Authors: Ibtisam Barakat

Tasting the Sky (3 page)

BOOK: Tasting the Sky

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When dawn finally lit up the world, I saw that I was surrounded by a large crowd. No one spoke to me, and I stared at the children who were clinging to their parents. I envied them having a hand to hold on to while I had none.

People were gazing into the sky as though a long line of unanswered prayers hung from it. They were cursing as they struggled to swallow their grief. They begged one another for a drink of water and begged God for mercy.

I wandered aimlessly, staring at strange face after strange face. And then, suddenly, I thought I saw my dad. “Yaba!” I called in a low voice, hoping it wasn't a mistake
again. But he turned to me. Tears streamed down his face. Now I was certain.

Next to him stood Mother, holding my sister to her chest. My father and my brothers hurried to meet me, holding out their arms. Muhammad, the one who had first noticed that I was missing, offered me his shoes.

My heart ached, my feet burned, and something in me still felt confused and lost. But I was no longer alone. Once again, I was with my family. Together, we entered the second day of war.

Shelter

There were no cars or trucks on the Jordan road for as far as the eye could see. The June sun beat down fiercely on the tar, and on our faces. We stood for a long time before I asked if I could sit. My father insisted that I remain standing so that I could be ready to run. But I could no longer stand. My feet were bleeding and bruised, and thorns had broken under the skin. Each time I moved, it felt like I was stepping on needles.

Then, suddenly, it seemed as though my feet had disappeared from beneath me. And I fell to the ground, asleep. Frantically, Mother hovered over me while pressing Maha to her chest, and Basel and Muhammad shook me and pinched my cheeks until I woke up again.

“No one can carry you,” my father explained urgently as he skinned off a piece of cucumber and rubbed it on my
face. He offered me another piece to eat. At Mother's insistence last night he had brought the cucumber.

“Mirriam, do you really think it can replace water?” he had exclaimed in the darkness before we fled.

“I imagine so,” she replied.
Imagine
was Mother's favorite word. In Arabic, she would say
batkhayyal,
which also means “to see the shadow of a thought,” as if one is separated from it by a thin cloth. Mother seemed to dwell behind this veil, gaze through it, and long for uniting with its other side.

Now, standing only one step away from Mother, I could see that she had slipped behind that veil. Silently I begged her to come out and see me. But her gaze only floated far away to the horizon. When she finally spoke, the words were not directed at me.

“I hear something in the distance,” she whispered, so as not to disturb the spider-thread perception connecting the sound to her ear, “perhaps an engine.”

A fierce look came over my father's face. He closed his eyes, cupped his ears, and opened his mouth, as if to swallow the sound upon capturing it. He asked us all to listen; then he instructed that we hold hands and run behind him. “If it's a vehicle, I will stop it no matter what it takes,” he vowed.

At the center of the road, he flung his arms open, ready to embrace a broad destiny. He implored the men standing by the roadside to join him. Many did, including a man who was carrying a gun. They huddled together, looking into one another's eyes to find courage, forming a human barrier,
with terror the mortar that held them close. Everyone seemed to understand the strategy, and in no time other men formed new barriers along the road.

The noise now became increasingly loud, its diesel hum goading everyone's desperate hopes and deepest worries. People pushed one another in every direction as they fought to get closer to the road. My brothers and I planted our bodies where we could see our father, as if we were a compass needle and he was our North.

The source of the noise soon appeared as a white water tanker emerged from the silver spot on the horizon. People cried out to God in gratitude and jumped high in the air as if to deliver the words in person. But instead of slowing down, the tanker increased its speed as it approached the first group of men in its way. The men dashed to the side of the road at the last moment, and the tanker cut through them like a comb parting hair.

Then the water tanker approached Father and the barricade he had formed with the others. They raised their voices, promising that it would not pass through. They chanted that God is mightiest and asked for His help, which it seemed they would certainly need as it roared closer and closer. But then, when it was almost upon them, it screeched to a stop.

Quickly, people stuck themselves to the white truck like ants on an abandoned candy bar. Men climbed the giant balloon-shaped metal tank. Women, almost all of them carrying children, cried as it quickly became clear that the water tanker could transport only a small number of those
waiting. The majority of families standing beside the road would be left behind.

Mother instructed my brothers and me to respond to all of her directions with the speed of a bullet. The three of us, who had become more like soldiers than children that day, nodded our heads in compliance.

Her directions were given upon hearing Father's voice, which came to us through the clash of many noises. But Mother seemed to understand every word. When he asked us to move closer, she commanded that my brothers climb up the tanker, find a way to fling their bodies on the windshield and block the driver's view. She then pulled me up by the arm and ordered that I squeeze myself among the bodies or, if I must, seep through them like water, but get myself to stand on the truck step, hold the door handle, and not let go. “Ibtisam, fight with everything in you,” she roared.

I do not know how they did it, but Basel and Muhammad sliced through everybody until they ended up spread across the tanker's windshield. I took myself to the door handle. People pushed me away repeatedly, but I kept climbing until I had my hand on it. I pressed my face fiercely against the window and waited for Mother to reach me with her voice. When she called my name, I could see that she had been right behind me all the time and, to keep me on the step, had been supporting my weight with her body.

Looking inside, I saw the driver, his wife, and three children. They were piled up on one another, staring at all the mad faces that surrounded them. I could see my father's face
pressed against the opposite window. He was unleashing a stream of curses, asking the driver to let us inside with his family, and to let as many people as possible hang on to the tanker for the journey to Jordan. Then pointing to a man who was aiming a gun at the truck's front tires, Father warned that if the driver did not consent, the man would shoot.

How could he open the door? the driver pleaded. People would force him and his family out, take the tanker, and leave. My father promised this would not happen. The driver hesitatedâuntil we all heard the thundering of renewed bombardment.

Then the driver beckoned to his wife. The door opened a crackâand Mother, my brothers, and I instantly swirled around and shoved ourselves into the seat. The driver's wife, now with three children crying in her lap, looked into Mother's face and cursed. Trembling, she reached over to the door and locked it.

Reciting a short prayer, the driver pressed his hands against his face as though to comfort himself, then hit the horn until everyone in front of the truck moved aside. He announced that we would be moving nonstop until we reached Jordan. I did not know how long the drive to Jordan would take, but I hoped our time in the tanker would be short. My feet pulsed madly. As everyone pushed and tugged against one another, I ended up with my head pressed to the glass of the tiny window behind the seat.

My father was on the other side of the glass. But now he was holding a metal peg, which he used to knock on the water
tank. He called to the driver that two knocks would be the signal to slow down so the men wouldn't fall off, and three knocks the signal to stop. The driver nodded.

The scattered sounds of bombardment made me jump each time I heard them. They also made the driver increase his speed. But whenever he did, Father slowed him down by knocking twice. Other men joined in, knocking twice with their hands to make sure the driver heard. The driver alternated his responses to themâfirst curses, then prayers for the time when he would be rid of us.

The men also burst into a clamor each time a plane zoomed above us. I could feel their voices washing over us like a giant wave that left me soaked in anxiety. But I kept my eyes on my father, who had become the solid center of my world.

The teeming tanker now rattled as it struggled to move as quickly as it could away from war. The driver reminded us over and over not to press too hard against the windows and doors. In no time Mother and the driver's wife, who said her name was Hamameh, began to speak as though they were friends. Hamameh invited Mother to visit her when the war was over and we all returned home. “Bring your children and come spend a day,” she said.

Now, surrounded by the warm, womanly voices and calmed by the tanker's rocking motion, I fell asleep.

I jumped awake with the noises of many vehicles beeping, children crying, people shouting across a huge crowd, all swirled in dust and chaos. We were approaching the
bridge over the Jordan River. Once we crossed it, we would be leaving the West Bank behind us.

Countless vehicles, bursting with people like ours, were trying to cross this bridge. Groups of fleeing people, carrying their belongings in knotted blankets, waited on the roadsides and begged for rides. Some walked in resignation or tried to wade through the shallow water under the trembling bridge.

Word was that there were shelters in Zarqa, Amman, Al-Salt, and other Jordanian cities. Many families were opening their homes to receive West Bank refugees. Mother and the driver's wife wept upon hearing this.

“There is still good in the world,” Mother exclaimed.

“God does not forget anyone,” Hamameh affirmed. It seemed that we were close to safety.

“We made it!” the driver announced the moment we crossed the bridge. He thanked God with a quick prayer. But even though we had entered Jordan, we could still hear warplanes right above us. Then they started to fire.

Our truck rocketed forward at a dizzying speed, as though fear were its only fuel. Other vehicles raced parallel to us and formed many lanes on the narrow paved road. A giant dust cloud quickly enveloped all the vehicles and made it impossible for us to see what was happening to those behind us. But I knew that my father and the men on the back of our truck were holding on to its bars as though their arms were made of steel.

It was afternoon when we arrived in Al-Salt City. At the
entrance of a shelter for women and children, Mother flung open the door of the truck and the nine of us, Hamameh and her three children, Mother and my sister, my brothers, and I, burst out, all sighing in relief. Our driver, Father, and the other men said they must leave us and go volunteer their help where it was needed. The driver asked his wife not to worry about him. And Father, who now sat beside the driver, told Mother he would come see us or find a way to send us word every chance he got. He held an arm out the window, and my brothers and I hung from it until the driver started up. Then we jumped off the truck step. But Father kept his arm out the window waving to us, and we waved back as long as we couldâuntil the white water tanker finally disappeared into the distance.

Souma

The shelter was a three-story stone house. Before we entered, Mother said that she was unsure whether Maha was still breathing. “She's been silent for so long; I don't have the courage to find out if she's alive,” Mother confessed. Without saying a word, Hamameh reached down to my sister's nose. She pinched and held it briefly. To our stunned surprise, Maha coughed and then cried.

We fought our way into the shelter, which wasn't much more than a box of strangers packed in like sardines. Every few minutes, sirens went off.
“Khatar, khatar,”
voices would shout. People would run up the stairs, then run down howling news about fires and bombings they'd seen from the second- and third-floor windows.

The sirens were warnings before or after bombardment,
and they were always followed by a silent moment of nauseating anticipation of the destruction of our shelter. My brothers and my mother, Hamameh and her children all joined in the stair madness.

I hung on to my brothers and hopped along until I could no longer tolerate the pain of being elbowed or shoved or having someone step on my injured feet. The cuts I had from running barefoot had begun to swell, making it more and more difficult for me to walk.

I decided to sit in a corner of the basement. And there, standing almost invisibly in a cloud of dark and quietness, was a baby donkey. At first I could not believe my eyes. For one brief moment, the surprise made me forget everything else. I raised my arms and touched his face; he remained still. I spoke to him; he looked at me and listened. I knelt on the ground and pulled him toward me. He did not resist. I named him Souma and embraced him with my whole heart.

I stayed with Souma until the air raids subsided. But then the howling of stray dogs began. The war had awakened their pack instinct. They came to the city searching for food and corners to hide in. They sniffed, clawed, grunted, and yelped in frightening demon voices. Souma's ears stood like antennas measuring the danger. We were only one wooden door away from them.

“Be warned!” someone shouted outside. Expecting loud noises, I covered my head and plugged my ears with my fingers. But that did not keep me from hearing gunshots as bullets entered the bodies of the strays. An anxious cheer or two accompanied the shooting.

The packs retreated, but the injured dogs were left crying in voices that grew smaller and smaller until they resembled the whimpers of infants. Tears soaked my face. I knew that they were dying and that they had come to our door only because, like us, they were seeking refuge. But instead of understanding, we shot at them, the way the warplanes shot at us. I listened until there was only silence.

Crawling up the steps, I left Souma in the basement and went to be with the others. The women covered the windows with paper and cloth. They searched for charcoal but found none. Darkened windows would make it difficult for airplanes to notice light from our shelter and target it. The women then unfolded blankets that were stacked against the shelter wall like giant wafers. Children lay on them and formed tiny forts with covers that they drew over their heads. I lay down, too. I fell asleep, but my throbbing feet woke me up again and again. The women did not sleep. Instead, they passed the time by telling stories of the war in 1948, embroidering their memories with worry and tears. They only stopped when the call from the minaret of a nearby mosque announced the arrival of a new morning.

Allahu Akbar,
God is greatest. Everyone awake repeated the words. But was God going to end the war today? End our flight and send us home? I wanted to know. We raised our arms above our heads in the shape of empty baskets for God to fill with the day's rations of our lives.

The women hoped the darkened windows would allow
the children who were still asleep to rest longer. But hunger awakened everyone. Food appeared and disappeared unexpectedly that dayâmainly bread and tea were delivered to us when people outside remembered that we had nothing and knew no one around us. The following days were the same. We could never guess when or if we were going to get food.

Each time we did, however, the youngest and the sickest got their bread and tea first. Mother brought me my share and instructed that I eat every morsel. To check my temperature, she spread her hand on my forehead. She thought I had a fever, so she asked that I lay my cheek against the cool cement floor.

When I sat up and ate, Mother held my potato-size foot and measured its swollenness. I cried. She disliked my tears. “You will become blind and live in a corner forever if you keep on crying,” she warned as she slammed her eyes shut for a moment to show me blindness.

I tested Mother's warnings. I clenched my eyes and attempted to see what she meant by becoming blind. But I discovered that, with my eyes closed, I saw more. I even saw things that were not around meâour home in Ramallah, the gravel road leading to it, the pine forest behind it, the green spearmint patches on the dry land, and the stone sculptures Father had taught us to build by stacking flat stones into human-looking shapes. He called each stack a
qantara
, but I called it a stone person. I now saw the
qantara
my father had once built to remind me that he loved me. And I saw the fig tree at the side of our house, alone in the
field with one early ripe fruit hanging on a hidden branch. The sparrows had not gotten to it. The fruit hung like a kiss. Its neck was softly tearing. Soon it would be on the ground, sweet like nectar. The sparrows would feast on it.

With my eyes still shut, I saw my father appear before me, wearing his green shirt with the bulging chest pocket covering his heart. Inside it he kept his tiny black comb and scraps of paper with old and new lists of foods Mother had asked for, and a clip-on pen that poked out near the colorless button. In my mind, I ran and held his hand tightly. I did not want to let go of him. And, suddenly, I understood what Mother meant by the word
imagine
. I, too, could imagine. Blink. Blink. Blink. I could see anything I wanted to see, anytime I wanted. I needed no one's permission. And I could close my eyes and hide anywhere in my imagination, making the sounds of war more distant and less alarming.

In a short time, the shelter began to feel like a home, everyone in it belonging to one large family. Mother and Hamameh talked to each other all day long. My brothers spent their time playing with the crowd of shelter children. And Souma the donkey became my best friend; we were inseparable. The strangers of only days ago now remembered each other's names, the cities they had fled from, and directions to particular neighborhoods. They told of their pain and illnesses, and cried to one another whenever their stories felt too heavy to bear alone. They gave one another messages to pass on if the shelter was attacked and they died. Since no one knew how long the war would last, they
decided that all would share the work and take turns sleeping. The women kept the shelter spotless, as if it were a home.

Our drinking water came from a rain well in the backyard and was stored in a clay urn. The urn had a thin base and could easily be pushed off balance, so only adults handled it. They watched over it carefully, snatching babies who crawled by it or shouting to warn children not to race near it. The urn had a mouth and two ears on its sides. An oversize tin saucer on the top looked like the rim of a man's hat, so the neck, round belly, and tiny base of the pot made it look like the only man among us.

Trash was left near the door in a rusted metal barrel. Stubborn flies quickly formed a lid for it until a group of boys rolled the barrel away and set fire to its contents.

The women who could do so nursed the infants of women whose milk had dried up. It was said, and repeated, that children nursed by the same woman would instantly become siblings and must never marry. Mother nursed only my sister, so we acquired no new siblings. But Mother gained a sister of her ownâHamameh, the driver's wife.

The two women agreed that if the war lasted a long time and their husbands did not return, they would help each other through whatever followed. But the war ended six days from the day it had started. For those of us at the shelter, it ended with two words,
Behawenha Allah
, spoken amid tears by an ailing man who leaned on a cane as he stood at the shelter's door.

All the faces cried, for
Behawenha Allah
meant “We have
lost so much that only God can ease our loss.” Our loss? I knew that days ago I had lost my shoes and our home. But had everyone else also lost their shoes and their homes? I did not know why all the women, and especially Mother, who warned me often not to cry, were weeping uncontrollably now, tears streaming down their faces.

I, too, cried and held Souma close to me, because the words caused chaos in the shelter. Then everyone headed outside. I tried to go with them, but my feet, especially my right foot, made it impossible. The pain was too much for me, and I knew that, this time, if everyone left, I would not be able to run after them.

In the following days, everyone but Hamameh, her children, and my family left the shelter for good. Before departing, people shook their heads in sorrow and waved their arms as though to erase the memory of war. We, too, wanted to leave. We waited for Hamameh's husband and Father to come for us.

But no one came except a man and a woman whose wrinkled faces reminded me of my grandma. They were Um and Abu Muhammad, who had opened up their home to shelter us. They had spent the war days in Amman with their relatives, and now they had returned.

Um and Abu Muhammad were happy to see all of us who had taken refuge in their home. Though they had not met any of us before, they kissed our cheeks and held us for a long time while thanking Allah for our safety. Mother and Hamameh bent to kiss Um Muhammad's hand, but she
pulled away, refusing any gestures of gratitude. “It's a duty,” she insisted.

They invited us to stay in their home as long as we needed to, but Hamameh wanted to find her relatives in Amman. She asked Abu Muhammad if he knew them. He instantly recognized the names. Like Mother and Hamameh, who could recognize the names of many women, even if they were not actual friends, Abu Muhammad knew the names of many men. He sent word to let Hamameh's relatives know where she and her children were.

Within a day, a man in a taxi, stirring a cloud of dust as he pulled up at the door, asked for Hamameh. He was her uncle. The time for Hamameh and her children to leave the shelter had finally arrived.

There was nothing to pack. Hamameh turned to Mother to say goodbye. Suddenly, I was frightened. Was Father going to come for us? Would we know how to get back to Ramallah? Who was going to carry me? I stared at Mother, who silently leaned against the wall. But Hamameh understood her silence.

“Mirriam, my home is your home,” she said to Mother. “Come with us until the men return.” She tugged at Mother's shoulder.

Mother agreed. Um and Abu Muhammad said they would tell my father and Hamameh's husband where to find us. It was time for us to leave, too. “We're going,” I cheered into Souma's big ear, thinking that he had no one in the world but me. I was ready to go anywhere as long as he came with me.

“We have no space in the car for a donkey,” Mother snapped at me.

“I won't leave without him,” I shouted. “Yamma, let him come with us,” I begged. I gripped Souma with all my might as Mother tried to peel me away from him.

Um Muhammad came between us. She quietly said that Souma belonged to her.

“No! He belongs to me,” I protested.

“But he would be so sad to lose his home,” she said.

Now I could see what she meant. And so I let him go.

BOOK: Tasting the Sky

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