Shadows Across the Strait
Epigraph "It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well." — René Descartes
The Decision
The first thing I remember clearly is the drought. It came like a thief, silently at first, stealing from our wells and fields. The cracks in the earth widened every day, and the air reeked of desperation and dust. Baba would linger at the field’s edge, his gaze fixed on the horizon as if demanding a debt unpaid. He held himself like this only when he thought no one saw—arms locked across his chest, jaw clenched tight, defiant against the silence. I used to wonder what he was waiting for.
“You know, Idris, the rain doesn’t care about your prayers,” Baba had said one evening, his voice low and clipped, as we sat together under the pomegranate tree in the courtyard. I was kneeling, trying to fix a broken sandal strap, the leather fraying like everything else in our lives. “It comes when it wants. Or it doesn’t.”
He was looking at the sky again, the fading orange light casting shadows across his face. Baba always spoke like that, in riddles wrapped in anger. I knew he wasn’t mad at me, not really. It was the drought. The empty fields. The debts piling up like the dry stalks of maize we couldn’t harvest.
“Maybe it listens to someone else,” I said quietly, not looking up. My voice wavered just enough for Baba to notice.
He turned to me sharply. “And who might that be?” He almost sounded amused, but there was something darker in his tone.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Someone with more... more water, I guess.”
Baba’s laugh was sharp and short, like the snap of a dry twig. “Water isn’t a god, Idris. It doesn’t bow to anyone. That’s why we’re leaving. This land—it’s as dead as your sandal.”
I froze. We’d talked about it before—leaving. But it had always been in whispers, in the spaces between silences, never said outright like this. “You mean it?” I asked, my fingers fumbling with the strap.
He knelt before me, his hand settling on my shoulder with a weight that felt both steadying and heavy, as if it carried something unsaid. His eyes, always so stern, softened just enough to scare me. Baba never looked soft. “Do you think I’d gamble your future on a dream if I didn’t mean it?”
The days after that conversation passed in a blur of whispered plans and stolen glances. We didn’t tell Mama or the little ones. Not yet. Baba said they didn’t need to carry the weight of it, not until it was time. He worked long hours in the field, though the crops were all but gone. It was a way to keep the neighbours from asking questions. People talk in Rawajeh, especially when the fields are as empty as our bellies.
One night, as we sat eating what little Mama could stretch—a thin soup of lentils and dried mint—I caught Baba watching me. His spoon hung motionless above the bowl, suspended in some distant thought. The flickering glow of the oil lamp carved shadows into his face, etching the lines deeper, as if the years themselves leaned closer to whisper their weight.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. My siblings were too busy slurping their soup to notice.
Baba shook his head, setting the spoon down with deliberate care. “Just thinking.”
“About Spain?” I whispered, even though Mama was right there.
His lips pressed into a thin line. He didn’t answer, not directly. “The sea,” he said finally, almost to himself. “It’s a cruel mistress. She doesn’t bargain, Idris. She takes what she wants.”
I didn’t understand then what he meant. I only knew that Baba’s silences scared me more than his words.
The night we left, I didn’t sleep. Baba didn’t either. We sat by the door, waiting for the bus to El Jadida. In the other room, Mama was crying. Quiet. Like she didn’t want us to hear. She didn’t say goodbye. Baba said it was better that way. I didn’t think so.
“It’s only for a little while. Right?” I said. My voice sounded strange, like it wasn’t mine.
Baba looked at me. His eyes were dark. Heavy. Like he’d been carrying something too long. “One day, you’ll understand,” he said.
“I understand now,” I snapped. The words came too quick, too clean. My gut clenched with them.
Baba’s eyes held me. Steady. Unwavering. He shook his head once, slow as a clock ticking down. Then he leaned back, the wall taking his weight like it knew him. His mouth twitched at the edges, as if it wanted to smile but forgot how.
“No,” he said. Just that. Flat and final.
He breathed out. The sound low and drawn, pulled from a place beyond the lungs, someplace darker, worn and hollowed.
“You’re too young,” he said, “to know the weight of a thing like this. Too young to know what it costs to carry it.”
He paused. Looked at me again. “But you will.”
The bus growled to a stop as the first pale light of dawn slipped over the village rooftops. Baba’s hand found my shoulder as we stepped aboard, his fingers pressing firm into my bone. “Keep your head up,” he murmured, his voice a low command. “No one needs to know we’re leaving.”
I nodded. The words caught in my throat, but my eyes gave me away. The bus jolted forward, and I turned; I couldn’t help myself. I turned, just once, and looked back at the house. The pomegranate tree stood there, still and quiet, its branches unmoving save for the faint stirring of leaves in the breeze, as if it waited for something long gone, something it already knew would never return.
The morning light hit them just so, and they flickered like bits of something fragile. Something I wanted to call hope.
Baba didn’t look back. Not once.
The Departure
The bus station wasn’t a station so much as a forgotten scar of asphalt, its surface split and faded underfoot, yellow lines stretched thin like memories of order long gone. The air carried the bitter tang of diesel and something sourer still—like the ghost of a promise never kept. Baba stood next to me, shoulders squared against the coming dawn, his head high in a posture that defied the world to see him as anything but whole. I tried to mimic him, to match his resolve, but my hands betrayed me, trembling until I buried them deep in my pockets.