Saint Alif
an excerpt

However, what struck her as the oddest was the level of comfort and homeliness that permeated even the blackened rugs and clay pots that filled every nook and cranny. No matter how poor these people were, they were happy, they had a beautiful home. She looked around the room and took it all in for the first time. Alif tried to think of her own home and found that she couldn’t. The memory wasn’t there. She drew a complete blank, as if someone had taken to their knees and scrubbed and white washed away everything she had of memories of home. Again fear welled up, an emotion that was becoming all too familiar with her lately.
She struggled to remember something, anything. She let out a saddened moan and closed her eyes. ‘Where am I?’ She thought to herself, ‘What happened, how did I get here?’
And finally she asked herself the question that she was afraid to ask all along, ‘Who am I?” she let her eyes slide over the roof and walls of the little house as she struggled to remember.
Alif
That word stuck out so strongly in her mind that she was sure that it meant her. Alif. That is me. That must be me. Alif. That word brings comfort, and healing. It is so familiar that just saying it in her mind brought her a sense of something from her past, something to hang onto. She clung to it and repeated it over and over and smiled a tiny smile feeling strangely comforted by the very sound.