AT NIGHT we went from house to house, pleading to be let in. There were fewer and fewer of our people in the city every day — they had fled or were in hiding — and it became difficult for us to find those willing to help. I was a dog and nothing more, asking no questions, unable to think for myself. I hovered in the shadows as people turned us away. Even those who believed in my father’s politics were wary, unwilling to leave themselves at risk. Only a few left their doors open, and even they made sure to look the other way and not greet us with an embrace. Often we slept on straw pallets, grateful for a shelter meant for goats. We shared the animals’ chamber and slept restlessly with the sound of beasts breathing beside us. I had the same dream again and again. In my dream there was a lion sleeping in the sun, one I dared not wake. One night I dreamed that the lion was eaten whole by a snake that devoured everything in its path. I stood barefoot in my dream, on a stretch of rocky earth that was so blindingly white I couldn’t open my eyes. I felt compassion for this wild beast, the king of the desert, for in my dreams he had given in to the snake without a fight. He had looked at me, beseeching me, staring into my eyes.

That night my father shook me awake. My feet were bleeding on the rocks in my dream. Before me there was the coiling black viper of the desert that wraps itself around its prey and refuses to let go. He had devoured the lion and now had come for me. In my dream I offered the scaled beast almonds and grapes, but it had a taste for human flesh. I begged for it to release me as I mourned for the lion. I yearned for that beast in the way that a person yearns for her own destiny. What happens is already written, and the lion had been written beside my name.

“We must go and not look back,” my father said when he woke me.