The airport smelled of jet fuel, fried plantain from someone's lunch box, and final goodbyes.
Zahra stood still as the bustling tide of passengers surged around her, her boarding pass clutched so tightly in her hand that the ink smudged. Her suitcase wobbled on tired wheels. Her heart wobbled more.
It was a gray afternoon, one of those days when the Harmattan dust dulled the horizon and even the sun seemed uncertain of itself. She stood between the world she knew and the one she dared to enter, heart strung between continents.
Her father stood beside her in a brown kaftan that rustled in the wind. He looked thinner than usual, older too, though he smiled with that same proud half-smile that had once cheered her through spelling bees and science fairs.
"You'll make Ghana proud," he said quietly.
Zahra nodded, blinking away tears she hadn't given permission to fall. But then, he added something strange.
"If anything ever feels too familiar… too perfect in China... look closer. Your eyes will see, but your spirit must discern."
She furrowed her brow. "What does that mean?"
He hesitated. Then, as if pulling the words from a locked drawer in his mind, he added,
"Your mother and I... we were there once. Long before you were born. Not everything was as it seemed."
That was all. No more, no less. Before she could press him, the final boarding call rang through the speakers like a sentence. She hugged him, long and hard. The kind of hug that says I love you, I need you, and I don't know when I'll feel your arms again, all in one silent squeeze.
He slipped something into her coat pocket. "Don't open it yet," he whispered.
Then he stepped back, hands behind his back, watching her disappear into the glass gates of departure.
On the plane, as the engines roared and Accra shrank below her, Zahra felt the envelope in her pocket. Sealed. Heavy. Untouched. A mystery she hadn't known she was carrying.
And far above the clouds, as the continent fell away and the sky yawned wide, Zahra Williams began her journey. Not just across oceans. But into the shadows of a past she hadn't known was hers.