I didn't realize then that women like her walked on roads of embers. Their life was an endless wait for the husband kidnapped by the police, the missing brother, the son who had been imprisoned. Women who could not sleep because of the fire in their chest. Ali's mother was one of those women, battered by fate.
You know how it is when you arrive in a new place and feel like you don't belong there? That hesitation to recon with a new geography. That knowledge that this place is not mine, these ways of talking are not mine, these silences are not mine, this etiquette is not mine.So many new things to absorb. And the place also takes a little time to accept the new person. Often you have to meet the place on its own terms. Sometimes you have to work hard to earn your little corner in it. Till that place become yours, till you find your own equilibrium, there will be a gap between you and the place.