Zami & Daliya's Guardian Angel

I lay awake next to my brother Zami. He was only a few months old, and snored gently beside me. I stroked his face as I looked up at the light from the window across from us. Outside, I could hear our father talking to someone.

"Just make sure you watch them carefully, Richard." he said in Arabic. "The world is an unpredictable place."

A moment of silence passed between them before my father spoke again: "If anything happens to them...I will make sure you end up just like those so-called holy men who killed my wife."

I heard the stranger chuckle in response, "It's not your job anymore, Elia. You've already done enough."

My father sighed, "I know. But I can't just leave them behind." I heard him walk across the room until he stood by my bedside. His hand reached down and brushed against mine on Zami's cheek as he leaned over us both and kissed me on the forehead. "Good night, Daliya." he whispered before leaving the room and closing the door behind him.

Zami and I were left alone except for the stranger who sat silently in a chair across from us, staring blankly into space with his hands folded neatly on his lap. He had been living with us for a while now, but as far as I knew, never ate or slept or even left the house unless he absolutely had to. My mother had always said that he was very important to our family and that we should treat him with respect.

Zami and I fell asleep together laying side by side on our bed while the stranger sat silently watching over us both like a guard dog waiting for its master to return home. When morning came, Zami and I were awakened by our mother standing over us with a smile on her face as she held out her arms to take us into her embrace. She put us both into one large bundle onto her back and carried us out of the house towards something outside of our home that we didn't usually see but often heard about called a carousel. It turned out that it was some sort of transportation device that carried people from place to place. There were several other cars around it that people were getting into and other cars were arriving nearby full of people getting out of them who would then go to other cars nearby to get into them instead. The whole thing seemed complicated but my mother did not seem nervous or frustrated at all as she guided Zami and me towards one car in particular where two people were waiting for her to arrive with us in her arms when suddenly something strange happened...