Abscondence by Sandra Carlson Khalil

Clara and I spent that first afternoon, without Elie, wandering the narrow streets of the Khan al-Khalili market, soaking in the sights and smells of Cairo. I had expected the market to be filled with street vendors, but Clara and I walked almost unnoticed, admiring the wooden ouds that swung like tree branches from the awnings of several shops and peering into buckets of colored spices.

It was then, in that quiet state of half-looking, half-wandering, that we first saw the boy. He was no older than Clara—ten or eleven—with bare feet and a grin that took up half of his dirty face. It wasn’t hard to know what he wanted, so I shook my head, but he held out his hands anyway. I knew he meant it as a reminder of everything he didn’t have, but all I saw in his empty palms was everything I did.

<><><>

Initially Elie wanted the three of us to visit his mother in Beirut, but I had suggested that perhaps, this time, he could go alone. He would be able to spend more time with her by himself. Instead, I proposed, I could take our daughter to Cairo.

What will I tell my mother? he asked, though I knew whatever he said, my mother-in-law would come to her own conclusions. Not long after we married, she’d told him about a distant uncle who’d married an American woman, who, some years later, absconded to America with their two children. The same, it seemed, would happen to her son.

Tell her Clara and I haven’t seen the pyramids, I suggested, and he nodded. He suspected nothing. Unlike his mother, my husband didn’t think I would ever leave him.

<><><>

Outside the market, we slipped into a waiting taxi, and I turned to see the boy standing outside my window. But he was no longer smiling, and as we pulled from the curb, his lips seemed to tremble and curl, a different boy now. He began to jog beside us, then lunged and slapped my window hard.

Clara screamed—Mom!—and I watched the driver’s eyes dart from deadlocked traffic to the boy, and back again, before he began to shout, jabbing his finger, then trying to shoo him away with the flick of his hand.

Again and again, he slapped my window. He can’t hurt us here, I whispered to Clara and sure enough, we watched him turn and run towards the market, but instead of disappearing inside, he reached for something tucked behind a column and ran towards us again, his arm cocked behind his head.

<><><>

Before the boy appeared, Clara had wanted to buy her father one of the swinging ouds. As I studied the curve of her upturned face in the shine of its walnut wood, I knew that she was right: he—neither a musician nor an oud player, but someone accustomed to being surrounded by beautiful things—would love it. For a moment, I thought about it. I thought about going back, about carrying the instrument, wrapped, through the Cairo airport, watching its funny shape disappear between the black flaps of the security scanner. It wasn’t its bulk or fragility that dissuaded me, but the thought of watching Elie cut open the bubble wrap, his face expanding with hope as he mistook the gift—from Clara but really, he would think, from me—as a sign of something I no longer felt.

We had met online, the product of an algorithm that had churned its way through thousands of matches in the Chicagoland area, and brought us, inconceivably, together: he, a student nearing the end of his study abroad; and me, cycling resolutely from one lover to the next, as if searching for something unnameable. I fell quickly in love with him, the way his eyes shone with all the dreams he had, dreams enough, I thought, for both of us.

Before we left America, I squirreled away his class ring and watched his face break into a smile a few days later when he read the words I had engraved inside it: endless possibility. Now, I wonder if there was a part of me that knew, even then, that the words weren’t so much for him, but for me. He had given me everything I thought I wanted, but now that I had it, I still rung silent and hollow, an empty bell.

I had tugged sharply at Clara’s hand, pulling her away from the instrument—and towards a plan of which she still knew nothing. Come, I promised her, we’ll find something else.

<><><>

That night, when Elie called, I didn’t tell him about the boy. I felt protective of our day. I clung to it, not quite a secret but the beginning of something that would be.

Do you miss me? he asked before we hung up, and as if on cue, I heard his mother in the background and his hushed voice as he turned to answer her.

<><><>

That afternoon, after the rock hit, the window was a spider that unfurled, its multitude of legs growing until they met the confines of the window frame. I clung to my daughter and watched the boy, distorted through broken glass, turn and run. You have all of that, I had heard him say from somewhere deep inside of me, and still it’s not enough.

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SANDRA CARLSON KHALIL — Sandra grew up in Minnesota, but has called the Middle East her home for over a decade. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Forge, The Stonecoast Review, and SmokeLong Quarterly, where she was a finalist for the SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction 2024. You can find her work at www.sandracarlsonkhalil.com.

Art by JOANA SOLÀ — Joana (@sisaliks) is an illustrator from Barcelona, Spain. With a background in engineering, she didn’t start taking art seriously until she entered art school in her late 20s, and has now made her long time dream of working as a full-time artist a reality. Her love for sci-fi and fantasy started young, reading her father’s books of classic authors and never stopped. Her art focuses on cool, relatable, and interesting female characters, concepts with an edgy vibe, and often features eerie or dark themes.