Page 87 of Kiss Her Goodbye

I love you.From the beginning to the end to the beginning again.Civilizations fail.Countries die.People pass.And yet a parent’s love, hope, dreams…

I love you, Zahra.

And in that instant, I let you go.

Because my sins shouldn’t be your punishment.

Someday, I hope you’ll understand.As my mother taught me, so I will teach you:

You descend from warriors.

There are good men, amazing men, exceptional males out there, but too many…

They seek to erase us from existence.To force us to disappear within our own communities.To make us become invisible to even ourselves.

Never let them win.

Your voice has value.Your heart sings.Your mind glows.Your strength beckons.

I bow to you, one tired fighter to the next.

And I hope you will understand what I have to do next.

Two halves of one whole.

I finally understand.And there are things I must do.

I can only offer you this, a parent’s lament to all the children out there:

I’m sorry.

I love you.

I’m sorry.

I love you.

CHAPTER 33

ALIAH IS SURROUNDED BY Asea of graph paper when I return.At a glance, I can tell she has duplicated the five-by-five grids provided by Zahra, each sheet bearing a raft of scribbles in the margin.

“Do you know what magic squares are?”she asks upon my entrance.

“Not a clue.”

“Your handsome friend is correct; they are puzzles where the sum of the digits across rows, down columns, and through diagonals are the same.From that regard, these are magic squares—the numbers always add up to sixty.There’s no way such repetition can be by chance.”

“What does that mean?Is the number sixty significant?”

“Maybe, but here’s the problem, your friend is also correct—a true magic square doesn’t have any repeated numbers, and these ones do.Which, apparently, classifies them as trivial.But given everything that’s going on, they don’t feel so trivial to me.”

I peer over her shoulder, studying the laborious process she’s been going through adding up every single combination of numbers.She’s right; there’s no way this kind of perfectly synchronized addition can be by chance.But what does it mean?

I pick up a piece of graph paper, study the copied puzzle fora bit.If it’s a code, by whom and for whom?And what does this five-by-five grid of numbers signify?

“Do we know how Zahra learned to draw this?”I ask.

“She says her mother learned them from her mother, a gift passed from generation to generation.”