Finding Muna: A Palestinian Novel

Chapter Forty Two

April's eyes fluttered open slowly, but she shut her eyes almost immediately due to the intensity of the light, and then she tried a few more times to open her eyes until she could fully open her eyes.

She looked around the strange room in confusion, trying to sit up despite the intense pain she felt all over her body, along with numbing and painful throbbing in some parts of her body.

Her hand flew to her throat as she gasped out of severe thirstiness; she looked around the room in alarm and grabbed the bowl that was containing water beside the bed she laid on. She put the bowl to her mouth and chugged the water down immediately, ignoring the awful taste.

Her mind tried to register where she was, but she couldn't stop being confused, she didn't remember walking into the room, nor did she understand how she got there, it was a long time ago since she'd ever been in a liveable shelter place.

She ran her hands over the wounds in injured she had sustained, utterly perplexed on what could have happened. She kept looking around the room, feeling in her gut that something was missing, but she was unable to point a finger at what she felt was missing.

Then suddenly she gasped as she noticed that Lamees wasn't in the room with her, and her heart started to race as she struggled to remember where they had separated. She looked down at her torn clothes and at her hands that were stained with dark blood and scratches as if she had scraped them on the floor.

She shut her eyes and inhaled deeply as the memories of how they were beaten came to her mind, the phone call to warn them, the text messages to Asma, and the hopes of them surviving and the fear of them being killed. She remembered as they were humiliated by the soldiers and how they were eventually taken with them and how she blacked out.

Alarmed, April tried to get up from the bed, she yanked the bed cover away from her body only to be stopped by something holding on to her ankle, she looked at her ankle and she saw that she was tightly chained to the bed. The chain was so tight, that although she had only one leg, she still couldn't escape. Seeing the chains made her more afraid than she was before, she didn't want to scream, because she was unsure of what would become of her if she did.

She wondered how long she would be left in the room until someone would come to her, and she was afraid of what would happen if they did come to her.

Her conversation with Lamees suddenly started to roam her mind and her eyes stung with tears as she wondered what was going on with Lamees and why they prevented them by seeing each other by separated them, she feared Lamees returning to her half dead and useless and she greatly feared them returning Lamees's corpse to her.

Tears started to flow down April's face as the scary thoughts engulfed her, she had already lost of them, and she couldn't lose the other one. The two people that were stopping her from ending her live mustn't leave before her.

Her thoughts were cut short by the loud opening of the gate to the room she was in, April's eyes widened in fear as she watched the door getting unlocked, her facial expression held that of fear as if she was sure that the person on the other side of the door was there to take her life.

A soldier entered inside with a stoic look on his face, followed closely by someone he forcefully dragged into the room with a tape on her mouth. April's eyes travelled to the person he pulled in and her eyes lit up as her heart rate returned to normal in relief, April opened her hands out wide as she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs.

The soldier placed one of his fingers on his lips, gesturing to them that they shouldn't make noises as he released Lamees who wasted no time before jumping on her friend in an embrace.