The seasons changed.
Rain swept across the mountains. Streams filled and overflowed. Vegetation grew over paths that had once been carefully examined.
Winter arrived, followed by another spring.
Layan’s twentieth birthday passed.
Then her twenty-first.
Her university classmates graduated.
Some found jobs. Others continued their studies. A few moved to different cities.
Mahmoud watched photographs of graduation ceremonies appear online.
He tried to imagine his daughter among them, standing in a cap and gown with her familiar smile.
He had once promised to take a hundred photographs on the day she received her degree.
Instead, he kept her last photograph beside his bed.
The image showed Layan smiling in the sunlight, her camera hanging from her neck.
He dusted the frame every morning.
He never moved her books.
Her unfinished project remained on her desk, with a pencil resting across an open notebook.
Friends and relatives gently encouraged him to accept that she might never return.
