The Map of Salt and Stars

by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

  The expedition emerged from the domed rocks and picked their way down into a sloping valley. Stopping their camels, they shielded their eyes from the setting sun. As the cool of evening gathered, Khaldun clapped his hand to his breast. “This, indeed,” he said, “is a gift from God for weary eyes.”

  A town sat below them, quilted by thick olive groves. Houses dotted the blanket of green, and the streams that ran through the valley churned with mills. Al-Idrisi sketched while they rested, noting the streambeds and the homes nestled against the hillsides. Children watched them, scattered under the trees. If she closed her eyes, Rawiya could almost imagine she was back in Benzú, sitting beside her mother in the shade of the olive grove.

  As they entered the village, al-Idrisi called out to a man returning from the grove. “Hail, good sir,” he said. “What is the name of this village?”

  “Traveling from Nur ad-Din’s realm, are you?” The man shielded his eyes.

  Thinking fast, Rawiya thought of the Hajj. “We are only pilgrims,” she said, “in search of the wonders of God.”

  Al-Idrisi caught on to her idea. “We lost our way and are in need of a place to spend the night.” He motioned to the servant with the broken shin. “One of us is injured.”

  The man wiped his brow. “I’m surprised to hear you’ve lost your way. You mean to tell me you haven’t seen the new fort, eh? The fort at Wu’eira, north of the valley? I’ve lived in Wadi Musa all my life. I’ve seen nothing like it.”

  Wadi Musa, the Valley of Moses, had been captured several decades ago by Frankish forces. As Rawiya had realized, the expedition had crossed into the Kingdom of Jerusalem without meaning to, passing under the nose of a Crusader outpost.

  “We have heard of the generosity of the people of the Valley of Moses,” said al-Idrisi with care. “And the Kingdom of Jerusalem is known for its wonders.”

  There was an uneasy silence. The man studied their camels and al-Idrisi’s books and scrolls. “Pilgrims, you say?” The man shook his head and drew close to al-Idrisi’s camel. “You are poor liars,” he said quietly, “but do not be afraid. I am Halim, and what little prosperity I have I am happy to share. My sons and I never supported the division of these lands. What need do we have of borders drawn in blood across God’s creation? Christians and Muslims have tilled the soil of this valley side by side for centuries. We are a generous people, with a love of peace in our hearts. And”—here he motioned to al-Idrisi’s books—“I myself am partial to scholars and mapmakers.”

  Halim led them to a clearing in the olive trees and a small house, where they tied up their camels. Halim and his wife, who could not fit the whole expedition in their tiny kitchen, prepared dozens of steaming bowls of cracked wheat and chickpea fritters. In return, al-Idrisi gave them jeweled bowls and gold dinars from their treasures.

  When they had eaten and retired for the night, Rawiya sat awake, looking at the stars. She traced out the camel and the three mourning daughters. How had she never known that the star Vega was named for a falling eagle? The star was even indicated by a bird on the rete of the astrolabe.

  Khaldun, who couldn’t sleep either, came and sat beside her. “In my experience,” he said, “it is a noble person who loves the stars.”

  Rawiya blushed and said, “The world is so much bigger than I expected.”

  “And filled with tales.” Khaldun tucked his knees into his chest. “But once you’ve heard too many voices, you start to forget which one is your own.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Rawiya said. “The world is wide, and each of us is so small.”

  Khaldun eyed the moon. “People think that stories can be walled off, kept outside and separate. They can’t. Stories are inside you.”

  Rawiya turned to look at Khaldun. She felt relaxed, understood—things she had not truly felt since she’d left home. “You are the stories you tell yourself,” she found herself saying, as though she and Khaldun had known each other for years, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Khaldun nodded. “Certainly.” He tossed up a white stone, and it hung suspended between Vega and the horizon before falling to the earth. “If you don’t know the tale of where you come from,” he said, “the words of others can overwhelm and drown out your own. So, you see, you must keep careful track of the borders of your stories, where your voice ends and another’s begins.”

  The wind rustled the olive leaves, seeming to shake the stars. “Then stories map the soul,” Rawiya said, “in the guise of words.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, Umm Yusuf’s son comes back to the apartment when dawn is still a blue fog over the buildings. The door slams across the hall, and I rub my eyes. I throw off the blanket—how am I the only one rolled up in it?—and leave my slippers by the rug.

  A throaty voice comes teal and gray under Sitt Shadid’s door, a sound stuck deep in the chest. It’s the kind of voice that reminds me of the older boys singing songs and throwing up fists in the street in Homs, the angry kind that’s all ribs and the wings of shoulder blades. I wonder if all teenage boys are angry like that, if they know anger is a dangerous, unpredictable thing.

  I want to coil into the corner and wait until the boy goes away, but I want to make sure Sitt Shadid is okay. I creep out the door and across the hall. The tile in the hallway is a thousand tiny ice cubes on the soles of my feet.

  Arguing in Arabic, bursts of a woman’s voice pleading like pink violins. I reach the knob and crack the door. The blue anchusa is wilted in the soda can, draping its head over the rim. Sitt Shadid stands with her feet planted, her slippers not on yet, the seam of her knee-highs tight against her toenails. Whoever she’s talking to is hidden behind the cracked door. The daylight beats in, lighting up corners that were in shadow last night. Photos taped to the walls flutter over rolled-up sleeping mats and folded blankets. Single cushions line the bare floor. It makes me think of the week one of my friends’ families moved to a new apartment, how the place was empty until her parents brought the couch in sideways and reassembled the dining room table. Except there’s no U-Haul truck waiting outside here, no box spring to lug in. I think to myself, This is all any of us have.

  The person behind the door gives a frustrated sigh. A handful of Arabic words I know come through, like a radio suddenly tuning to a signal: I need to work, we need to eat. Sitt Shadid’s pink voice: You’ll be caught. The boy with the teal-gray voice pounds his palm against the wall and says, You don’t understand.

  Sitt Shadid comes back with a hail of angry Arabic, and footsteps storm up to the door. I dive aside and hug the wall. A tall boy huffs out. His gray tee shirt leaves behind a woody smell like sticky evergreens and heat. I hold still, my breath burning in my chest, willing him not to turn. The boy’s anger is a knife to me, a weapon. It is the warning sign I should have seen the night the bombs fell on our street. He runs half a fist through his black hair, and I’m so close I can see the pores on the back of his neck. Then he huffs down the stairs, and the door slams below us.

  I peek in toward Sitt Shadid. Rahila is asleep on a mat in the corner, her earmuffs rising and falling. Somewhere outside, a dog barks, neon bright in the quiet. If I concentrate, I can just imagine all the things Rahila’s family left behind, the brass coffee tray and the children’s books and the extra scarves and all the tiny things nobody misses until they aren’t there anymore. And I realize that Rahila probably doesn’t remember her old house in Syria at all, that pretty soon this will be all she has ever known. Dusty Amman alleys, the broken sewer pipes leaking into the street. The ache of her feet on the bare floor. Wilted anchusa in a soda can.

  The fading stars through the warped window whisper to me, It will happen to you too. And it’s true. Someday I’ll have lived out of New York longer than I lived in New York. Someday the summer I lived in Homs will be dozens of summers behind me.

  A hard red knot glues itself to my ribs like indigestion, the tangled-up knot of all the things I’ve loved that will be buried one day, all
the things I know I am bound to forget.

  Above the apartment, the thrum of a helicopter comes, menacing. The floor trembles under my feet, and I am back in our yellow house in Homs again, the smell of ash in my nose.

  I bolt for the stairs.

  I tear off down the street. The city is just coming alive, an animal licking its teeth. I breathe hard down the hill, my bare feet thumping pavement. Lights come on in stacks of apartment buildings, and laundry lines shimmy and dance. A mesh of telephone wires chops the air. I rush down toward orange rooftops and the yellow boxes of homes.

  I pump my legs, fighting gravity. I twist around a crooked olive tree cut into the sidewalk, tripping around a thick centipede and jumping over a pigeon. Men appear on balconies, drinking coffee or smoking narghiles as they wait for the sky to lighten. Shopkeepers wave delivery trucks into cramped parking spaces. Girls stare at me out latticed windows.

  I run through streets I don’t recognize. I run up the next ridge and wonder how one city could have devoured nineteen hills. I ignore the sting of tiredness in my calves and wonder if I can run all the way back home, wherever home is now, back to a level of reality where babies don’t cry at border crossings and my legs alone could carry me across the ocean. Is there a level I could reach if I ran fast enough, a level where Baba is waiting on the island of Manhattan with his arms open, calling to me from between the coin-operated spyglasses?

  I tumble down steps cut into the stony hillside. I zigzag down alleys, past slumped eucalyptus and arrow-necked palms. I run out of breath between three hills, on a side street by a busy intersection. The road is crowded with cars and street vendors, their spices and jewelry piled on long tables. The sidewalks here are so narrow that I have to walk in the street. Cars pass by with their windows down, blaring love songs in English and Arabic. In the distant western section of the city, the round balconies of hotels shimmer, their glass faces yawning.

  I’m lost.

  I wander, trying to figure out which hill I came from, which neighborhood. But the more I wander, the more lost I get. Nothing looks familiar. No linden tree, no landmarks I know. I keep coming back to the same spot, going in circles. Everything looks different in the daylight than it did in the dark, and even the things I recognize look too much the same. I stop to study the signs, sounding out the letters in Arabic. Across the way, a boy not much older than me stands on the street corner, his feet planted and his shoulders tensed, selling packs of tissues.

  Night comes. I shuffle toward the crest of one last hill on my swollen feet, my toenails shredded by asphalt. Car exhaust has turned the hems of my shorts gray, stained my fingers and my knuckles. The scent of roasting freekeh and lamb slice into my hunger.

  I sag down under a tree. It’s too dark to tell what kind of tree it is, but it smells good, like water and rest, so I lean back on the trunk. My scalp itches against the bark, forcing me to scratch. My whole body is tingling, one long convulsion of emptiness.

  I pick a few coin-round leaves from the bottoms of my bare feet. They come away wrinkled with sweat, their softness a relief after the asphalt. Underneath, my soles are split and bleeding, and a tack of white quartz has gashed itself between my toes. I pull it out and brush my blood off its jagged edge. I tuck it in my pocket.

  Under red tile roofs, rosy lights come on beneath wooden blinds and curtains. A dog barks silver purple again. Old men with potbellies stroll by, hands clasped behind their backs. Ramadan here is no different from Ramadan in Homs: shops closed early, families sharing dates, low tones of relief at the first glass of orange juice after the fast. In the tiny apartment, Umm Yusuf will be stirring lentils and frying sweet onions in oil. The bare floor will be warmed by fourteen feet. The bare walls will be splashed with color from everybody’s singing.

  “I should have remembered.” Tears come hot, but I refuse to let my throat cramp up. I don’t want anyone to know I’m crying, not even me. “I should have remembered the way.” I thought I was going in the right direction. I always remember, always know how to find my way home. How did I end up so lost?

  Rahila will be laughing under her earmuffs right now, fingers clenched around the last scrap of bread. She’ll grow up without remembering the time they spent in Syria, thinking that apartment is all the home there ever was.

  And what if I never find my way back? What if I live on this street, in this city, for the rest of my life? A broken pipe drips from the cramped apartment building beside me. Is this how people lose themselves, one drop at a time? Memories slide away so quickly—the rooftop garden, the amber-eyed coyote on West 110th, the fig tree in Homs. It would be so easy to forget.

  “Nour?”

  I wipe my wet chin. A man is silhouetted in the doorway behind me, squinting at my back. He calls my name again in a honey-yellow voice, reminding me of a smiling man in an orange shirt.

  “Abu Sayeed!”

  I run and press myself into his collarbone, and together we go into the apartment building. A linden leaf peels itself off the sole of my foot. I took myself home without knowing.

  “Are you all right?” Abu Sayeed stops outside Sitt Shadid’s door and checks my face for scratches. “Your mama nearly died when she found out you were gone.”

  “I’m okay.” The hungry dark gnaws at me, the threat of forgetting. I push open the door to Sitt Shadid’s apartment, peering in. The throaty-voiced boy isn’t there. The shoes by the door carry the tang of apricots and the must of old walls, familiar smells. But the sound of the pipes dripping follows me into the apartment from the street, and that same rhythmic loneliness curls up inside me like a shadow, a deep wanting.

  “Nour, habibti!” Mama rushes to me, surrounding me with hair and warmth. “I was so worried!”

  Umm Yusuf hugs me hard too. My sooty fingers stain the hem of her hijab. A circle forms around me, everybody laughing and crying at the same time. Their sounds without words hum in everything, an energy without a language. Sitt Shadid’s face runs with tears. She holds up her palms to heaven and thanks God—“Hamdulillah!”—and her voice vibrates the nails in the floorboards.

  We eat mujaddara and dates and play backgammon. After we eat the iftar, Sitt Shadid gives me sweet atayef pastries and a stuffed toy, a white bird. I name him Vega. He smells like Sitt Shadid, like jasmine and olive oil.

  But as the night goes on, my head starts to itch again—Could tree sap or car exhaust roil my scalp like this?—and I scratch so hard I draw blood. When we go back across the hall, Mama shuts the door and clucks at me. “Why do you scratch your head like that?”

  “It itches.”

  Mama sniffs at the blanket, folded in the corner of our room, and dumps it on the floor. “Zahra,” she says. “Get a comb.”

  While Zahra borrows a comb from Umm Yusuf, I fidget, trying not to scratch. Huda curls up on the carpet, one wrist out, her knuckles resting on the wood. Mama combs out my hair real hard, pulling the skin tight under the bandage on my temple.

  “Ow! Don’t pull it.”

  Mama says something under her breath in Arabic.

  I make a face, my head burning. “You’re not supposed to say that.”

  But Mama just wipes the comb on her palm and squints at it. Then she combs out Zahra’s and Huda’s hair. Huda winces and gasps when Mama bangs her shoulder by accident.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. “Why is nobody saying anything?”

  Mama goes across the hall and comes back with electric clippers in her hand. She purses her lips, her fingers tense on the clippers. “Nour,” she says, “sit down.”

  “Why?”

  She raises her voice. “Just—sit.”

  I bend my knees and clunk down on the floor. I stretch my feet on the wood. My toes are tarry burls of dried blood, the arches of my feet stained with grime. The clippers buzz to life behind me.

  “Don’t cut it,” I say.

  “Hush.” Mama runs her fingers through my hair to part it, lifting a section of thick curls.

  “Don’
t.”

  The clippers touch the knob of bone at the back of my neck and work their way up. They vibrate my skull and the white quartz in my pocket. We couldn’t save any family pictures from the house, so none exist. There are no shots of Baba and me with my dark ringlets. Nothing.

  “You have lice,” Mama says.

  “I don’t care.” The hair falls on my shoulders in thick strips. I see myself as a boy, my head a lopsided melon. I see Rawiya. “Don’t!”

  That buzzing, the whine. I shut my eyes. I’m not Rawiya. This isn’t an adventure. A yellow wail bubbles out of me.

  Mama’s hands brush my ears, trembling. “Don’t make this harder,” she says. I can hear the tears in her voice, firm as a fist.

  EVERY DAY AFTER that, Mama goes to the American embassy in downtown Amman and fills out paperwork. We try to make the best of things. I help Sitt Shadid fix up the bare apartment as best we can, plucking fresh anchusa blossoms when we can find them and setting them in a bit of water in the soda can. I try not to think too much about the things we lost—soft rugs under my feet, shelves of my favorite books, stuffed animals and photo albums with pictures of Baba we couldn’t find in the rubble.

  Outside our window, the neighborhood kids play soccer, and Zahra flirts with Umm Yusuf’s son. I stay inside with Huda and my stuffed bird. Even when Umm Yusuf finds me a pair of used sneakers so I don’t have to wear my ripped-up slippers anymore, I still won’t leave Huda by herself. She sleeps less now and cuts her pain pills in half to make them last.

  Mama says she’ll get better, that it’ll just take time. She tries to get our minds off what she’s doing, tries to come home from the embassy every night smiling. But Zahra told me it’s not easy to apply for asylum, that there are too many people who don’t have anywhere to go and not enough places to put them all. She told me that even though I was born in America, there are no guarantees for people who aren’t American citizens, even if they’re my mother and sisters. It must be true, because when Mama comes home, I see her out the window by the linden tree, catching her breath before she comes inside. She looks older than she ever did in New York, like she’ll cry if she has to put one more smile on. But she does it anyway.