'Together': Sehri Tales selections, Day 17

I. 
I heard the enemy is angry at us
for a crime we didn't commit.
White birds tell, to be born is to sin.
So let's huddle here together,
talk about space and rocks,
and wait for the world to crumble upon us.
Nobody tells the enemy we'll turn into birds and tales, flying over the skies of Falastin.
[On the painting, Rania Abu Anzeh, who was blessed with her twins Wasim and Naeem after waiting eleven years after marriage.] 
by Afra Ibnat Portia 
II.
"Strangely, I'm glad I'm sick," Dad said, his voice weak and raspy.
"Glad?" I raised an eyebrow. "Dad, you've been bedridden for days. How can you be glad?"
Dad sighed. "It's made me realise how long it's been since we all sat together. I can't even remember the last time we did this," he said, gesturing at our family clustered around him.
"But, Dad, we frequently are together in the same room," my brother added.
"Together?" Dad echoed sceptically. "We've been physically in the same room, but have we really been together?"
I glanced around the room: my sister absorbed in her phone, my brother hunched over his laptop, and me? I was scrolling through social media, my attention divided between looking at my father and notifications of the post where I asked my friends and followers to pray for my father.
He was right—work, responsibilities, the allure of virtual connections, and the constant social media interaction had indeed pulled us apart.
"Maybe we should put away our screens," Dad suggested. "Talk. Laugh. Remember what it's like to be a family again after I have recuperated.".
A stab of guilt went through us. We recalled how my father did not have much time left. "We're still here Dad, we're not going anywhere," my sister said on the verge of tears, squeezing his hand.
Dad looked at us circling him. "I'm still glad I'm sick," he whispered, his eyes shining, "Because it brought us back together."
by Nahid Hassan
III.
Finescale/Faran
— hurt yourself.
I am told that I won't recognise the city anymore. That it has changed ineluctably in my absence. All those places we went to together, the streets and the back alleys and the markets where we spent hours trying to find that one good book to take back home. They're all gone.
They say this to me with a wistful lilt to their voices. I have to commiserate, of course; it would be rude not to.
Whenever I find myself ensnared in one of these conversations, I am tempted to remind people that I don't actually feel what they're feeling. 
The city has always been foreign to me. I learned to live in it, sure. I learned to speak the language. I lived there long enough that I could pass myself off as a native.. Despite all that, it always felt like I was on a prolonged vacation, like I was only there for a while. 
It's the same feeling I get now, with this life here. It feels intransient. When people tell me of things that happened a decade ago, I can reminisce with them and they think I'm from here. 
But. 
I drag myself to work, I haul myself back. The sense of displacement never leaves me. It's like I'm constantly waiting to leave.
Except, where would I go? 
Very few people understand what it means to exist in this world but not be of it.
My one fervent wish, is to walk into a room — 
by Tareq Adnan