Under the Olive Tree

6. Sitta

Amani accompanied Reema to her daily course that day, but all she'd done was sit in silence by the window and watch the gender-separated room recite the verse sections they'd each been tasked with memorizing. Some of them recited long pages of Standard Arabic that even Amani struggled to decipher the meaning of. Others only had a few verses that, somehow, were still longer than a single page.

She placed her chin onto her palm and watched some students struggle with anxious fingers and trembling voices and others whose confidence in themselves made every word seem correct. Only when their recitation ended and the teacher asked them to hold out their hands did she realize they messed up.

If he nodded and moved on, they hadn't.

Amani followed her cousin's recitation in the book in front of her, trying her best to match the sounds with the little letters she knew. Then she attempted to teach herself at least one verse while the others continued repeating after the bearded man sitting at the room's front.

"What did you think?" Reema asked once class had been dismissed and they began their walk back home. "I saw you trying to memorize ayah 57. You know, most people start memorizing at the beginning of the chapter or the actual book."

Holding the book securely against her chest, Amani shrugged. "I was bored. Listening to some of your classmates repeat the same ayat over and over like the next one is magically going to appear in their mind isn't the most interesting thing, Reema."

She rolled her eyes. "It's okay to admit that you're interested in Koran class. There's no shame in it, little cousin."

"I didn't say it was shameful."

"You should try to memorize some and, maybe next time, Sheikh Magdy will let you recite it to him. I'm sure he'd be very happy to see the foreigner actually trying to better herself."

Amani nudged her. "I don't need to better myself."

"You always need to better yourself."

"Shut up," she scoffed.

Reema stepped away to avoid the family of cats sleeping on the roadside as they both continued down the street. "I mean, sure you would be an adult beginner in a class of four- and five-year-old's learning the little Surahs but at least...." Reema's words trailed as she turned her head to look behind Amani.

She began reaching for her cousin but a loud thunder against metal turned Amani around in time to see the large dark vehicles speeding through the road. From the dirt paths on either side, children launched rocks at the massive tank-like cars. Inside, Amani saw the armed men with their weapons watching the rocks batter the side of their military grade protection.

Her eyes met with a feminine pair in the passing tank past her dark green helmet. Amani was almost surprised to see a pair of human eyes looking back at her, so human she might've forgotten about the riffle strapped to her chest and ready to blast into the body of any person who stepped into her way.

"-balek." Watch out.

Amani didn't have time to turn her head before something firm pressed into her back, pushing her away from the road as a tank plowed through the dirt she'd only been standing on. She hugged the book against her chest to keep it from toppling onto the ground, her heart tight at the thought that she could've been flattened.

She lifted her head to see the man still standing against her back and found Bread Boy glaring at the speeding vehicles. Only he wasn't touching her, it was the box in his hands that brushed against her back every time she took a breath.

"Are you okay?" He began to turn to her before his eyes caught on the book she'd been gripping so tightly. Almost as if the book was stationary and was the only thing keeping her from falling away.