In the Language of Miracles by Rajia Hassib Page A

subdued anger. “I have not slaved for twenty years to have my son insult me this way, tell me he would take loans because I cannot afford to pay his tuition. Tell me I am not able to provide for my own son like my father did for me and like his father did for him before that.”
    â€œI meant no insult,
Baba
. There’s nothing wrong—”
    â€œYou two have the nerve to sit here and discuss my finances with me, tell me how to run my business. Tell me I should cut my losses, pack up and move before we go broke. Is this the respect you show your father?”
    â€œWe did not mean—” Fatima started.
    â€œEnough!” Samir yelled.
    They never discussed this matter again.
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    Lying in bed, Ehsan’s and Fatima’s whispers still seeping into his room, Khaled wished his father had been less stubborn, had truly considered the possibility of moving away. The angst that haunted him in the few months following his brother’s death now returned with a vengeance,filling his head with images of his father drawing attention to himself again during Natalie’s upcoming memorial service, promising Khaled that they were all plummeting toward a rerun of the hostilities that had plagued their lives a year earlier. Again Khaled wished they had moved away. Tossing and turning in bed, he wished he could go to a new school where Natalie’s friends did not stop and glare at him in the hallways, where he did not have to listen to her former teachers speak to him without making eye contact, as if they were addressing an ethereal being floating in the air somewhere between where he sat and his teachers stood, or as if they were intent on gazing into space for fear that locking eyes with him would turn them all into stone. He wished he lived in a town where patrol cars did not occasionally trail him as he walked home from school, where he could walk down the road and fear nothing and no one, be menaced by no one, perhaps even be able to interact with people without the constant presence of his brother’s memory between him and everyone else, a barrier too high for anyone to climb over. He wished, more than anything, that he could talk to Brittany about all of this. But of course he could not.
    Grabbing his laptop, he sat up in bed and navigated to her Facebook page. She had posted new pictures today, and he flipped slowly through them, savoring each one, grateful, as always, for her habit of daily updates. When they first met in person a few months back, he confessed to keeping track of her photos. He had watched her as he said so, his heart pounding, afraid that she would view him as a stalker, that her eyes would mirror the panic he felt. But she had laughed, tilting her head back, and he had studied her long neck, the short black hair with its one purple streak, the many hoops that adorned her ear, and had realized that the five years separating them were an immense stretch, long enough to witness the life and death of generations of migrating monarchs, long enough to allow for a friendship only slightly marred by his obvious infatuation. He had wanted to confess more, to tell hereverything he felt she needed to know about him, but he could not. Looking back, he sensed the stupidity of confessing to browsing photos she had put up for everyone’s perusal but withholding other, drastically more important pieces of information. He had feared she would be scared away. Now he knew that she probably would not have been—but, after months of holding back, a late confession seemed riskier than ever.
    He clicked on the message button, stared at the new window that showed her name in the recipient box. He did not know what he could possibly say to her, but he felt a need to say something, to know that he could communicate with her, if he tried. He browsed back to an article about monarch tracking he had read earlier that morning, and then copied its link in the