I Left My Husband Bleeding, and the Mob Boss Said Good novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: A Ring of Dough
On Holy Saturday, Warda Sarafa came to my kitchen at two o'clock with a sack of flour on her hip.
I had told her the terms on the phone.
One afternoon, in my kitchen, and out by dusk.
Nobody spoke of Yousif.
She had said yes to all of it, in Chaldean, without a pause.
She stood in the back doorway with her black coat buttoned to the chin and looked at the counters.
Every flat surface held a tray.
There were dates stewed to paste, bowls of dough, rolls of semolina, and a baking sheet of finished kleicha in rows, golden and scored.
"Nahla," she said.
"Mama Warda."
"You are making enough for forty."
"I'm making enough for the whole street," I said.
"Good."
Yara came around the corner of the pantry in her bare feet, with her red cup in both hands.
She stopped.
She looked at the old woman in black, and at the flour, and at me.
"Yara," I said. "This is your Tayta."
Yara considered her for a long time.
Then she walked up to Warda, took hold of her wrist with both hands, and bit it.
Warda looked down at the little row of marks on her skin.
She did not pull her hand away.
"Her mother did that," she said, in Chaldean, in a shaking voice. "To everyone. For three years."
"Yara," I said. "No."
"No," Yara agreed, and bit her again, softer.
Warda began to laugh.
I had never heard her laugh.
It was dry and cracked and went on for a long time, with her free hand pressed to her mouth.
Marwan stood in the kitchen door with a flatbread in his fist and watched his sister bite her grandmother.
His face did something I had not seen it do.
"Good," he said, in English, helplessly.
"Karam," said Warda, wiping her eyes.
"Marwan."
"Marwan." She tried the name slowly. "You will eat standing up in my granddaughter's house?"
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Left My Husband Bleeding, and the Mob Boss Said Good are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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