Chapter 29: A Cruel Twist of Fate
Although they were completely forbidden from travelling through the Ether Wall, Anemo and Remi spent most of their time at Shehrazad’s house. It was the evening of the 24th of October, and the two weeks of rest imposed by Dr Hazem weighed heavily on them. It was, in fact, another kind of mandatory quarantine, a barrier that sorely tested their minds and patience. Every evening, they would gather in the inner courtyard under Cairo’s pale amber sky, watching as the Mirror of Time slowly repaired itself, filling with water.
On one such night, when the silence had almost become a tight, uncomfortable garment, Remi, who was sitting at the black marble table placed between Anemo and Shehrazad to ease the flow of conversation, plucked up her courage. Having first touched the woman’s hand with her pink cat’s tongue, she asked:
‘How did you lose your family, Shehrazad?’
Shehrazad’s hazel-gold gaze grew suddenly misty. She seemed to be searching for a painful truth hidden somewhere beyond the stars. Her voice dropped, cracked, and turned into a barely audible whisper, painfully deep.
‘Nadir, my husband, was also a university professor,’ she began, and Remi felt a cold shiver run down her spine once more. ‘On that fateful morning twelve years ago, he was supposed to take our son, Munir, my daughter-in-law, Amira, and our two grandsons to the International Airport. They were going on holiday to the Swiss Alps, to St Moritz.’
The woman smiled at the happy image in her mind.
‘The children had never seen snow before. My grandsons’ real names were... how could it be otherwise? Samir and Demir. They were twins, and they were the light and joy of the whole family.’
Anemo placed a hand on the grieving woman’s shoulder, while Remi, casting aside any narrative analysis, began to lick the back of Shehrazad’s hand, wishing to take upon herself at least a fraction of that immeasurable pain.
‘Munir had already bought them thick clothes and boots,’ the woman continued. ‘Nadir had brought me a gift from Switzerland that the little ones were fascinated by: that mechanical clock shaped like a tortoise... I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was caught up in a teleconference and... and my husband’s car key suddenly stopped working. It was completely dead, so he discreetly popped his head through the door of the room where I was holding my meeting and gave me a sign. He showed me the key to my jeep, mouthed an “I love you”, blew a kiss into the air, and ran off. Our son, daughter-in-law, and the children were waiting for him eagerly in the street, ready to set off on their first adventure.’
Shehrazad paused for a second, placing her hands one over the other on her chest, pressing gently.
‘I didn’t even say a proper goodbye... I was caught up in that wretched conference when the explosion that brought my entire universe crashing down was heard. A ruthless game of fate, a macabre joke of the gods. That bomb attack was meant for me. I was the one who had discovered things that were supposed to be kept hidden. Me!... With my theories and intuitions that were so hard to explain. Me, the great and important epigraphist, Shehrazad Haziz.’
The woman’s sobs could no longer be held back, nor could her tears. With trembling hands, she searched through the photo archive on her phone and showed her two confidants a group photo—a selfie in which the one holding the camera was Munir, her son.
Remi swallowed hard and, for a moment, felt as if she were in the Twilight Zone and that nothing, absolutely nothing, was impossible. Shehrazad’s daughter-in-law, Amira, looked like her perfect double—Remi's double. The son’s face was the spitting image of the Pharaoh she had seen through the Ether Wall, and the little children looked exactly like those babies she had seen in Shehrazad’s arms in the Mirror of Time.
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