Enemies in Embrace: Episode 23 – Before the World Told Us We Couldn’t Be

 

“Even the pain?” he asked.

“Especially the pain,” I whispered, because it meant we were real.

 

By Julia M Cross

 

The next morning, the sun burned over Amman like a secret exposed. I lay awake beside Yousef, the thin sheet tangled around our legs, the air conditioner clicking like it, too, was out of breath. He was still sleeping—his chest rising slowly, his lips slightly parted. I stared at him, counting each breath like it might be his last. I was afraid to blink. Afraid that if I did, he might disappear.

I got up without waking him, tiptoeing across the small hotel room floor to the window. The city looked golden from this height, but under the glow was a restlessness I could feel in my bones. We weren’t safe yet. We had fled Gaza, crossed through tunnels and blood and lies, but the world hadn’t forgotten us. We were still fugitives from more than borders. We were fugitives from memory.

I turned on the tap in the bathroom. The water ran rusty for a few seconds before it turned clear. I washed my face and stared into the mirror. The reflection looked like Leah Ben-Ami but didn’t feel like her. My curls were frizzed from heat. My lips were cracked. There were faint bruises on my hips from where I had slept on uneven floors, bumps on my arms from mosquito bites, shadows under my eyes from weeks of nightmares. But my eyes—they weren’t afraid anymore. Just tired. Just done with pretending to be anyone but the woman who chose Yousef.

He was awake when I came back. His eyes met mine, sleepy but alert.

“I was dreaming,” he said softly.

“Of what?”

“You and the boys. You were at the beach. I was watching from the water, too far to reach you, but close enough to see your smile. It felt like home.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. “Maybe one day we can have that again.”

He reached out, brushing my thigh with his hand. “We will.”

I wanted to believe him.

But by noon, belief got harder to hold on to.

Nadav called. His voice was clipped.

“You need to leave that hotel today. They’re asking questions. I don’t know if they traced the van or one of the guards talked, but word is out. Someone’s looking for you.”

“Do you know who?” I asked.

“Israeli intelligence. Maybe even internal Palestinian sources. I don’t know yet.”

“What about the boys?”

“They’re safe. Still with the host family in Eilat. You can’t go back there yet. Not until we know who’s tracking who.”

I pressed the phone tight to my ear. “So what do we do now?”

“You disappear again. I’ll send you coordinates. You’ll go to a safehouse in Ajloun. It’s in the hills. Quiet. Nobody will find you there.”

“And then?”

“And then we wait. Maybe for a week. Maybe a month.”

Yousef was beside me by the time I hung up. I didn’t need to explain. His eyes told me he heard everything.

Ajloun felt like exile. It was green and still, too peaceful for a heart like mine, which beat like a bird trapped in a cage. The safehouse was made of stone, the walls thick enough to block phone signals and thoughts alike. There was a fireplace in the corner, a small garden out back with thyme and basil and lemons. But the silence clung to us. We whispered even when alone. We tiptoed like ghosts. Every sound outside felt like a boot, a knock, an ending.

One night, while Yousef was sleeping, I opened the window and climbed onto the rooftop. The stars stretched wide above me, cold and ancient. I hugged my knees and let the breeze slap my skin.

I missed my sons.

I missed knowing what day it was.

I missed not being hunted.

I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me until they stopped just a breath away.

“You’re cold,” Yousef said, draping his jacket over my shoulders.

I didn’t answer.

“I used to come here as a child,” he said, sitting beside me. “My father took me hiking in the Ajloun Forest once. I was eight. I remember thinking the trees here must be older than the wars.”

“Maybe they are.”

He looked at me. “Are you angry at me?”

“No.”

He waited.

“I’m angry at the world,” I whispered. “I’m angry that loving you cost me everything.”

He nodded. “Me too.”

“I lost my parents. My country. My name. Sometimes I think I lost myself.”

“You didn’t lose me.”

I looked at him. “But what if that’s not enough?”

He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “If it’s not, then we’ll build something more. A new name. A new home. A new way to live.”

I leaned against him.

“If we get caught,” I said, “what happens?”

“They’ll take you back to Israel. Maybe put you on trial.”

“And you?”

“They won’t give me a trial.”

That silence was heavier than anything.

We left Ajloun two days later.

Not because Nadav told us to.

But because the silence started to feel like a grave.

We took a car, moving only at night, zigzagging toward the Syrian border. Nadav’s plan had changed again. Syria was unstable, but there were places there where no one asked questions, where records vanished. He had people. Contacts. Promises.

I didn’t believe any of them.

But I followed because there was nowhere else to go.

We reached the border checkpoint outside Daraa just before dawn. The man at the gate looked at our papers and squinted.

“These are old,” he said.

“They’re what we have,” Yousef replied, steady.

The man shrugged and waved us through.

And just like that, we crossed into a new kind of exile.

The Syrian desert spread before us like a riddle. Nothing but dust and wind and sky.

We drove for hours, only stopping to refuel or rest. At one point, the engine overheated, and we sat under the shade of the car hood, sipping warm water and watching the mirage on the horizon twist into shapes that looked like cities and people and hope.

“You know what I wish?” I said suddenly.

“What?”

“I wish we could go back to Fontainebleau.”

He laughed. “The hotel?”

“The moment. The pool. Before all this.”

“Before we became us?”

“Before the world told us we couldn’t be.”

He took my hand. “I wouldn’t undo it. Not one second.”

Even the pain?

Especially the pain. Because it meant we were real.

Later that night, in a small roadside inn outside Suwayda, we made love again. It wasn’t hurried. It wasn’t desperate. It was quiet. Intentional. Two people touching to remember they still could.

His hands moved over me like prayer. My breath caught in my throat like a secret too sacred to say out loud.

And when it was over, I cried.

Not from sadness.

But from release.

He held me.

We fell asleep like that, our bodies folded into each other like pages of the same story.

When morning came, I knew something had changed.

The air was different.

Something was coming.

But I didn’t know what.

 

 

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