Cinnamon Read Free Page A

the clouds, peering down at her. She shut the curtain again and inhaled the scent of her bed sheets.
    â€˜Are you mad? You saw her with your own eyes. She was in his bed. It’s just your subconscious, you stupid bitch. You know what the subconscious can do to a woman disturbed by the unsightly things she’s witnessed.’
    â€˜But I didn’t see anything unsightly. Aliyah is so slight, so soft and she’s got no one to turn to now. She’ll have to live on the streets.’
    â€˜She’s just a pair of hands. Replace her!’ screamed the other woman from inside the mirror.
    Hanan stopped on the tips of her toes, pulling at her hair and shuddering. She tried to close her mouth so that she could no longer hear the words coming from her own voice. She clung to the mirror, concealing the ghostly figure with her palms.
    Hanan retreated from the mirror and hid in her bed, curling her body up into a ball and pulling the covers over her head. Her eyes remained open, staring back from the mirror. Closing them, she began sobbing, her body shaking. She stopped up her ears with the sheets but the voice grew louder.
    â€˜It wasn’t a dream. Run downstairs – his flesh is covered with the traces of her saliva; the imprint of her lips is all over his skin. Look at yourself, you miserable wretch! Cry all you want, your days have turned to nightmares!’
    Hanan threw the covers onto the floor and jumped up on the bed. She stood upright on the mattress, fell and attempted to get up again. In an instant, the bed seemed to become a pool of moving sand and she could barely get her footing before it quaked under her feet and she was on her knees again.
    â€˜Don’t say a word,’ the mirror threatened. ‘Don’t talk to me about torment; I know it far better than you. I keep it stored away here in its velvet boxes. Look at me. Press on my heart, then you’ll know. Do it, before I break you; before I reduce you to splinters. Do you really think you are a living, breathing being? You’re nothing but emptiness and thin air. You never even existed. But if you just do the right thing, you can be free of your agonies. All you have to do is stick the blade into your heart. Isn’t it enticing? Go on, do it.’
    Hanan struck out at her heart in the mirror and gave a loud laugh, delight sketching its way across her face. Suddenly she frowned and pressed her lips together.
    â€˜I won’t do it. I’m not sure of anything.’
    â€˜Liar! You’re lying. Ever since you were a little girl, you’ve lied and faked those pallid smiles, so that everyone would gather round you and applaud. And now where’s it got you? Prisoner to a dirty little maid.’
    â€˜I’m begging you, get away from me! Why are your eyes so yellow? And why is your hair a mass of monstrous snakes?’
    Hanan finally stood up from the pool of shifting sand and took a few heavy steps. She felt like a tiny ant. Everything around her grew longer and wider: the bed was the size of a train, the mirror as big as the sky and the ground below was a pit which she fell deeper into with every step, unable to keep upright. She began to tremble hard, shaking uncontrollably.
    Hanan collapsed onto the mattress.
    â€˜I can’t do it. I miss her! Why did I throw her out like that? Had I lost my mind? Maybe she’ll come back. She’ll knock on the door in a few minutes, for sure. She’s got nowhere to go, nowhere very far from me.’
    â€˜Go on then, burn in your own hell; it’ll eat you up and make her the new mistress of the household. You won’t even know who you are then.’
    Hanan jumped up once more, then struck the mirror, which gave out a loud noise, accompanying the howling wind as it sent the curtains flying into the room. Such a morning wind in the heart of summer seemed strange, she thought.
    â€˜You’re lying. You know I’ve never asked for anything