"Breakfast was crap do you think I could at least get a cup of coffee while we wait?" I asked.We waited another twenty minutes or so, before the SBI a...ent came in to release me. "Don't leave town," Wade said."There is no were else I would rather be," I said."What the fuck happened?" I asked Rita when we were on the steps of the courthouse."I asked for an immediate arraignment. It seems the state can't find Ahmed. He got a call from the Immigration and Naturalization Service last night. That. She was always economical with words, like everything else, whereas he used to pour them out as if he had an endless supply, as if they bred inside him. When he was with her though they were so often stillborn, dead before they could make the journey from wherever they originated up and out through his mouth, to fall on the air. Where, like butterflies, they died after a brief flutter of meaning. Her words were rationed, as if she knew they were limited and had to be released into the air. Suddenly the lights went out. I realized it was load shedding time. I got up to get a candle. She held my hand in the darkness. My heart missed a beat. She didn’t say anything. Slowly I sat beside her. She leaned towards me, still holding my hand. My heart thumped wildly as I placed my hand on her shoulders. I pulled her towards me. I kissed her gently on her forehead and cheeks. With my other hand I pulled off her sari from her shoulders. I rested my hand on the opening of her blouse. I rubbed. ’ He had cried himself to sleep that night. Praying the way she had taught him for his mother to become healthy again and come home to them. He couldn’t have been more than four, yet many years later, in his dreams, he still struggled against the dark clad men. The mother he had known, with her radiant smile and beautiful golden crown, he never saw again. *** Sunset bathed the snow-covered hilltops in a golden glow as the last warm rays withdrew their caress from the valley below. Even the.