Enemies in Embrace: Episode 12 – Silence Was No Longer an Option

 

"‘Maybe you can’t love someone and be loyal to a flag that sees them as the enemy,’ he whispered, the desert wind swallowing his voice. In that moment, love felt like both rebellion and prayer."

By  Julia M Cross

The air was thick with dust and burnt rubber. No one spoke for miles. Father Elias drove fast, his eyes never leaving the road. Every time we passed a truck or dipped around a curve, I flinched. I held the twins close in the back seat, my arms tight around them, their soft heads buried in my chest. Yousef sat beside me, bleeding from a gash near his temple. His fingers gripped mine like they were the only thing still tethering him to this world.

We didn’t stop until we crossed into Jordan under the black veil of night. This time, we didn’t take the checkpoint. We took the desert.

Amira had arranged everything. A Bedouin guide met us twenty kilometers east of Jericho, leading us down winding dirt trails where goats and landmines once shared space. The car couldn’t follow. We hiked the last leg on foot, each of us carrying a child and a bag. I felt my calves tear from the climb, my lungs burn from the dry wind. But I didn’t complain. Not once. I just kept going. Because he was next to me.

And I would follow him anywhere.

By dawn, we reached an abandoned village near the Jordan River, a place of broken bricks and shattered windows, long since left to ghosts and smugglers. Our guide gave us water and a warning: “Stay three days. Then move. The desert talks, and people listen.”

We thanked him, and he vanished over the hill, disappearing like smoke.

Inside one of the houses, we made a bed of blankets on the floor. The children fell asleep immediately. I washed Yousef’s wound with water from a plastic jug, tearing strips of my underskirt to use as bandages.

He winced. “You always did have a dramatic flair.”

“Hold still or I’ll make it worse,” I whispered.

He chuckled weakly. “Marry me again.”

I paused. “You’re delirious.”

“I mean it. In front of someone this time. Let’s make it official. Somewhere with trees. And no guns.”

I kissed his forehead. “If we survive this, I’ll wear a white dress made from the bandages you bled on.”

He grinned. “I’d love that.”

We stayed hidden for two days.

On the third morning, Father Elias left. He had to return to the monastery. We didn’t argue. He had risked more than enough for us.

“I’ll pray for you,” he said, embracing me like a father saying goodbye to his daughter.

Then he turned to Yousef. “You’re not done fighting.”

“I know,” Yousef said. “I just don’t know what I’m fighting for anymore.”

Father Elias looked toward the children. “Them.”

And then he was gone.

The hours moved like sand in a windstorm—slow, yet never still. We cooked rice over a camping stove, cleaned the wounds with boiled herbs, and tried to keep the children from crying too loudly. Yousef read them old Arabic poems from a book someone had left behind. I sang Hebrew lullabies I hadn’t sung since Tel Aviv. Our languages danced together in that tiny house, like lovers that didn’t care which side of the wall they were born on.

But the world outside cared.

On the fourth day, the radio crackled to life. It had been silent since we arrived, the batteries nearly dead. But that morning, as Yousef fiddled with it under the open window, a voice came through.

“—reporting now that Dr. Yousef Darwish, a former intern at Rafidia Hospital, is believed to have escaped custody in connection with alleged subversive activity. Sources within the Authority describe him as radicalized and dangerous—”

He clicked it off.

“What do they mean, ‘radicalized’?” I asked, feeling my chest go cold.

“They need a story,” he said. “They can’t admit they locked me away without charges.”

I sat beside him. “And me?”

“They won’t mention you.”

“They already have. I know it.”

He looked at me. “Do you regret it?”

I shook my head. “Every second has been worth it. But I’m scared.”

He wrapped his arms around me. “So am I.”

That night, I woke to find him sitting on the doorstep, smoking.

He hadn’t smoked since we left Nablus.

I joined him, wrapping a shawl around my shoulders. “Talk to me.”

“I can’t stop thinking about what my mother said,” he murmured.

“Which part?”

“She said I wasn’t just marrying a woman. I was marrying a war.”

I stared out at the moonlit hills. “Do you think she was right?”

“I don’t know anymore. I thought I could have both—my country and my heart. But maybe you can’t love someone and be loyal to a flag that sees them as the enemy.”

“I never asked you to pick.”

“You didn’t have to. The world did.”

Silence stretched between us, painful and honest.

“I want to go back,” he said finally.

“What?”

“Not to Ramallah. But somewhere public. I want to speak. I want to tell our story. Not just in letters.”

“Yousef—”

“Let them come. Let them hear it. Maybe it changes nothing. Maybe it changes everything.”

I shook my head. “If you speak, they’ll find you.”

“They already are.”

He stubbed the cigarette out. “But I’d rather die telling the truth than live hiding it.”

The next day, we found a phone.

It was old, buried in the glovebox of an abandoned truck by the well. The signal was weak, but we climbed a hill, held it to the sky, and prayed. It connected.

He made one call.

To a journalist he’d once treated during a skirmish. Her name was Dalia. She was Israeli. And brave.

He asked her to meet us in Madaba.

“She’s coming,” he said after he hung up.

“Are you sure we can trust her?”

“She trusted me with her life once. I’m trusting her with mine now.”

We left the ruins at sunset. Packed what little we had. Wrapped the children in scarves. And set off again, not knowing what waited ahead.

But knowing that silence was no longer an option.

 

 

 

From the romance series by Julia M Cross. Next episode releases Sunday  at 8 PM.