Enemies in Embrace: Episode 17 – No Road Home

 

"Every sound felt like a warning, every shadow like a trap. Yet even as fear crawled beneath my skin, I knew that running was no longer about survival—it was about protecting the only love that still had breath."

By Julia M Cross

 

The white van didn’t move for hours.

It just sat there—still, humming, its windows darkened like the eyes of someone waiting to pounce. From our place behind the goat pen, I could make out the blur of someone inside, a silhouette leaning slightly forward in the front seat, elbows resting on the steering wheel. They didn’t knock on the door. They didn’t come searching. They were waiting.

I crouched lower in the grass, gripping the twins’ shoulders tighter as Yousef whispered next to me.

“They’ve already made up their mind,” he said, his voice cold. “They’re just waiting for a clean shot—or for us to panic.”

“What do we do?” I asked.

“We stay invisible.”

But how could we?

We had two five-year-old boys who didn’t know the meaning of silent. We had no weapons. No allies left. No truck. No plans. Only this crumbling old hilltop with fig trees and too many ghosts.

Yousef took the boys back into the stone shed while I stayed behind to watch. I wanted to feel brave. But I didn’t. I felt small. Like prey. Like I was back in Tel Aviv the night I told Eliav I was leaving him, standing at the edge of my parents’ porch with a suitcase in one hand and a fractured heart in the other. That same feeling was in my chest now—that awful, trembling knowledge that the life I’d built could collapse in one scream.

I waited. And the van waited.

When the sun dropped behind the ridge, the van finally moved.

It rolled backward slowly, like someone trying not to wake a sleeping house. Then it vanished into the trees. No headlights. No sound.

I didn’t breathe until the crickets started again.

“They’re coming back,” Yousef said when I returned. “Tomorrow. Or maybe next week. But they know.”

“We have to run again.”

“We can’t. There’s no road. No ride. And the boys—”

“I won’t let them take our children,” I said sharply. “Not now. Not ever.”

“I know.”

We sat in the dark for a long time. No candles. No talking. Just silence and the occasional rustle of leaves against the stone walls.

At midnight, Maysa knocked on the shed door.

She didn’t wait for us to answer. She stepped inside, lit a single oil lamp, and stared at me with eyes like winter.

“You’ve brought hell to my doorstep,” she said calmly.

“We didn’t ask for this,” I said.

“You didn’t ask. But you never stopped it either.”

“What do you want us to do?” Yousef asked.

“Leave. Now. Tonight. While you still can.”

“We have no transport.”

“Then walk.”

“It’s twenty kilometers to the next village,” I said. “Through mountains. With children.”

“Better than coffins.”

She turned and walked out.

We packed in silence.

Two blankets. Half a jar of honey. Flatbread wrapped in a dish towel. A knife, just in case. I tied a scarf over my head and stuffed my curls underneath. Yousef carried both boys, one on each hip, until they fell asleep, then we took turns cradling them like sacks of flour.

The forest path was narrow and slick with dew. Moonlight filtered through branches above, casting strange shadows on the trail. Every time an owl called or a twig snapped, I froze, sure that someone was behind us.

But the night stayed quiet.

Around three a.m., we reached a fork in the road where the trail split—one leading down into a valley, the other curling higher into the hills.

“Which way?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

We listened.

From far behind us came the faint hum of an engine.

No headlights. But something was coming.

We turned uphill.

By dawn, my feet were bleeding. Yousef had to carry one of the boys on his back while I dragged the other beside me. The bread was gone. My arms ached. My knees burned. But I didn’t stop.

We reached a small ravine just as the sun broke over the ridge. There was an old concrete culvert half-buried beneath a fallen tree. It wasn’t much—but it was shelter.

We collapsed inside.

I held the twins between us and whispered lullabies my mother used to sing when I was five. Songs from Shabbat dinners. From summer picnics. Songs about light and bread and hope.

Yousef leaned against the far wall, blood leaking from his sock.

“Let me see,” I said.

He shook his head. “Later.”

“You’re limping.”

“We’re all limping.”

“No. You’re bleeding.”

“I said—later.”

I didn’t argue. Not because I agreed. But because I knew his silence was louder than anything I could say.

He didn’t want to fall apart in front of the boys.

Neither did I.

They slept most of the day. We dozed in shifts. And when the sun began to dip again, I woke to find a man crouching at the culvert’s mouth.

He was young. Late twenties. Wore a university hoodie and dusty sneakers. His face was tired, but not cruel.

“Benamirs?” he asked.

I didn’t answer.

“I saw you on the video. My uncle lives in Irbid. He said you might come this way. He sent me to look.”

Yousef stirred behind me.

“What do you want?” he asked hoarsely.

“Nothing. Just to help. I have a car. Not far.”

“Who sent you?”

“My uncle. He runs a safehouse in Mafraq. He says you’re heroes.”

I nearly laughed. Heroes? We were two fugitives with hungry kids and a knife too dull to peel a cucumber.

But we followed him anyway.

His car was hidden beneath a tarp near a shepherd’s fence. A dented Hyundai with cracked leather seats and a windshield sticker that read Hope is a Weapon.

We drove in silence.

Mafraq wasn’t far. Maybe two hours. But it felt like days. The boys cried. Then slept. Then woke again with dry mouths and heavy eyes.

At the safehouse, we were given food. Clean clothes. Antibiotic ointment for our feet. And finally, a bed that didn’t feel like a coffin.

We stayed there for three nights.

It was the first time since Fontainebleau that we heard laughter not our own. The other families—Syrians, Yemenis, Sudanese—all had stories. Some worse than ours. Some too awful to speak aloud. But they smiled. They shared. They handed us life in cracked bowls and chipped mugs, and it was enough.

On the fourth morning, Yousef woke me with a whisper.

“They found us.”

“How do you know?”

“They sent a message. Through one of the kids. A paper slipped under the mattress.”

He handed it to me.

It read: Your love started a fire. Now let’s see how far it burns.

That night, we made the hardest decision we’d made so far.

We would separate.

I would take the boys to the Jordan River border crossing. Try to claim asylum using my Israeli papers and the children’s mixed status. Yousef would stay behind. Not forever. Just until the heat died down.

“We’ll reunite in Amman,” he said, gripping my hands so tight my fingers went numb. “One month. I’ll find you.”

“What if you can’t?”

“I will.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know I love you.”

And that had to be enough.

The goodbye was quiet. No sobbing. No dramatic kiss. Just the sound of footsteps in gravel and the aching space where his hand used to hold mine.

 

 

 

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