Rhet Shel was mostly shielded in Nur’s arms, but she was a child of this violent world and understood enough to make her body into a ball and numb the world by gnawing on her thumb.
Khaled
“But I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.”
—Chris Hedges
Then we were moving. They stopped repeatedly to blink my eyes with their fingers or to put drops in them, until we got to the forbidden dunes, which had once been a neighborhood, home to thousands. But Israel bulldozed it years ago to expand the Buffer Zone. And there was much scrap metal left.
Wasim was right, I was not scared, but my eyes began to burn after a while. In their rush to collect as much metal as they could, they forgot about my eyedrops.
I concentrated on moving my eyelids and tried to summon Sulayman to help me. The world felt empty around me, with only pieces of sound from Wasim’s and Tawfiq’s hurried movements littering a vast silence. It was the silence of the Buffer Zone. Of the dunes. Then there was a small plop, like a pebble hitting still waters. My eyes had already begun to blur, but I could still see in my peripheral vision when Wasim fell. Another small sound came from him, like a sneeze. I think I shall never forget it. I heard Tawfiq running; the sound of his breath and uncoordinated leaps dissipated the silence and I began to feel the creep of fear. Death lived in the dunes, and we had woken it up.
Blink, blink, dammit, blink. Help me, Sulayman!
Another pebble hit still waters.
Blink, dammit!
“I’ll come back with help!” Wasim screamed.
Blink!
The dimness of dusk came and wrapped my body in a blanket of ice. I blinked at last and found myself in a desert, the waves of its sand stretching before me in a familiar path. I got up from my chair. I knew exactly where I was and where I needed to go. I began to walk that familiar road, from the small wrinkles on Teta’s left ear, up along the broken paths to her forehead, then the long trek across to the other side of her head. I walked and walked the sandy surface of this desert that was Teta’s weathered face until I reached the corner of her right eye and sat on the ink spot to wait. My father, my jiddo Atiyeh, and my great-khalo Mamdouh came, as I knew they would, and together we walked to Beit Daras. We sat by the river there and talked. Three horsemen approached from the distance, and as they neared, I could see that Tawfiq was one of them. I leapt toward him. “Khaled! You wouldn’t believe this! This is my great jiddo and the horses my family owned in Beit Daras.” My jiddo and great-khalo Mamdouh knew them all and together we went to visit their home in Beit Daras, leaving the women by the river. I looked back once more. Mariam still wasn’t there, but as we passed the water well of Beit Daras, I heard someone whisper my name. I looked and saw Mariam curled in a small shelf inside. She seemed frightened, and without moving her lips, she whispered to me across the distance, “Tell my sister Nazmiyeh to come find me.”
FIFTY-ONE
Once, when Mama still wore niqab, a western woman approached her very politely in the souq, and her male translator explained that she was a feminist writer working on an article about niqab. The translator explained feminism as a fight for women’s rights. The woman smiled beatifically, touched Mama’s arm in the way of a savior, and said, “I see very beautiful, exotic eyes and I long to see the gorgeous face I know goes with those eyes.” Mama walked away without answering. She understood deeper truths about people. So I was not surprised one day when she whispered to my immobile body, “Son, you don’t have to hang on for us if the angels are calling you. We will be okay.” And when terror spread through her body that I might be killed in the sand dunes, I understood that when I left, she wanted it to be on my own terms. Maybe donning niqab, then taking it off, had been a way to live on her own terms.
By the Time Alwan came to, the townspeople had already retrieved Khaled and people near and far were awaiting news of the boy trapped in his own body, alone in one of Gaza’s killing zones. Wasim and Tawfiq had limped away for help, but only Wasim had survived to make it out of the dunes, and the soldiers had let Khaled be. But he had sat alone for two hours before it was safe to approach his wheelchair and pull him back to safety. Earlier, two paramedics had tried to brave the distance but shots had been fired at the ambulance until they had turned back. People were helpless to do anything more than watch, but they felt some reassurance that Khaled would be spared because snipers had not already shot him. They didn’t consider his eyes were drying.
The voice of that uncharitable woman hung over the town after that. Many thought death would be merciful for the boy, particularly when it seemed he was now going to be blind, too. But things changed after that day, because no one could understand how Khaled had survived. Tubes and bags fed him and collected his waste. He could not speak or move. Now he might be blind and it was uncertain if he had been able to see before. The townspeople contemplated that Allah was keeping Khaled on this earth for a grand purpose. But some thought the mother or grandmother had made a deal with the devil. And the legend of Sulayman was retold.
Hajje Nazmiyeh had to be carried home by her sons, who could recall an earlier time when their mother’s legs had stopped working. That night, after the sisters-in-law and neighbors left, Hajje Nazmiyeh, Alwan, Nur, Rhet Shel, and Khaled sat together on floor cushions, letting stillness fall around them. Khaled’s eyes were bandaged and Alwan held his head at her chest, stroking his hair. Rhet Shel, who hadn’t left Nur’s arms, stayed that way and fell asleep in Nur’s lap, leaning against the wall. Hajje Nazmiyeh rocked slowly, her numb legs stretched before her, whispering on each Misbaha prayer bead passing through her fingers.
“Habibi, Khaled. Can you hear me? My love, my son,” Alwan sighed. Nazmiyeh’s eyes took her in and caressed them both. Then Alwan told her. There would never be a right time to tell her mother that she was dying, and this was as good as any. “Yumma … I have to cut off my breasts to live longer. But I could also die during the operation.” She paused to wipe tears, “Either way, it is for sure that I will die.”
Nazmiyeh stopped rocking, a rigid protest against the enduring molestation of their future. A fire ignited in her, a burning intransigence against destiny. Against Allah and the dung hole of perpetual death. “Nonsense. I am not letting anything take you from me. I will not, daughter.”
“Astaghfirullah, Yumma. You bring sin in our house when you speak against Allah’s will like that,” Alwan sighed.
“We are believers, and today our son was saved. Tomorrow is another day and, enshallah, everything will be well. Allah bifrigha. Rest now and let us all dwell on His mercy, my daughter.” There was no capacity in Hajje Nazmiyeh that could hear or take in such news. She did not even let it permeate her, as if she had not heard it at all.
Thus, life and love and death and will were packed close in the small space of their home, and they wore them to sleep together on the floor that night. They awoke the next morning renewed and determined and everyone was pleased to see that Hajje Nazmiyeh’s legs had awoken with her. “Allah never gives us more despair than we can handle,” she said.
FIFTY-TWO
It took some effort for Nur to unlearn the American assumptions she came with. The first time she took a shower in our home, Teta had to storm into the bathroom and shut the tap off before she used our entire water supply for the month. Then Mama taught her how to bathe by scooping water from a wash bucket and to recycle as much of the used water as she could. The dirty water had to be captured in another bucket that we used for flushing the toilet. Rhet Shel helped her learn to navigate life without electricity during the long power cuts. And Teta taught her the best curse words, when to use them, and how to confront harassment from men in the street. “If you tell them to get lost and they don’t, pick up the biggest rock you can lift and go at them with every intention to bash it on their heads. Look crazy. Trust me, they won’t bother you anymore.” My uncle’s wives taught her how to remove the ha
ir on her body with caramelized sugar. “Men shave. You’re not a man,” they had admonished her. Her most intractable assumption, perhaps, was that fate could be controlled with a host of myths ranging from hard work to winning a lottery; or that ill fate could somehow be redeemed by objections or lawsuits. The day following the violence at the dunes, without intending to, Mama and Teta showed Nur how to carry on without corrosive bitterness that comes from helpless rage.
Jamal had been working in Rafah and didn’t get the news about Khaled until Nur texted him two days later, explaining what had happened and requesting another day off from work. “Nur, would it be okay if I came to visit today?”
Hajje Nazmiyeh didn’t call any of her sons to be there when the doctor visited. “You’re the man of the house,” she said to her grandson. She kissed his forehead over the eye bandages and wheeled him into the kitchen, where she began preparing a meal for their guest, even though he had insisted that he would come only for a short while to see Khaled.
Nur was out with Rhet Shel, and Alwan joined her mother and son in the kitchen. “It doesn’t matter anyway. His wife will probably come with him,” Alwan said.
“First of all, I don’t think she likes to get dirty coming to the camps. If she does come, it’s because she wants to keep a close eye on him around Nur. If she doesn’t, then it’s either because he didn’t tell her or because they got into a fight over Nur and he stormed out and came anyway,” Hajje Nazmiyeh said, pleased with her analysis.
Hajje Nazmiyeh welcomed Jamal that afternoon, “Tfadal, my son. Have a seat. Is your lovely wife coming?”
The good doctor apologized on her behalf, making up a story—she was sick—which they all knew was a lie. Nur saw a look pass between Alwan and Hajje Nazmiyeh and changed the subject to the talk of the town. She struggled to comprehend how the unhingeing events of the previous days could have passed so quickly. Only faint traces of the devastation they had all felt could still be seen in Hajje Nazmiyeh and Alwan. Rhet Shel, too, perhaps taking cues from her mother and grandmother, had unplugged her thumb and uncurled herself. The bitterness of Tawfiq’s funeral was still present in what they ate and breathed, but they stopped talking about it. Was it resilience? Denial? Nur searched for psychology terms: Was it compartmentalizing? Detaching?
Nur started to recount what had happened. Talking about it was essential to making sense of it. “What happened is done. Let us put our fate in Allah’s hands and focus on praying for Khaled’s sight,” Hajje Nazmiyeh said, cutting her off.
Nur obeyed, kept up with the polite conversation around her, but she slipped into the subterranean parts of herself. Into the lonely places of old shoes and unraveled necklaces.
Jamal had come late intentionally to ensure they would have already eaten, but the hajje insisted and he couldn’t refuse when she told him that they had been waiting and hadn’t eaten. Nur watched him without looking, feeling what he said, how he moved. He ate with a hearty appetite and she found herself putting more food on his plate, the way she had seen women everywhere in Gaza do for their guests, their children, and their husbands. She didn’t notice the silent communication between Alwan and Hajje Nazmiyeh. And after he left, though she could not remember much of what had been said, his presence lingered, and it turned the hours into a compulsion that weighed on Nur. They passed with perfunctory tasks after the meal; changing, wiping, draining Khaled’s bags and checking for infection; kneeling, prostrating in prayer; Alwan embroidering, trying to get caught up on lagging work; Nur helping Rhet Shel with homework; Hajje Nazmiyeh gathering with her friends in their homes for tea and sweets and argileh.
The electricity came on at the perfect time, just as it was getting dark and Rhet Shel had to come in from playing with her friends outside. Nur and Alwan, like nearly every person in the camp at that moment, reflexively put their phones on the chargers. The battery pack of Khaled’s respirator was already plugged in, waiting. A soap opera series was coming on and Hajje Nazmiyeh hurried back to watch it. On days when the electricity was out, she would go to watch it in a home where someone had a generator. “I prefer watching it in my own house,” she said and carried on about the characters, lamenting this one’s fate, cursing that one, wishing for some event to happen to yet another. She would yell at the screen sometimes, laugh or cry, and she used it as a teaching tool for Rhet Shel. “See that? That’s how you get what you need in life,” or “That’s the kind of man you want to marry when you grow up.” Nur followed along until a text from Jamal pulled her heart wide open.
Can you talk? I am going to the water to clear my head. I could use a friend.
Nur thought he had messaged her by mistake. He hadn’t. He said he was leaving his wife. His life had been devoid of love for so long. What was he saying? Why to Nur? The sudden intimacy of his words terrified and thrilled her.
“I’d be afraid. Leave the son of a bitch. He’s cheating on you with every harlot in town!” Hajje Nazmiyeh dispensed advice to the television characters.
Then he said it, in a text.
She knows I’m in love with you.
Nur stared at her phone, light from the television dancing on the darkened walls around them, unaware that Alwan was watching her. She did not text back, and Jamal quickly apologized. He said he had thought she felt the same. That she had made him feel alive for the first time in years.
With trembling hands, she wrote and erased that she felt as he did. She wrote and erased how desperately she wanted to see him. Another text came.
Please say something.
Aware of Alwan’s attention, Nur went to the toilet and wrote back.
I can meet you by the sea, near Tal Umm el Amr in three hours.
She remembered the first time he took her to those ancient ruins of Saint Hilarion monastery that spanned centuries from the Roman Empire to the Umayyad period in the seventh century. They had stopped to eat lunch after visiting patients and Jamal had talked through five thousand years of history.
The television soap opera had been over for some time and they were already well into watching an Egyptian film when the electricity went out. It was just as well because Rhet Shel had already fallen asleep and both Alwan and Hajje Nazmiyeh were dozing off.
Another hour passed in waking dreams that thickened the darkness with unbearable want. Nur removed the covers slowly and as she got up from the bed, she was startled by Alwan’s grasp.
“My love, the sea can wait,” Alwan whispered from the depths of sleep.
Nur waited until quiet settled again, and crept out of the bedroom past Hajje Nazmiyeh, who snored on her cot in the family room. The door creaked slightly on its hinges and she paused until the rhythms of the night were restored, then she stepped into a black outdoors. Nur had never known such uncorrupted darkness as Gaza’s nights. In places where light appears with the flick of a switch at any moment, the streets are always illuminated. Light would pour from the bedrooms of insomniacs. From the call of twenty-four-hour stores. Street and highway lights. True darkness such as this was unattainable, for it was not merely the absence of light, but the presence of something unseeable filling every crevice of life. Not even the moon nor the brightest stars could light more than their own periphery in this blackness. Nur walked through it, the remains of the day, loneliness and desire clinging to the walls of this darkness to guide her. The sonorous rolls of the ocean, the calls of crickets, occasional scurries of wild cats and rats, and the small intonations of her steps made for the music of that night. She kept walking until she knew where she was. Not far away, amid this beautiful black, Jamal was waiting. She went to the place where they had once shared a lunch. The moon danced on the surface of the ocean, on some of the ruins’ edges. She walked until she heard steps not her own. She moved, then heard them again, until Jamal was behind her. “Nur,” he said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
But words felt like intruders, so they said little else. The darkness panted and Nur was breathless. The taste of his skin, the
moisture of his lips moving down her neck. Their breathing grew jagged and hungry. She felt her bare breasts pressing against him and inhaled the air off his skin as deeply as her lungs would allow. And when he slipped into her eager body, a small gasp marked the moment she felt home.
Khaled
“So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
—T. S. Eliot
They closed my eyes that day, and darkness wrapped around me like a blanket in winter. I thought it was over. That I could not return to the still body in a chair again. But I could hear Mama speak of her sickness and fear, and of love. I think she is not long for here either. Because she sits on the floor and plays for hours with Rhet Shel now. Because of her new unhurried way. Because if she were not dying, she’d have slapped Nur when Nur told her about that married man and what they had done on the shore. Mama had woken up at night and found the door unlocked. But she didn’t yell at Nur. She didn’t tell Teta or call Nur a homewrecker or a whore. She told Nur she was selfish and reckless with the lives of others, like all Americans were. Then she stopped speaking to Nur for days, except in dry tones when it could not be avoided.
Nur begged her forgiveness. But Mama would have none of it. She had stayed up waiting and Nur had returned barely before the sun. I could feel despondency grow inside Nur, just like cancer was growing inside Mama, and they both confided in me. I was t he unintended repository of secrets and quiet fear. A living, breathing depot of understanding that didn’t judge or talk back. Nur said, “No one has ever loved or wanted me like Jamal does.” And Mama said, “Americans are taught to think only about themselves.” They could lay bare their hearts at the same time they changed bags and cleaned tubes and wiped drool and shit and tended to bedsores.
The Blue Between Sky and Water Page 19