echoes of centuries and the weight of their ambitions. Below, the harbor bustled with Arab, Italian, and African traders bargaining over goods and exchanging languages as naturally as they exchanged coins.
In that harmonious chaos, he saw what he had never fully seen before: the image of the city Anna María had chosen for him. A city like her promises—standing between East and West, belonging to neither and to both, a bridge loyal only to life.
A whisper rose inside him:
“Did you see what I could not? Did you know that only the solid earth can give what the sea cannot? You wanted us to anchor at last—not to keep drifting forever.”
It struck him then—not as an idea but as a revelation—that she had not merely urged him toward building a home. She had left him a philosophy of survival and continuity, an understanding shaped by the spirit of her age: that true love was not a tempest of longing but a ground sturdy enough to reorder the chaos of time.
He closed his eyes, the folded document held against his heart, and silently breathed:
“You taught me that a choice can be an act of love, and that love itself can become a homeland.”
A memory stirred—a soft, trembling thread of her voice on the deck of the ship long before their arrival. She had fixed her gaze on the water with an exhaustion sharpened by clarity and said:
“The sea is beautiful, Daniel… but we must not dwell in it. Only the land gives life.”
At the time, he had mistaken her words for the weariness of a woman exhausted by the endless cycle of ports and the shifting silhouettes of foreign shores.
Only now, knowing what she had hidden, did he understand. She had not feared the sea itself—she had feared loss. She had already been planning, in her quiet and steadfast way, another journey for him. A gentler one. A safer one. Toward a shore where he could remain alive for their coming child.
He reached for the document again, folding it with the gentleness of someone returning a heart to the pages of time. Then he pressed it to his chest once more.
“Again you teach me to read the world through your eyes, not my own… In Oran, you found a heart for the sea and a memory for the land. As for me—I am still learning how to live between the two.”
He sat by the window, watching the golden threads of sunlight stretch across the harbor like a woven carpet laid delicately over the surface of the water.
Below, the voices of French sailors mingled with the Arabic of the dockworkers, while Italian and Spanish accents intertwined as if the city had fashioned temporary peace from its patchwork of differences.
And in that moment, Daniel understood: Anna María had not chosen Oran by chance. She had chosen it because it stood exactly at the threshold between the sea he loved and the land that bestowed life—between longing and belonging, between journey and arrival, between memory and future.
Daniel Müller whispered into the stillness of his own mind, as though he feared the world might overhear a secret meant for no one else:
“How far-sighted you were, Anna… You wished to shape for me a small homeland, one that could hold East and West together—a place where my scattered tongue might find shelter beside their prayers, where my sea could rest against your land. You wanted to restore the balance I lost the day I left Hamburg.”
He closed his eyes, and at once the scene rose before him—alive, breathing—as though Anna María herself were still leaning close, her voice brushing softly against his ear:
“Here, Daniel… here we shall plant a child who carries both our features—German in spirit, human in essence—one who knows that life begins from a single ground, from the language of the heart.”
He bowed his head slowly, tears gathering until they blurred the edges of the world. In the quiet chamber of his thoughts, he spoke to her as if she were only a breath away:
“You knew that the earth, not the sea, is the womb of all things… and that the sea, however it tempts us, offers nothing but wandering. So you chose this place for me, that I might finally learn how to anchor.”
But the illness that had crept into her body during pregnancy and lingered after childbirth stretched into the years that followed. Its shadow dimmed her voice, softened her glow, until she resembled a candle giving light only by giving herself away.
Daniel would sit beside her, holding her cool hand in both of his, speaking inwardly as a man who confides in the echo of his own soul:
“How can life give and reclaim in the very same moment? Do I continue for her? Or for what has not yet fully lived within us?”
Outside, the sea sang a long and mournful melody, and the wind carried the scent of rain to the windows of their new home—almost as though the sky itself wished to join him in the farewell that was approaching.
From that night onward, the shadow lengthened over every certainty. Their story began to reshape itself—between two shores, between a woman who surrendered half of herself to the sea and a man still learning how to arrive.
Later, as Daniel gazed at the child with eyes full of awe and fear, he felt a heaviness coil itself around his heart. Each heartbeat seemed to echo a reminder of the life he must now carry forward.
“How will he grow and learn to know his homeland? How can he inherit roots he has never seen? Or is the whole world destined to become for him nothing but harbors and narrow alleys—places where seas touch ports, where languages trade hands like goods, where colors collide with sounds—without ever granting him safety or belonging?”
The questions pressed deeper, as though searching for a shape he himself did not yet know.
And then, in a whisper meant only for the depths within him, he added:
“Will it be enough that I love him, to shield him from loss and estrangement? Or is he fated to carve his path between two shores—between Hamburg and Oran, between memory and absence, between dream and reality?”
His thoughts hovered there, trembling between hope and fear—the endless struggle of a man torn between the sea that shaped him and the land that claimed him.
Anna María felt her emotions swirl in a fragile circle—wonder tangled with fear, tenderness with an unnamed dread. She sat quietly beside the child, watching him with eyes shimmering in both worry and love. In the silent chamber of her thoughts, she asked herself:
“Can love alone shield him from the harshness of the world? Will the days embrace him as they once embraced us when we were young? Or will memory—with all its wounds and its absences—chase him between Hamburg and Oran, between the discipline of order and the restlessness of markets, between the clamor of cafés and the pulse of the sea?”
Her breath trembled, and with a calmness that seemed like a whisper spoken to the tide outside, she added:
“Will life grant him the wisdom to distinguish danger from joy, to hold onto roots he never knew, and trust the harbors that will one day shelter him? Or must he learn love and loss in the same breath—stronger than our memories, deeper than our wounds?”
Between these two worlds, the child grew:
a world of discipline, thought, and history—
and another of seas, mountains, colors, and wandering tongues.
Every street, every stairway, every window seemed to whisper a single question:
“How does one live amid uncountable differences, guard the heart from the ache of loss, and still learn to love without borders?”
For Anna María, his birth became a quiet lesson in patience and destiny—
a reminder that choosing to bring life into the world meant accepting the full weight of that choice. She gazed at his small face, his fingers curling trustingly around hers, and her thoughts softened into another question:
“Can one heart truly hold so much love? Will I be able to give him the safety we ourselves were denied? Or is he destined to discover the world—with its noise, its fears, its dazzling strangeness—before he knows the warmth of that safety?”
Thus the second child became a symbol of the intersection between worlds:
the ordered German world of method and clarity,
and the free, fragrant world of Oran—alive with music, color, and wandering souls.
A place where a human being tests the strength of love, the courage to give,
the ability to grow even through loss,
and the grace to accept difference and build memory anew, despite all that vanishes.
Yet the illness did not recede.
It pressed upon her with a persistence that felt almost deliberate—
pain rising and falling like a tide, steadied only by medicine that soothed but did not cure.
It was as though the sickness itself played an endless game with her,
shifting between darkness and brief awakenings.
Daniel Müller summoned doctors from every corner of their world—
Arabs, Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards—
one after another.
Their heavy footsteps crossed the wooden floor,
their murmurs drifting between instruments and stethoscopes,
each carrying a promise that flickered only for a moment,
as though the miracle they sought kept slipping out of sight.
Daniel stood by the door, frozen,
unable to step closer as Anna María’s breaths intertwined with the pounding of his own heart.
She clutched the edge of her blanket as though it were the last thread binding her to life,
and whispered in a fractured voice—half sound, half echo from another world:
“Bring me my child… I cannot let him out of my sight.”
The Italian doctor came forward, with the French physician beside him.
They examined her pulse; then the Frenchman shook his head gently,
whispering, “We are doing all we can, but…”
He left the sentence hanging,
as if even words feared the pain they might confirm.
Daniel trembled, and his thoughts broke loose in a frightened whisper:
“Can the cities that taught us medicine and philosophy fail to save a single heart? Or does knowledge stand helpless before a love that should never be taken from those who sought peace?”
He imagined the child again—small, warm, smiling without knowing why—
and suddenly his soul felt pierced by longing and fear intertwined.
“Is love enough to resist death? Can a heart withstand pain when life slowly slips away? Or must we seek miracles in our own eyes before they descend from the heavens?”
In the stillness of the room,
the heavy ticking of the clock marked each passing moment—
each strike resembling either the pause of a heartbeat or its fragile renewal.
Anna María drifted between consciousness and sleep,
her body shifting weakly before she whispered again:
“I want my child… let him come to me…”
At last Daniel approached her bedside.
He took her hand gently between his palms,
feeling the warmth of her life seep into him,
and realized that his presence—his voice, his touch—
might be the only medicine left,
the cure no physician could offer.
And in that moment,
the silence of the room grew full—full of life despite the pain,
full of love that refused to surrender,
full of the quiet defiance of a human soul facing the edge of mortality.
The walls seemed to narrow around him,
and the sea—once so close—felt further away than ever before.
He heard only her faint plea echoing through the room,
reaching for him like a final thread of hope:
“Bring the child, Daniel… bring the child…”
Each time Anna María stirred from her weakness, she sought him, gathering him to her chest, whispering into his ear in a warm, broken voice:
“Be like your father, my little one… be like your grandfathers. Do not bend to the wind, and do not close your eyes to the waves.”
The child, so small and fragile, lifted his head to hers, his lips moving gently in response. He smiled when she smiled, frowned when the shadow of pain crept into the cadence of her voice. And each time, it was as though her words carried him beyond the walls of the room, to distant worlds where mornings breathed slowly over the harbor of Hamburg, and stealthy winds wandered, listening to the unfolding of events. Moist breezes from the Elbe drifted past wooden windows, caressing balconies, awakening wreaths of flowers the girls had woven beneath the silver gaze of yesterday’s moon.
The child smiled at her talk of the scent of fresh bread from ancient bakeries, but frowned when she spoke of his elder brother, lost to flames that spared nothing—an agony too sharp for his tiny heart to fully grasp. Then he would stretch his hand to her chest, as though seeking assurance that he was present, that the pain could not devour him alone.
She told him of Uncle Friedrich, of his grandfather stepping out of the mill gates, observing passersby with eyes that combined pride and nostalgia. Her memories wandered back to her wedding to Daniel, when the world had seemed vast and full of promise. And she spoke of Daniel, their son, who had chosen not to follow the sea but to remain by his father’s side, easing the weight of the millstone on his heart. In those moments, she sensed that the child, even with his infant intuition, understood the meaning of patience and fidelity. It was as if her embrace taught him that life, despite its harshness, could still be warm, still be filled with love.
Every whisper, every story of the past, caused him to laugh sometimes, frown at others, reach toward the air as if touching distant memories. He felt part of a world that stretched from Hamburg to Oran, spanning yesterday and today, pain and hope, loss and life. Each passing moment in that room became a tiny miracle, restoring hope to the watcher’s heart, teaching that true love could withstand the trials of both time and space.
Anna María spoke as though to a young man who understood, not a child too young to grasp the word marriage. Yet, in those moments, she planted within him a memory akin to a soul—a memory that would one day rescue him when he asked himself, “Where did I come from? Who am I?”
A faint cooing echoed in the room, like the breaths of a mother struggling to tether her heart to her small child before he fully awakened to this strange, vast world. Anna María drew him closer, brushing his soft hair, whispering secrets of the world into his ear, granting him the warmth of the present and a sense of belonging before he could yet understand the expanse surrounding him.
When fatigue overtook her, when the weight of illness pressed upon her, Daniel approached with quiet steps. He completed her unspoken sentences, filling the room with a calm warmth, weaving a protective layer of security over the tender warmth of her embrace.
He whispered to the child of the sea, of the harbors, of the paths he had chosen to remain by his side, of the patience and resolve of the grandparents whose courage still lingered in the corners of the room. The child lifted his head slightly, his small features swinging between curiosity and wonder, his fingers reaching toward Daniel’s chest as if seeking the reassurance that came from his voice and its gentle tone. When Daniel smiled, the child smiled; when he frowned, a shadow of puzzlement flickered across the small face, as though he were attempting to grasp the meanings of the past and of life itself.
With every word, every whisper, every small gesture, the room expanded with a mixture of tenderness and fear, of pain and hope. Daniel’s voice sang of stories never before heard, while Anna’s silence, stretched across the child’s chest, formed an intimate backdrop where breath and heartbeat intertwined. Through it, the child learned the first lessons of life: love, patience, and the security born of shared existence.
And so, in the mother’s embrace and the father’s whisper, the child formed his first memory—a memory akin to the soul itself, carrying from the past the wisdom of patience, from the present the assurance of safety, and from the future the courage to face the world.
Every small movement, every glance, every smile seemed to weave around the child a delicate layer of life itself, gifting him a sense of belonging and transforming the room—despite its shadows of sickness and frailty—into a sanctuary of hope, of love, of small miracles that shape a human soul before words are ever understood.
The room was silent, save for Anna María’s uneven breaths, Daniel’s low voice completing her thoughts, and the soft rustle of the blanket beneath the child’s small, restless motions. The child, with his wide blue eyes, waved his tiny hands in the air, frowned when the echo of pain lingered in Anna’s tone, and smiled when he perceived the warmth of Daniel’s voice or the gentle touch of Fatimah’s hand.
Fatimah sat beside him, her eyes brimming with tenderness, her fingers brushing softly over his hair, reaching gently for his small hands. For a moment, he froze, as if waiting for this contact to reassure his little heart. Without words, she spoke in a language older than speech itself, a language of love and warmth, turning each motion of his body into a first lesson in safety and trust.
Anna María, lying back with her eyes half-closed from exhaustion, observed the scene with a quiet, aching serenity. She felt each tiny laugh, each fleeting frown, each fluttering finger restore her hope. From afar, she brushed his hair and smiled when their eyes met; her whispers mingled with Daniel’s stories of Hamburg—the morning winds over the Elbe, the early light over the mill, and the distant memory of his grandfather, Uncle Friedrich, standing at the gate and watching the world with both pride and nostalgia.
Each time the child laughed, sunlight slipped through the window, dancing upon his small face, upon the soft strands of his hair, turning the scene into a living painting filled with love. When he frowned, Daniel leaned close, whispering in a warm tone, and a shy smile returned—as if reinforced by the assurance granted from every direction: a mother’s embrace, Fatimah’s gentle touch, the father’s murmured words.
Despite the stillness of the room, life overflowed within it. Every look, every movement, every whispered word intertwined to form a symphony of love and tenderness, teaching the child patience, planting the first seeds of memory and understanding. Each breath, each laugh, each frown became part of a memory that, though small, was deep—a witness to the soul, to the past, and to the hope that bound them all together.
Fatimah, that young woman from Oran in the prime of her youth, never tired of standing by the child’s side. Her eyes were full of care; her hands moved with a gentleness that seemed to plant within his heart a feeling of security. She had not completed her formal education, yet her heart knew what books could not teach. She acted not only with the wisdom of a mother but with a completeness of nature, making every gesture, every word, flow to the child as a spring of tenderness and a fountain of safety.
Anna María, observing such genuine love, felt a calm reassurance. She described Fatimah as “the second mother of her child,” for her presence was no mere duty or obligation; it extended the mother’s love, alleviating the harshness of illness and granting the child a warmth that sowed the first seeds of trust, safety, and life itself.
Each week, Fatimah requested Daniel’s permission to take the child for a day to visit her own family, to renew her connection with her parents and the familiar faces of her town. Yet she always returned quickly, drawn back to the child, to his small embrace, to his voice that filled the room with warmth and life, to the whispers that turned each moment with him into a lesson in love and tenderness.
On her way home, her thoughts clung to the child: imagining his smiles, his frowns, each small gesture that revealed his curiosity or delight. Her heart overflowed with longing, as if a piece of her spirit remained there, in his hands, compelling her swift return. In his presence, she rediscovered the meaning of care, of security, and of life, learning how these gifts were shared between giving and love.
Daniel, watching from a distance, felt a quiet contentment. He understood that this brief journey, though short in time, would strengthen the bond between the child and Fatimah. It would teach the child, gently, the meaning of love, tenderness, and care beyond the walls of the room—in a wider world rich with human connection and enduring bonds.
And so, the child’s first understanding of life unfolded not only in the embrace of his mother and the whispers of his father but through the tender attentions of another who, though not his mother by blood, extended the same devotion and care. In this room, in these quiet interactions, he began to form a memory that was not only his own but a testament to the human heart, to patience, and to the hope that sustains us all.
A few days later, sorrow spread its wings over the house, silent and heavy, as quietly as a candle exhausted from standing too long finally sputters out.
Daniel felt an immense void open within him, a silence so vast that the room, once alive with her presence, now seemed merely an echo of a distant hush.
He sat at the long, weathered pine table, encircled by quiet and familiar faces. His oldest friends were present, each carrying in their eyes a wound not yet healed. The formal ceremonies had ended; now they lingered in the final councils of farewell, surrounding Daniel as if to guard a raw, gaping hurt, fearful lest their lids close upon the bleeding.
One by one, the names slipped into his memory, like faint whispers: Johann Schmidt, Emil Mayer, Fritz Bumann, Martin Fischer, Otto Lehmann, Peter Stein… and, at the most delicate moment, Heinrich Wolf joined them, arriving from Naples, as though carrying folded within his coat the tender image of the departed, pressed gently against an old affection.
After the departure of his wife, after the travels of his friends, Daniel wandered through the house as one tracing footsteps in a hidden labyrinth. Everything within it recalled her: the chair she favored, the cup still bearing the faint mark of her lips, even the wind that slipped through the window seemed to him like her gentle breath returning, if only for a moment.
Sorrow had taken permanent residence within him; it rose with him, rested beside him, accompanied him in every gaze and every silence, speaking like a shadow that never left. He could no longer distinguish waking from dreaming; all around him seemed populated by phantoms moving through fractured time.
Long nights were spent staring at the ceiling, listening in imagination to the echo of her steps, seeing between folds of shadow her face smiling at him as she had before dusk. At times, he whispered to her, cautiously, as though fearing that even the sound of his voice might awaken the dead. And whenever he called her name, the echo returned softly, painfully, as though the very walls mourned with him.
He did not cry much; tears seldom found their way to his eyes. Yet he bled silently, each day shaving from his heart a small fragment of grief. In the absolute quiet of the house, he heard within himself the faint pulse of her life, as though it breathed from behind a veil, only to fade again.
Fatimah, attuned to the depth of his sorrow as if it had taken residence in her own chest, cradled the child in her care, attempting to transform his laughter and small motions into a balm for Daniel’s wounded heart. Whenever the child’s voice filled the house, something stirred within Daniel, as if life itself remembered to reappear after a long absence.
From time to time, Fatimah would lift her eyes to him and see him immersed in a solemn silence. She knew that this stillness was no peace, but a wound breathing. She would approach, place the child gently in his lap, and allow tenderness to translate what words could not.
Since Anna María’s departure, Daniel had changed profoundly. His silences grew longer, his gaze more distant, as if attempting to pierce a place beyond vision. He would sit for hours by the window, watching the small garden, observing leaves spiral slowly through the air, as though in them he glimpsed his life dissolving softly and without clamor.
When Fatimah entered the room, bringing the child to her chest, he lifted his head slowly and gazed at them as though recalling that warmth still lingered in the world. Occasionally, he smiled—a fragile smile, like a flickering firelight—then retreated into his silence, as though afraid to disrupt the purity of the scene with a word spoken from a tired heart.
And yet, amid all this quiet and melancholy, life persisted. The child’s laughter, the gentle rustle of his small hands, the soft sighs of those who loved him—all acted as reminders that the human heart endures, that tenderness can be preserved and renewed, even in the shadow of profound loss.
Daniel’s grief, though immense, became a lens through which he perceived the delicate networks of care and attachment that truly bound people together—reminding him, perhaps, of the German ideals of family, friendship, and moral responsibility that had shaped him in youth, and which now sustained him even when Anna María’s absence seemed unbearable. Could love, he wondered, endure in absence as faithfully as it had flourished in presence? And in that question lingered both despair and hope, intertwined, inseparable.
Fatimah tried gently to breach the fortress of his silence. She asked, at intervals, about the child—about his meals, his sleep—her voice soft, tender, yet deliberate. Daniel responded with short, fragmented phrases, as if every word inflicted a small wound, carrying with it a heavy breath, reluctant to leave his chest.
And when he saw her laughing with the child, the small, melodic peals that seemed to spring from some hidden joy, his gaze lingered momentarily on the scene. Then, almost instinctively, he turned toward the wall, as though ashamed that life should witness him steeped in such sorrow among the living.
The nights were the harshest. When the voices died and the house surrendered to darkness, everything returned to weigh upon him: the scent of the rooms, the photograph on the shelf—silent judges of absence. In these hours, Fatimah could hear a strange stillness in the house—not the slumbering quiet of sleep, but the quiet of a heart learning to beat alone after a great loss. Could a heart, once fractured, truly find its rhythm again? She did not ask, but she wondered.
Days passed, and gradually, the grief within Daniel shifted from a burning flame to a steady, aching presence that took root in his being. The first sign of this subtle transformation appeared when the child reached out his tiny arms toward him, yearning to climb into his lap. A moment so brief, yet it awakened something Daniel had believed perished with Anna María.
At first, he hesitated, a shadow of doubt flickering across his features. Then, slowly, he extended his hands, gathered the child against his chest, and felt an ancient memory tremble within him—Anna María’s embrace, warm and protective, enfolding him as she had in years now past.
From that instant, the child became a fragile bridge between Daniel and the world. He watched him crawl among the shadows, laughing a small, delicate laughter that recalled the gentle evening melodies Anna María once hummed. And when the child reached for his face, Daniel felt as though life itself were brushing tender fingers over his heart, coaxing it to beat once more.
Fatimah witnessed these scenes in silence. She stood at the doorway, smiling, as if she were observing the birth of something new emerging from the ruins of sorrow. She spoke no word, understanding that there existed a language of healing unspoken, composed of glances, gestures, and the quiet persistence of life itself.
Each time Daniel held the child, a little of the grief receded, as though making way for light to pierce the clouds. From afar, Fatimah could see the gradual restoration in his face, the slow return of features shaped by the habit of hope—learning again to smile, remembering that even a broken heart possesses a remarkable capacity for life.
Gradually, the house began to breathe anew. No longer did the walls echo with the relentless mourning of absence. Instead, small voices filled the space with gentle vitality: the child’s laughter, the soft steps of Fatimah moving through the rooms, the water flowing in the kitchen like a quiet, ancient song. Daniel listened to these sounds with an open heart, absorbing their rhythm as though learning a new language—one spoken not in words, but in glances, in breaths, in the pulse of living things.
Each morning, the child crawled toward him, dragging his small limbs across the floor, laughing as if summoning Daniel to rise. Daniel extended his hands, lifted him, held him close, inhaling the delicate fragrance of his hair, closing his eyes as though trying to draw from that tiny breath a reason to continue, a reason to endure.
Fatimah tended the household with serene diligence, as though composing a melody for each passing day. She prepared the meals at their appointed times, arranged flowers upon the table, and ensured the daylight entered the room before they settled into it. She nurtured this quiet order like a gardener tending a wounded plant, knowing it would never bloom as it once had, yet recognizing that it deserved to live.
In time, the three of them—Daniel, Fatimah, and the child—formed a new rhythm of existence. Daniel spoke less, but listened more; Fatimah understood his silences before his words could form; the child filled the spaces between them with the voice of life itself.
One evening, as the sun’s slanting light seeped into the room, Daniel observed Fatimah holding the child, singing softly. He stood still, and for the first time, his sorrow wept within him—not from pain, but from the fragile bloom of joy.
When night drew its curtain, Daniel sat once more in the old chair by the window, gazing at the small garden that had been silent since Anna María’s departure. Fatimah gathered the child’s toys and arranged them neatly upon the shelf. Seeing him lost in thought, she paused, as though reluctant to interrupt the delicate thread of his reflections.
He drew a deep breath and whispered, almost to a shadow,
“She loved this hour of the day… at sunset. She would say, ‘The sun bids farewell to the sea as a woman bids farewell to the one she loves,’”—and the quiet in his voice trembled with the memory of tears that had once accompanied such gentle wisdom.
Daniel remained silent for a while, then slowly turned his gaze toward Fatimah.
“I haven’t spoken of her since… since she left,” he murmured, voice low and heavy. “Everything about her frightens me with memory. Even the scent of her breath… it haunts me every morning.”
Fatimah lifted her eyes toward him, yet said nothing. Her silence carried more reassurance than any words could. Encouraged, Daniel continued, as one surrendering to the first steps of confession:
“Do you know? She wanted to plant a tree for our child in front of the house. She said, ‘Let it grow with him.’” His voice faltered. “But she left before she could do it. And ever since that day, whenever I look at the soil there, I feel as if the earth itself waits for her with me.”
Fatimah stepped closer, her presence calm and steady, and stood beside the window. Together, they looked out toward the patch of earth he had indicated.
“Perhaps it is time to plant it,” she said quietly, warmth threading her words. “Not to replace her… but to continue what she began.”
Daniel looked at her for a long moment. Then, for the first time since Anna María’s departure, a smile softened his face. In that instant, tears no longer signified loss—they hinted at a beginning.
Yet within his quiet, an internal dialogue ran, unseen by anyone: Should he return to Hamburg? Or remain here, in Oran, to build a new life for the child? Each option seemed both a promise and a trial. Staying meant crafting solace from grief, a tentative attempt to redefine himself after loss. Returning promised a journey into the familiar, into shadows of childhood, where memories lingered on old shores—familiar yet strangely distant.
Among friends with whom he had shared waves, seasons, and ports, Daniel knew that the exile of the heart was far more stubborn than any ship, more distant than any voyage.
Fatimah, with her quiet diligence, her gentle care of the child, and her meticulous attention to the house, wove for Daniel a fragile bridge between what he had lost and what could now be built. She offered him a sense of security, a silent hope whispering that a new life could indeed emerge from the ruins of sorrow.
Her concern extended beyond daily affection. Patiently, endlessly, she sought to draw him from the isolation his grief had imposed. In her quiet, she asked herself: Can I open a new door for him? Can his heart learn to trust again?
Sometimes she invited old friends from Hamburg when their ships docked in Oran, filling the house with laughter and memories. Daniel found himself pulled between past and present, between a vivid smile that reminded him of what he had lost and the genuine laughter that breathed life anew into his heart.
Other times, she took him and the child to visit her family, where the warmth of simple love and honest smiles reminded him that life continued, that he could still share, still love, and still smile despite pain.
In these moments, Daniel felt a profound contradiction: a small joy swelling within him, and a deep grief lurking in the shadows of his soul. Can life truly return after such loss? And do I deserve to rejoice once more?
Every gesture of hers, every tender care for the child, every meticulous arrangement in the house, became a quiet whisper restoring his faith in himself, reminding him that love does not vanish with departure—it transforms into a silent energy that can illuminate the path toward a new tomorrow.
Yet Daniel continued to harbor a long, private silence in his heart. He conversed there with the memory of Anna María, confiding in her what could not be spoken aloud—between longing and pain, between question and answer, between a soul seeking the presence of the lost and another wondering at the meaning of staying.
At the same time, Fatimah did not forget the duty of fidelity. Every day, she visited Anna María’s grave, placing a bouquet of the flowers she had loved, and lingered for moments of silent conversation, as if speaking directly to her:
“Daniel has come today… and I am here, guarding your memory.”
Whenever Daniel arrived to visit his wife’s resting place, he would find that someone had already tended it with care. His heart felt a slight reassurance then, as if grief could indeed be held tenderly, and that loyalty might endure even beyond departure.
Between these visits, the child became the center of his emerging world, and Fatimah a bridge between what he had lost and what he might yet build. She opened a window to life—a life that no longer frightened him entirely—small yet luminous, offering glimpses of warmth and hope. Daniel began to understand that sorrow was not the end of the road, but the beginning of a new comprehension of existence, of reattaching to the world with a cautious yet renewed spirit.
One quiet morning in Oran, Daniel awoke to a strange silence, a stillness carrying both the scent of grief and the memory of Anna María. He drew a deep breath and took the child’s hand, feeling the boy’s clear, smiling eyes. In that moment, some small stream of life flowed back into him.
Fatimah moved slowly through the house with her calm, gentle care—arranging toys, preparing meals, wrapping the child in every whisper and precise gesture—each motion rekindling in Daniel the strength to emerge from the shadow of loss.
At one gathering, when his old friends—Johann Schmitt, Emil Mayer, Fritz Bowman, Martin Fischer, Otto Lehman, Peter Stein, Hans Bruder, Johann Kraus, Heinrich Wolf, Friedrich Lange, and Karl Strauss—assembled in the place once reserved for Daniel and Anna María’s meetings, they whispered among themselves, their eyes fixed upon Fatimah. They observed how she moved with quiet grace, attended to Daniel’s every need, anticipated the child’s motions, and wove her presence into a delicate bridge between his past and the life he might now construct.
In a hushed, almost internal dialogue, Johann, Emil, and Fritz wondered: Is this an act of the heart, seeking to console a stranger who has endured such loss? Or is it a faithful soul, understanding that life does not stop?
Peter Stein broke the silence, daring to speak what others only dared to think. He turned to Daniel, voice gentle yet insistent:
“Daniel… do you not see what Fatimah is doing for you—and for this child? Do you not recognize in her care and love a warmth meant to lift you, to help you rise?”
Daniel paused. His silence spoke volumes. His eyes roamed between modesty and astonishment, realizing, perhaps for the first time, that Fatimah was not merely a guardian but a mirror of hope, a bridge extended through her love, her quietude, and her vigilant care.
In that same instant, he heard the pulse of his own heart speaking a truth he could no longer deny:
“Could grief have ever prevented me from accepting this pure love?”
“Do I not deserve to allow myself a glimpse of hope?”
A faint smile softened Daniel’s features, a smile that embraced Fatimah’s presence with a blend of sternness and tenderness. The old friends sensed it too, as though a veil of serenity had gently settled over a heart long weighed by sorrow.
Every glance they cast toward her, every quiet gesture, spoke of a friendship that cherished silence, care, and the stillness of reassurance. Daniel felt it too—he could still construct a life anew, framed by pure love and a hope that quietly threaded its way into his soul.
In the hush of their home, after a tranquil sunset, Daniel approached Fatimah slowly, each step heavy with anticipation and restrained shyness. She was gathering the child’s belongings, eyes calmly observing him, as if perceiving every movement, every thought passing through his mind.
He met her gaze, a flush of vulnerability warming his expression, his voice trembling between her silence and his own:
“Fatimah… do you know? I feel that everything I do for the child, and all that you do for me, almost… almost erases the remnants of my grief.”
Fatimah drew a deep breath, meeting his eyes with gentle steadiness. In his silence, she sensed a stirring of emotion:
“Sir Daniel… you need not bear the weight of sorrow alone. I am here… and the child is here… and together we will nurture what can be built, not what has been lost.”
Her words came as a haven of mercy and attentive care. Daniel felt the walls of fear within him begin to crack. He closed his eyes for a moment, quietly questioning himself:
“Can love renew itself after departure? Is it not right to seek moments of pure joy, in the tender rhythms of care and in the child?”
Fatimah moved her hand with delicate precision, her voice barely a whisper, yet it reached the depths of him:
“Sir Daniel… do you not see that life continues to move, and that even a small light may shine within your heart? I am here, and he is here, to build together what may yet exist.”
Daniel lingered in her gaze, feeling the tumult of emotions within him: profound sorrow that would not vanish, and a quiet hope slowly threading its way into his being. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, accepting that, despite his loss, he could still love, still rejoice, and redefine his life with kindness and affection.
He bent toward the child, eyes full of love and protective care, sensing that Fatimah was not merely a guardian for him and the boy, but a bridge to life itself, a promise of hope waiting silently and tenderly.
The next morning, bathed in crisp light, Daniel breathed in the clarity of dawn and met with his old friends at the harbor before the ships departed. Familiar faces carried the weight of memory, their silent presence echoing laughter, whispered counsel, and attempts to chart the uncertain future.
As Daniel guided his companions and workers through plans and oversight, his heart carried the lingering pain of loss, intertwined with the pulses of hope rekindled by Fatimah’s care.
One friend, Johann Schmitt, dared to speak, noticing Daniel’s reliance on routine and structure to create for himself a haven of security:
“Daniel… have you not seen? In all her calm and attentiveness, Fatimah is more than a guardian for the child. Do you not feel that she anchors hope and trust in life itself?”
Daniel paused, a surge of love and respect flooding him. Inwardly he reflected:
“Is it not right to grant my heart to one who has preserved my life with her gentleness and care? Do I not deserve to rejoice with one who shares with me a new beginning?”
As he returned to directing plans and listening to his friends’ observations, Daniel felt life pulse anew within him. His child and Fatimah were a bridge to vitality; hope and love awaited him in every step he would take.
One warm evening in Oran, at the estuary of a small river descending from Mount Margajo to embrace the Ottoman harbor, the sun vanished behind silvered clouds, and the sea sang a farewell to the day, a melody like whispered, passing memories.
Near the old harbor tavern, beneath its low roof and worn beams, faces seemed etched from an old story, surrounding Daniel who sat in a quiet corner. The tavern exhaled the scent of aged tobacco, roasted coffee, and salt-laden sea air, each note a reminder that life still thrummed between sounds and scents.
In the distance, ships bent their sails as if bowing to memories yet to come, whispering to the horizon that absence was not the end.
Daniel closed his eyes slowly, listening to a voice unspoken, and murmured, as if speaking to a past soul:
“Anna used to say: the harbors do not close their doors to those who return…”
Daniel opened his eyes, and in the next glance, a shy smile flickered across his face—one that did not deny the sorrow, nor did it allow it to dominate. It was as though his heart were tasting the faint sweetness of hope after a long season of despair.
Johann Schmitt spoke then, more to convince his own heart than anyone else’s:
“Then let us sail… to her harbors, to mine, and to those that still exist in imagination.”
The night that followed dimmed its lights upon a wooden pier stretching along the shore, when Mira silently pointed to a small ship approaching the horizon.
Daniel prepared himself, and Fatimah cradled the sleeping child with gentle steadiness. Each breath of the boy was like the lingering note of a song at the end of a dream; every moment carried a quiet warmth, whispering that life, despite all its losses, still shone in the smallest of details.
Around them, friends gathered—Fritz, Emil, Martin, Otto, and Johann—silent witnesses to the delicate intimacy unfolding. Fatimah sat beside him, enclosing the child’s small hand between her own as one might hold a fragile vial of perfume, protecting it from all violent winds.
Her eyes never left his, and in her smile was a warmth that dissolved the hardness of words, speaking without utterance: Here I am. Fear nothing. I will remain.
Then, without a flutter of her eyelids, tears spilled—tears not of surrender to grief, but of defiance against loss, as if refusing to let go of him, not in body nor in fate.
She sighed and lowered her gaze, as if searching for her own shadow upon the floor, and whispered, a quiet flame in the stillness of the room:
“Watch the little one… I have not told him anything yet.”
Daniel hesitated, as though gauging the direction of the wind, then murmured, his voice trembling between chest and throat:
“Will… will you stay with him?”
She raised her head, and in her eyes danced a hesitation like the shivering of a windowpane before the wind. In silence, she asked herself: Does he understand the depth of my quiet?
With tender firmness, she answered:
“I cannot… I cannot leave him, and yet I cannot go.”
Daniel lifted his gaze slowly toward her, as if emerging from a fathomless well of sorrow. He remained silent for a moment, then asked softly:
“What do you mean?”
Fatimah drew a deep breath, her words hesitant like waves breaking against the stones of the shore, a mixture of timidity and suppressed rebellion:
“My family… they will not allow me to travel with you, nor to live alone in a foreign land with a stranger.
I am not bound as my sister is, yet I dare not break their rules.
I am one of them, even if I appear otherwise.”
He turned his face away, hiding the weight of a choking emotion under his breath, and spoke, his voice rough as gravel:
“But he has become like your child… he needs you.”
Her gaze met his, tearful yet steady, as she replied with gentle sorrow:
“And I need him…
Yet my need for him does not conquer my fear of breaking the only door I have ever known.
I am bound by an invisible thread…
And yet he pulls me forward with every step.”
Then she fell silent, and in her quiet every whisper was a message to him. Her eyes lifted to his, seeking understanding through a closed window of circumstance:
“Do you understand this?”
He did not answer. He turned his face toward the wall, letting the words fall from his lips as if they were fears he dared not voice:
“I… I am trying…”
In the quiet of the room, each could hear the echo of the other’s heart, and both wondered silently: would this unspoken bond be enough to restore a shared life, or did loss still dwell between them, unseen but palpable?
A heavy silence settled, broken only by the creeping sound of wind from a distant ship and the soft lapping of waves against the pier, carrying with them the briny scent of the sea.
Suddenly, the child stirred, as if he had caught a fragment of their unspoken conversation. He lifted his head, eyes wide with the innocence and caution of one who senses danger yet does not understand its shape.
With unsteady steps, he walked toward Fatimah, clinging to her leg, wrapping his small arms around her as though to preserve a single thread of safety in a fractured world.
Looking up at her, he whispered in a voice colored by dependence and trust:
“Do not go.”
Fatimah froze, her body solid as if sculpted from soft stone, shattering inwardly under the weight of her emotions. She reached out, brushing her hand gently through his hair, tears falling silently, like a fountain emerging from the quiet of her heart.
Once more, the child spoke, in a voice too young to encompass sorrow:
“I want to stay by you.”
She wanted to answer, to reassure him, to tell him that sleep could exist even in absence, yet words failed her. All she could do was encircle him with her hands, pressing him close, as if she could root him into her very being for eternity.
Daniel stood at a distance, watching in silence, sensing the delicate peril of intrusion, and wondered inwardly: could he be the gentle presence between these two worlds, or would he betray every silent promise?
In that moment, he realized that this triangular love—between a man, a woman, and a child—knew no origin, no boundaries of time or space. It was a love fluid as water, capable of salvation or submersion.
With hesitant steps, Daniel approached, kneeling beside them. His hand rested lightly on the child’s shoulder, a quiet touch masking his own fractures.
“I will stay with you… do not be afraid,” he said with tender firmness.
Yet the child did not turn to him. He clung to Fatimah as if she were the last rope on a sinking ship, the sole provider of sustenance and warmth.
Daniel wanted to rise, to end this painful tableau with a decisive step that ignored the past, when he felt a small hand brush the edge of his coat.
He lifted his eyes slowly and saw the child, half-turned toward him, still holding onto Fatimah. In that instant, Daniel understood that hope and trust could reside in a single silent word, a single glance.
The child whispered, eyes wide and lost, as if questioning the world with the fullness of his childhood:
“Do not leave… you too.”
In that silence, Fatimah felt her heart creating a small universe, a sanctuary where they could all remain close despite the lurking fears and uncertainties that the world imposed. It was a fragile universe, yet entire.
Daniel Müller felt something fracture within his chest—not sorrow alone, but the crumbling of the fortress he had built around himself to shield against tenderness. A warmth, long forgotten, seeped through the cracks.
He gazed at the child for a long moment, as though seeing in him a mirror of what he had hoped to become, and then shifted his eyes to Anna María. Her gaze held the tension of hope and fear intertwined; her lips trembled, not with weeping, but with the shock of that long, oppressive silence that had stretched between them.
She wished to speak, to bridge the chasm of anticipation, yet the words weighed upon her tongue as if made of stone.
At last, in a voice low and quivering, like a heartbeat striving toward life, she asked:
“Did he… hear everything?”
Daniel lingered on the child’s small form, then shook his head gently, words spilling forth like a confession:
“I do not know… but he understood.”
The words sank between them like a stone into an ancient well. A peculiar quiet followed, carrying echoes of all that had remained unspoken.
Then Daniel rose suddenly, as if attempting to escape from himself, and walked toward the window that overlooked the restless sea. The clouds were heavy, and the wind murmured in unintelligible voices, carrying messages from afar.
Was he fleeing? Or was he returning? He asked himself, yet offered no answer.
Without turning back to them, his voice swayed between resolve and apprehension:
“Perhaps… I shall not leave this evening.”
Fatimah’s heart quivered in her chest like a small bird, finally granted flight after a long confinement. Her face shifted between astonishment, hope, and fear, and she managed a trembling, fragmented voice:
“What…?”
He turned to her slowly, eyes deep as a sea opening into darkness, in which a sudden spark of life gleamed. He said:
“I shall stay another day… perhaps more. Not only for you, but for him. For all that I have left unsaid, all that I have left undone.”
He stepped closer and knelt before the child, as if seeking forgiveness from the time that had been lost. Placing his hand gently upon the small chest, he whispered, voice entwining tenderness with determination:
“I will not leave you… until we find the way.”
In Fatimah’s eyes shimmered a tear, held in suspension, as if it feared breaking—a pulse caught between departure and remaining.
Inside, her silent voice echoed back to her:
“Was this the confession I waited for? Or is it the beginning of a new tale, written by fate, to be completed by him?”
The room was filled with the quiet hum of possibility, each breath and glance binding them in a fragile covenant of trust. And outside, the wind whispered secrets of the night, as if urging them to let the story unfold.
Fatimah lifted her hand to her mouth, stifling a gasp that had overpowered her. In that instant, it seemed as though the entire world had contracted into this small room, where neither homeland nor family nor fear had dominion—only three hearts, quietly reshaping themselves, slowly, yet with an honesty that no words could convey.
Then Fritz Baumann’s voice trembled into the corner of the scene, deep and resonant, like a note lost to time, as he gestured toward the approaching vessel:
“This is our ship. It may lack grandeur, yet it carries the memory of every port we have touched… Come, you and your son, and remember—tears are not wounds, but bridges between sorrow and hope.”
Daniel Müller rose, laying a gentle hand upon his child’s shoulder, his voice carrying the long, fading tones of twilight:
“I see you, my little one… in your eyes I read the words she once left unspoken. Today, you shall witness what remains of her love.”
Emil Mayer smiled, a playful glint in his eye, as though hiding a secret in his pocket:
“And we shall restore Anna’s echo—not merely in the port of Oran, but in every harbor we near.”
One of the men approached Daniel, speaking in a hushed tone, recounting tales of the Barbary pirates of 1795, of Rais Hamido, of captured ships, and slaves driven to distant coasts. Daniel remained silent, turning the wooden cup in his hands as though measuring time through its texture, or probing an old wound buried in the memory of the waves. What had long since hardened was now uncertain, and he did not know what had transpired across the seas…
Finally, he whispered—not merely to the man, but to the space suddenly filled with the scent of salt and the voices of the drowned:
“Sometimes I think history does not pass… it crystallizes into salt in the blood, invisible, yet altering the taste of everything.”
The informant, analytical and deliberate, leaned closer:
“Imagine… they were granted official licenses for piracy, called ‘privateers,’ not pirates. The law was tailored to fit the loot.”
Daniel smiled, that fragile crack of a smile, as if sunlight had touched a mirror in an abandoned harbor:
“Injustice, when penned on official paper, becomes respectable… but it does not change. It remains injustice, even if blessed by seals.”
He added, as if seeing specters flicker upon the window overlooking a restless sea:
“Do you see? They attacked foreign ships… and now we attack our own memories. The difference is slight… only that the sea is more merciful than some minds.”
Then, striving to maintain a neutral tone, he continued:
“That voyage… when our vessels passed along the shores of Tripoli in the summer of ’95… untouched, while others were seized. How could it be?”
He did not answer immediately, turning the wooden cup in his hands as though reading an invisible text etched upon it. Then, lifting his head, his voice steady though familiar with hesitation, he said:
“In certain seas, innocence alone is not enough… one must pay the price for it beforehand.”
The gathered group exchanged silent glances. No one asked, “How much did you pay?” nor, “For whom?” Yet the unspoken question hovered between them, conversing without a voice, probing their thoughts, stirring what words dared not.
Marius stepped a little closer, his voice low, almost lost amidst the faint whisper of the sea:
“But you did not lose a ship of yours…”
Daniel Müller answered without turning, his eyes fixed on the distant horizon:
“Perhaps… because I have lost things far deeper than ships.”
He stared outward, as though peering into a dying ember, watching it smolder piece by piece, and spoke softly, addressing the fading glow:
“Every covenant has its privateer, and every privateer has its sovereign, who sanctions piracy in the name of the state, calling it bravery, economy, or faith… does it matter which?”
They advanced toward the vessel in calm, measured steps. Sailors called out for them to come aboard: Daniel, his son, and Fatimah. A peculiar quiet settled—not the silence of emptiness, but the stillness that follows a tear shed in solitude. Fatimah’s tear had ceased, cradled in the hollow of her hand, and the world seemed to hold its breath, allowing her to inhale cautiously within that small expanse. The child clung to her leg, embracing it as if he held the whole earth in his arms, his wide eyes seeking reassurance from hers, searching for calm in unfamiliar gaze.
Daniel stood rigid by the window, watching the ship ready itself for departure. Fragments of the sailors’ voices reached him, drifting as if from another shore, across the corridors of time.
Fritz extended his hand toward his watch, then turned to the harbor:
“We should move.”
Daniel did not stir, nor even glance in their direction. His voice finally broke the silence, low yet resolute:
“We shall not sail today.”
All turned toward him. Even the child lifted his head, staring in astonishment, as if he had heard a rare word lost from another era.
Fatimah, her chest tightening with the moment, whispered, her voice almost imperceptible:
“But the ship… the schedule… everything…”
Daniel’s gaze softened, retrieving something deeper than mere appointments:
“Everything… has changed in this moment.”
He stepped toward the child, crouched to meet him at eye level, and gently patted his shoulder:
“We will not depart without a farewell worthy of you, and we will not leave anyone who loves you without showing them love in return—for your sake.”
Then he rose and turned to Fritz:
“Postpone the voyage for a single day. Just one day. I wish to sail without fear, without sorrow shadowing my child’s heart.”
Fritz nodded, his smile softening, leaving the moment unspoken, and looked toward Emil:
“Journeys delayed on account of children… often turn out the most beautiful.”
Fatimah said nothing, yet she felt the earth, once confining, expand suddenly beneath her. She did not reach, did not speak, but the world moved toward her, quietly, to say: “Do not fear losing what is dear; it may yet be granted if your presence is true.”
Daniel seated himself at the edge of the bench, looking at his son:
“We shall spend this night here… together. No farewells today, only stories.”
Then he turned to Fatimah, asking gently:
“Shall we return home?”
She did not answer, but seated herself on the floor beside the child, beginning to tell him a story of a small star, lost from its constellation… yet finding a new home in the embrace of one who recognized its light, never truly lost.
Martin Fischer poured a cup of quince drink, saying:
“For this, Daniel… we light the fire within you, to break through the dam of silence.”
Johann Kraus, with a quiet fervor, raised his cup toward the flickering lantern:
“To love, my friends! To the mother who wakes with every wave, with every wild breeze!”
A hush of longing fell upon them, as if the voice of the waves itself echoed in repetition. The vessel began to move slowly in a gentle orbit, gliding toward the illuminated gates of the harbor, as though advancing toward appointments whose secrets lay behind walls they could not yet see.
Daniel Müller’s voice broke under the weight of emotion, scattering his words like a fragile breath of hope:
“Anna… hear me now. At this very moment, you are with us. Your flame will not be extinguished in my heart… nor in the heart of our child. Let us travel tomorrow among the harbors, so that the earth itself may remind us how to love.”
Otto Lehmann lifted his gaze to the sky, clear as he dared to hope:
“If you can hear us, shine. Let us see how you stir new winds upon our lives.”
Within the quiet of the house, cradled in Fatimah’s arms, the child’s breath slowed, and he drifted into sleep, worn out by his tears and exhaustion. Her hand rested on his back, stroking him gently, as though soothing his pain before easing the weight from his small body.
Daniel sank into the wooden chair, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed upon the worn floorboards. The scent of salt and farewell lingered in the air, stubbornly persistent despite the passage of time, a reminder that some things—like love and memory—cling, however far we travel.
Suddenly, a light knock at the door. The physician, Walter Heinrich, slender and quietly remorseful, entered. He wore a dark coat, and in his eyes lay a gentleness that seemed born of regret. Without a word, he placed a small envelope in Daniel’s hand. Then, his voice, low and hesitant, broke the silence:
“I swear, I did not intend the delay… I found it among Anna María’s papers hours after her passing, then left the city for days… I forgot. Forgive me.”
He left, his presence vanishing as though it had existed only to deliver that moment.
Daniel regarded the envelope long and slowly raised his head, his face brushing against Fatimah’s. He whispered:
“Her handwriting…”
Fatimah drew the cover from the child and said softly:
“Read.”
Daniel opened the envelope, and began to read in a low voice, as if afraid to shatter the echo of her presence lingering on the paper:
*”To Daniel… my eternal beloved, my steadfast companion whom time could never replace. I write not to inform you of anything new, but to bid you farewell with a voice I trust will reach you between heartbeat and breath.
I know not if you will ever read this letter, or if it will lose its way, as our days were lost in the press of life…
Yet as I write, I feel my body drift from me, little by little, like a ship losing its anchor. Each word I write now is a new anchor I cast into the sea… hoping it finds you.
Our child… that small light we brought from our darkness…
Please, Daniel, do not let him forget my face, nor learn from absence the lessons we learned. Teach him to laugh, to cry without fear, to love as we loved—with a simplicity that is honesty itself.
As for Fatimah… do not ask how or when she became like a shadow, yet as real as a mother’s gaze. I chose her to be our child’s mother, not because life imposed her, but because my heart believed she is the safety that will endure beyond me.
If you see her weep, do not comfort her with words… remain silent beside her. In your silence, you will give her more than words of tenderness ever could.
And as for what I leave behind—ships, wealth, land… these are but things, meaningful only as vessels of memory. Do not pursue them, do not divide them. Leave them as they are, resting in your hands as though I still guide them.
Not for gain, but to keep our names afloat upon the waters, like words inscribed upon the waves, which the wind cannot erase.”*
Daniel’s voice trembled under the weight of feeling, yet carried a fragile thread of hope:
“Do not let my death be the end, Daniel… Let it be a comma in the long sentence of your life. A small pause between two breaths, nothing more…”
He paused, as if listening for her in the quiet room. “And when the sea finally rests and sleeps, you will find me in the first wave, arranging your sails, whispering to you as I always whispered:
‘Do not fear… the ships will return.’”
Gently, Daniel lowered the letter and closed his eyes. He remained silent for a long moment, the weight of her absence pressing upon him, and then spoke, voice thick with gravity:
“She knew… everything.”
Fatimah said nothing. Slowly, she rose from the floor, placing their child upon the bed, covering him with a quiet tenderness that seemed to shield him from the world. She returned and sat beside Daniel, eyes full of trust and tentative hope, asking softly:
“Does this… change anything?”
Daniel’s voice was low, uncertain, yet carrying a hint of clarity:
“Perhaps… it explains everything.”
He turned toward her, eyes shining with a new honesty:
“She spoke of you as his mother… and she chose you. As for me, I believed I was merely calling upon you for help.”
A brief silence passed, heavy with reflection. Then he added, voice firm now with understanding and resolve:
“Now I see… you were part of the story, from the very beginning.”
Fatimah gazed at him, her expression suffused with wisdom. She whispered softly:
“But fear… fear cannot read letters. Fear sees only walls.”
Daniel raised the letter gently in his hand.
“Perhaps… it is time to build windows instead of walls.”
He looked toward their child, voice resolute yet tender, infused with hope:
“I will not sail tomorrow… nor before we three know, truly, where we are meant to go.”
He remained seated in the room, the letter in his hands, the echo of Anna María’s words still pulsing vividly in his soul. Fatimah moved closer, sitting quietly beside him, the weariness fading from her face, replaced by a glimmer of new hope.
Daniel’s eyes returned to the letter. Words flowed from his lips, imbued with determination:
“She did not leave me mere words… she left me a path. A path toward the future—not just for me, but for our child.”
Daniel exhaled slowly, a weight pressing upon his chest, and spoke with a voice thick with responsibility:
“This path… I cannot walk it alone.”
Fatimah nodded gently, her hand reaching for his, enclosing it with a tenderness that seemed to reassure the heart itself:
“You do not have to walk it alone. Tomorrow, I will take you to my father, Sheikh Mahmoud. There, where faith takes root, and where the seeds are sown that will not wither.”
Daniel rose slowly, feeling the gravity of the decision, yet beneath it, a deep, comforting calm.
The next morning, in the house of Sheikh Mahmoud Ramadan, at the heart of a bustling quarter of Oran, the city awoke gilded with the first light of dawn. The narrow streets smelled of fresh bread, warm spices, and the faint, lingering aroma of old coffee.
In a small courtyard before the house, Sheikh Mahmoud sat beneath the generous shade of an ancient lemon tree. His turban, a brilliant white, contrasted with eyes that sparkled like twin stars against a clear sky, his voice calm and measured, like water flowing slowly over smooth stones.
Fatimah approached with tentative steps, holding their child’s small hand in hers. Behind her, Daniel walked slowly, as if traversing unfamiliar terrain—but the strangeness did not frighten him.
In a low, confident voice, Fatimah spoke:
“Father… this is Daniel Müller, who comes to visit you today. And this is little Salih, whom you know, and whom you have loved as you love your own grandson.”
The Sheikh lifted his head with serene composure, then directed his gaze to the tall, fair-haired man standing before him. His eyes were a mixture of gentle surprise and quiet admiration.
“Welcome,” he said softly. “Please… sit.”
Daniel seated himself, heart hammering with a force he had never known, even in the fiercest storms at sea.
The child settled upon the ground beside the Sheikh, gazing up at him with wide, innocent eyes, filled with unspoken questions.
Observing the child, Sheikh Mahmoud remarked:
“Your son is gentle… and there is a resemblance, a familiarity, in him that I know well.”
Fatimah hesitated for a moment, then whispered:
“I gave him the name Salih in secret, after my grandfather, just as I gave his father’s name to Daniel in my own heart… for the goodness, honesty, and fidelity I found in him. When Anna María heard it, she asked about its meaning, and when I explained, she agreed—it was right.”
The Sheikh looked toward his daughter, smiling tenderly, as his hand rested upon the child’s head:
“May God bless Anna… and may He bless my father, Salih… a man of heart and word, who distinguished neither by color nor tongue.”
He then turned to Daniel, voice steady and calm:
“Do you wish, Daniel, for this child to carry the name that Fatimah has chosen for him?”
Daniel shook his head quickly, as though to dislodge a torrent of emotions lodged deep within him:
“She is… all that remains of Anna. And Anna… she trusted Fatimah, granted her every virtue, every right, perhaps knowing that her child would one day bear the name Salih, though I myself do not fully grasp its meaning.”
The Sheikh’s eyes studied him with calm curiosity. “And do you love Fatimah?”
Daniel froze for a moment, his gaze drifting toward her before he answered:
“Yes… I love her. Because Anna María chose her to be our child’s mother. Yet… I fear that I might frighten her.”
The Sheikh’s smile was gentle, infused with wisdom borne of many seasons.
“He who fears does not frighten, and he who loves does not flee.”
Leaning slightly toward Daniel, as if probing the depths of a soul no longer foreign to him, the Sheikh asked softly,
“Do you know anything of religion?”
Daniel hesitated, fumbling like one trying to conceal a white sheet in a desert:
“I… I was raised a Christian. Yet I do not attend church, nor do I practice anything except what my conscience compels me to follow.”
The Sheikh inclined his head, as though recalling some ancient truth, and spoke:
“The conscience is precious, indeed—but it needs a kiss upon the brow to awaken.
You come from distant seas, yet this house is never closed to those who seek the door to life.
Fatimah is of our flesh and blood, yet she has chosen—and I do not oppose it—if heart and mind are united.”
He paused, his voice softening, carrying a note of hope:
“If your love for her is sincere, if you wish for this child to be woven of light rather than shadow, open your heart to truth. We do not compel or coerce—but because you see that it suits you.”
Then, with a tender clarity, as though presenting a key without lock or barrier, he said:
“Speak the testimony—not to relinquish, but to draw near; and be sincere.”
He added, his voice resolute yet gentle:
“Fatimah shall not be a servant in your house, nor merely a caretaker of your child from this day forth. She shall be a partner of your spirit… if you so desire.”
Daniel looked at Fatimah. She stood there, tears restrained, a smile incomplete, holding a universe of quiet hope within her.
His gaze then shifted to the child, and finally back to the Sheikh, who extended toward him a key to a door he had never dared approach.
Closing his eyes, Daniel spoke, his voice low but firm, carrying the certainty of a long-held resolve:
“I bear witness that there is no deity but God, and I bear witness that Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad are His messengers and prophets.”
A profound silence enveloped the courtyard, like a universal benediction. Then the Sheikh smiled gently, stroking his beard with deliberate care:
“May God bless you both… and may He bless your child, God willing.”
Sheikh Mahmoud extended his hand toward Daniel, pressing it with a paternal gentleness that seemed to carry the weight of both responsibility and blessing.
“Houses are built upon love,” he said slowly, his voice resonant and deliberate, “but they stand firm only upon faith.”
Fatimah, meanwhile, seated herself near her son—or rather, their son. She drew him close, resting his head against her chest, and whispered softly, as though sealing an ancient promise:
“Salih… just as you wished, my grandfather.”
Evening arrived without pomp or celebration. No music, no tents, no jubilant fanfare. The sun inclined gently toward the horizon, bathing the courtyard in a soft, golden light. A mild breeze played with the fringes of Fatimah’s shawl as she stood at the edge of the room, partly hidden behind a sheer white muslin curtain.
Daniel sat at Sheikh Mahmoud’s right, wearing a plain white shirt without a necktie, his face a mixture of modesty and quiet composure, betraying both nervousness and serenity. The room had been arranged with a simplicity that recalled old traditions of solemn unions: a small table with the Qur’an open, a glass of water, and a few dates resting on a copper plate.
To Daniel’s left sat Fritz Bumann, his silver hair gleaming in the amber light, a serene smile suggesting he had witnessed many storms finally stilled at sea. Near the doorway stood Dr. Mayer, holding the child tightly, his expression one of puzzled admiration, yet he smiled warmly at Fatimah whenever she inclined her head slightly from behind the curtain.
Sheikh Mahmoud raised his hand, his voice deep and melodious as he began to recite:
“And among His signs is that He created for you spouses from yourselves, that you may find tranquility in them; and He has placed between you love and mercy…”
Turning to Daniel, he spoke with gentle firmness:
“Daniel… with the intention of marriage in accordance with the way of God and His Messenger, for a symbolic dowry of five golden lira, and with a pledge to protect her and your child—do you accept Fatimah as your wife?”
Daniel’s reply was steady this time, each word measured and sincere:
“I accept… with a heart that understands the meaning of affection, even if it does not yet fully know Arabic.”
The Sheikh smiled and repeated the phrase in German, a sentence Fatimah had taught her father, and then the two witnesses echoed it behind him. Daniel repeated the words as best he could, while Fatimah whispered them softly from behind the curtain, as though praying silently, the syllables sacred in her mouth.
With the gravity of the moment resting upon his voice, Sheikh Mahmoud looked toward the curtain and called:
“Fatimah Mahmoud Ramadan, do you accept this man as your husband?”
Her voice came, calm yet trembling, yet imbued with steadfastness:
“Yes… I accept.”
The Sheikh inscribed the words in his ledger. Even the sea seemed to witness the moment in Fritz’s heart, who trembled for an instant, then surrendered, resting finally in their embrace.
Later, they gathered in the small courtyard, where mint tea and simple cakes were passed from hand to hand. Fatimah’s laugh, light and airy as her voice, lingered among them like a gentle promise, a delicate melody of hope and belonging.
Daniel stepped closer to her, holding a small silver ring in his hand, its surface catching the last rays of the dying sun. His voice trembled slightly, yet carried an earnest sincerity as he spoke:
“I never knew how to write love in Arabic… but now it feels as though it has become my second language.”
Anna María, with a delicate smile, remained silent. She grasped the child’s tiny hand, pressing it gently into Daniel’s, as if bridging not just flesh, but hearts and histories. Around them, the late afternoon sunlight draped the house in a soft, golden veil, the shadows retreating quietly, as though even the sun wished not to disturb the serenity newly born in this home.
The next morning found them at the harbor of Oran. The sun rose timidly, its pale light tracing the travelers’ faces with shy fingers. Unlike the usual clamor of merchant ships and naval vessels, the harbor was hushed, as if the sea itself had paused to witness what was unfolding.
An ancient cart moved slowly along the quay, pulled by a gray horse whose gait recalled a scene from some old, half-forgotten painting. Daniel sat upright in his modest attire, while beside him, Fatimah draped herself in a soft olive-colored shawl—its hue reminiscent of both her home and the boundless horizon.
In her arms, the child slept, his head leaning against her chest, a faint tear still pressed against the curve of his cheek—a silent testament to the dreams and fears he had carried before waking into this new day.
When they arrived at the pier, sailors lined the ship’s edge, waving and calling in the language of the sea. Though Fatimah could not understand their words, their welcome was written clearly in their eyes, in the gestures that seemed older than speech.
Fritz Bumann stood at the gangway, pointing toward the waiting vessel with a quiet gravity.
“All is ready… even the waves themselves are waiting for you.”
Daniel’s gaze lingered on Oran for one last moment. There, a green-eyed glance met his—a glance that held the warmth of the sun at its zenith. In the same instant, his heart seemed to settle into the child’s embrace, recognizing in his small features the echo of Anna María, of grandparents long passed, yet becoming fully, irrevocably his own.
Then he turned toward Sheikh Mahmoud, who had come despite his fatigue to bid them farewell. Daniel took the old man’s hand, his voice catching with a mixture of gratitude and something more vulnerable:
“Thank you… for not asking me so many questions, for trusting the heart rather than testing it.”
The Sheikh smiled, a quiet wisdom in his eyes that spoke of centuries of witnessing human hearts in their trembling and their courage. He replied softly:
“Faith, my son, teaches us that some journeys are better begun with trust than with doubt.”
Daniel allowed himself a deep, steadying breath. In that moment, between the soft lull of the harbor, the serene strength of Fatimah, and the blessing of Sheikh Mahmoud, he felt a rare harmony—a recognition that the paths of love and duty, of courage and compassion, could indeed be traveled together.
“But I asked him silently, deep within my heart… and the answer came to me, reflected in Fatimah’s eyes.”