Reconciliation with the present

The drive home seemed to take far longer for Assad. All those memories of the past that he had struggled to repress for the past 4 years, came rushing back in full ****. ****..... destruction..... wailing mothers.... molested children.... dead fathers.... It was too much.

What Mariam said was coming back to haunt him. Was his behavior towards his daughter really like those ISIS scum who took away the lives and freedoms of their own people?

And that's when it hits him. The faces of embarrassment, of regret, of silent rage, of desperation and of abandoned hope that he had seen before, that gave him sleepless nights....he had seen them even after coming to the US. He had seen all of those faces on his daughter, on his beloved Zara. The one for whom he would sacrifice everything to be with. Somewhere, as the years went by, fighting an ungodly war, he lost focus of his main reason to live. He became an automaton during the final years, blindly following and executing orders. His empathy decreased with time. He was but a shadow of the good man he once was. And he feared, it might have already been too late to reconcile with his daughter.

Assad takes a deep breath. He knows what he has to do. And Zara may never forgive him for his actions, but he must let her know how much he loves her.

Assad rings up his wife.

----Italicized conversation is in Arabic----

"Assad? Everything okay my dear?" Mariam says in a low whisper.

"I think so. I'm almost home. Please keep the back door unlocked. I don't want the kids to see me bloody."

"Why? What happened? Why are you bloody?" she says again in a whisper with a more insistent tone.

"I'll tell you all about it. Just keep the back door unlocked. I'll be home before you know it."

Assad hangs up the call. 5 minutes later he pulls up into the driveway and quickly gets out of the car and into the backyard where he finds Mariam waiting for him with the door opened.

Her face is one of shock and concern as she covers her mouth in horror. Assad white shirt was soaked with dried dark reddish brown blood and so was his face and hands.

"Before you say anything, it's not my blood. Ibrahim Abu Al-Qurashi. John had captured him for me so that I could....enact my vengeance upon him."

"Is he..."

"I've sent him to hell."

Assad takes out the envelope from his trouser pocket and hands it over to her. The envelope has a few bloody stains on it as well. Mariam gingerly holds the envelope and looks inside the see the money inside it. She quickly closes it and gives a sigh.

"Assad, this is the last time you do something like this, EVER. We came here to start a new life. A life free from the pains and hardships of our land. I have just found you and I don't want to lose you again," she says with tears in her eyes that also had a bit of justified anger behind them.

"You won't. This is the last time for me as well. I've wanted to bury this demon from my past for a long time. It... felt like I had never left that place, but now.... I'm ready to come home. I'm ready to come home to you, my love. I'm ready to come home to my daughter."

Mariam gives a teary eyed smile to her husband. "Welcome back, light of my life. Please never leave me again."

"I won't."

Assad goes to hug his wife but she rebuffs him. "Go get a shower first and put your clothes in the laundry. And then....sleep in our bedroom later instead of in the basement like you usually do."

Assad nods and stealthily heads to the bathroom to clean up.