Yusha made tea with gentle hands. She gave her her own coat and slept by the door, like a guard dog protecting its queen. She spoke to her as if she truly cared: she asked what stories she liked, what dreams she had, what foods made her smile. No one had ever asked her anything like that before.
Days turned into weeks. Yusha accompanied her to the river every morning, describing the sun, the birds, the trees, with such poetry that Zainab began to feel she could see them through his words. He sang to her while she did the laundry and told her stories of stars and distant lands at night. She laughed for the first time in years. Her heart began to open. And in that strange little hut, something unexpected happened: Zainab fell in love.
One afternoon, as he reached for her hand, he asked, “Were you always a beggar?” He hesitated. Then he said quietly, “I wasn’t always like this.” But he never said anything else. And Zainab didn’t insist.
Until one day.
She went to the market alone to buy vegetables. Yusha had given her careful directions, and she memorized every step. But halfway there, someone violently grabbed her arm.
“Blind rat!” a voice spat. It was her sister, Aminah. “Are you still alive? Are you still playing at being a beggar’s wife?” Zainab felt tears welling up, but she remained unbowed.
“I’m happy,” she said.
Aminah laughed cruelly. “You don’t even know what he looks like. He’s trash. Just like you.”
And then he whispered something that broke her heart.
“He’s not a beggar. Zainab, you’ve been lied to.”
Zainab stumbled back home, confused. She waited until nightfall, and when Yusha returned, she asked him again, but this time firmly. “Tell me the truth. Who are you really?”
And that’s when he knelt before her, took her hands, and said, “You were never supposed to know. But I can’t lie to you anymore.”
His heart was beating fast.
He took a deep breath.
“I am not a beggar. I am the son of the Emir.”
Zainab’s world began to spin as she processed Yusha’s words. “I am the Emir’s son.” She tried to control her breathing, to understand what she had just heard. Her mind replayed every moment they had shared, his kindness, his quiet strength, his stories that felt too vivid for a mere beggar, and now she understood why. He had never been a beggar. Her father had married her not to a beggar, but to royalty disguised in rags.
He withdrew his hands from hers, stepped back, and asked, his voice trembling, “Why? Why did you let me think you were a beggar?”
Yusha stood, her voice calm but thick with emotion. “Because I wanted someone who saw me—not my wealth, not my title, just me. Someone pure. Someone whose love wasn’t bought or forced. You were everything I ever asked for, Zainab.”