This is canon.

Their grandchildren are going through the memories they stored in their home.

There will always be a Layla in the family.

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you are my home

“There’s so much stuff here,” the girl said, her brown hair tied in a bun at the top of her head.

“Yeah, thank God, Tehteh put them like this,” her older sister said, running a finger along cardboard boxes stacked beside one another neatly as if poised for a picture. She had her hair in the same style as her sisters to keep out any stray hairs while they cleaned. “Okay. Dima, I’ll start with this side, and you take the other.”

“Tayeb,” Dima said, lifted up one of the boxes that looked like it’s been opened many times, and set it carefully on the floor.

The afternoon was a sunny one after so many cold rainy days, a warm breeze trickling in through the half-opened window. Layla, the older sister, could hear her cousins helping downstairs, their conversations floating around. They’d both been given attic duty and while Layla looked around, she could feel a certain magic that almost brought the floors and walls to life. As clear as the sky was blue, this house knew what love was.  

“Whoa,” Dima said, drawing her sister’s gaze. She sat in front of the box, the lid lying on the side.

Inside were various trinkets and artifacts. A teacup with a daisy print chipped from the edge, leather-bound notebooks whose worn-out papers made the notebooks bulge with the memories they contained, a small jar glass filled with dry jasmines, a sketchbook with acrylic blue paint dried on the sides. Everything here was preserved with careful hands. Everything here wasn’t supposed to perish.

Dima picked up an envelope that had been opened so many times, creases ate its sides. She pulled out its contents to find a Polaroid photo of a young woman, sitting in a field of daisies, her dress spread around her, laughing and reaching her hand towards the camera— to the person taking the picture. One hand covered her mouth, but not even time could erase the joy in her brown eyes. Her hijab was spun gold, falling over her shoulders like sunlight.

“Who’s this?” Dima asked, and Layla crouched beside her, squinting at the picture.

“That’s Tehteh!” she exclaimed.

“What?” Dima yelped, turning it around and both girls fell silent when they discovered there was a note scribbled in black ink at the back of the Polaroid.

No.

A love letter.

Sheeta, my Sheeta

You probably don’t know this, but I’ve loved you from the moment you were in my home, wild-eyed and scared, and saving a life. I thought I couldn’t love you more than I loved you that day. Then I thought that the next day. And the next. And the next. Until every thought began and ended with you. All my dreams were of you.

I wanted to love you in Homs more than the time we were given. I wanted to love you in a home we built on our land.

I thought that for a very long time.

But one day, I woke up in our old apartment in Toronto, and you were sitting on the balcony, looking up at the sky and all I could see was the back of your head, but I knew you were smiling. And I realized in that moment, as random as it was, that you are home.

 You said that to me once. That Syria will be in our hearts. In the way we live. I didn’t fully understand it until then.

You are my home. You are all my happiness. You are all my colors. I only see them with you.

Happy 10th anniversary, my love.

I’ll be waiting for you at our place tonight. I’ll always be waiting for you.

Today and in the afterlife.

Yours, yours, yours

Kenan