Where Hatred Takes Root

Tears made Nadi's eyes blurry, yet she said nothing. She put Fatimah under the straw hut, then took an old iron spade and started to dig into the soil in the yard.

Nadi had been walking for an hour and a half. Her feet were already blistered and bloody.

When the hole was dug, her hands were also skinned and holding a handful of blood.

However, Nadi had lost the sense of pain. She could no longer feel any ache.

Once, Nadi's mother had told her many times that she wanted to die completely intact, undamaged while sleeping in the soil. She didn't want a gravestone; she desired absolute freedom, to become fertilizer for plants and trees, living on in another way.

Nadi remembered everything.

With tears streaming down her face, she let the memories torture her like countless knives.

Placing her mother at the bottom of the hole, Nadi cupped her hands and began covering her mother's body with one scoop of earth after another.