The rain in the valley didn’t fall; it hung there, like a cold, gray shroud clinging to the uneven stones of the ancestral estate. Inside the house, the air smelled of stale incense and the metallic scent of unpolished silver. Zainab sat in a corner of the living room; her world was a tapestry of textures and echoes. She recognized the precise creak of the floorboards that announced her father’s arrival: a dull, rhythmic thud that bore the weight of a man who saw his own lineage as a crumbling monument.
She was twenty-one, and in her father Malik’s eyes, she was already a broken glass. To him, her blindness wasn’t a disability; it was a divine insult, a stain on the immaculate reputation of a family that traded in aesthetics and social standing. Her sisters, Aminah and Laila, were the gilded statues in his gallery: glittering eyes and sharp
