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Authors: Ibtisam Barakat

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BOOK: Tasting the Sky
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Finally my brothers let me hold the kite string for a moment. The soaring kite was heavier than I had expected. It was stronger than I was and pulled me forward. But I pulled the string back. It was a wonderful new feeling. I was thrilled to show my brothers that they had been right to
trust me to share in their games. Holding that string, I felt as though I owned a piece of the sky.
I returned the string to Basel and continued to gaze upward. The kite held us in its spell, our heads back, mouths wide open, eyes dancing with every flicker, when suddenly we felt the earth shake under our feet and heard a strange sound. It was loud and thudding, as though someone were knocking from inside the earth.
“Hazzah ardeyyah!”
Basel said. “An earthquake!” We looked down at our feet but saw nothing. Then we glanced up the road. There was the source of the earth-shaking noise.
From the mouth of the gravel road emerged a long line of Israeli soldiers. They moved in pairs, shoulder to shoulder, stomping forcefully, chanting at the top of their lungs. And they carried guns.
Where were they going? There were no other homes on that road. Were they coming for us?
Basel let go of the kite; he gave it to the wind, and we bolted for home.
“Hide!” shouted Mother. We pushed our Formica cupboard up to the door and pressed against it with our bodies as the noise got closer and closer, until it was surrounding us, engulfing our home.
When we peeked out the window, the entire length of the road was a blur of khaki interrupted only by the white and blue of the Israeli flag. Now we could see the soldiers, and we knew that if any one of them turned his head, he could see us, too. But none did. They moved in the same direction, like one long dragon, hundreds of heads covered
with half-watermelon khaki helmets strapped under hundreds of chins, and hundreds of stomping feet, all wearing high leather boots.
Reaching the hill, the soldiers spread out. We glued ourselves to our window to watch every move they made. They dug trenches, hid inside them, pulled up green thornbushes by the roots, put them on their helmets, raised their heads, shot in the air, hid again. A bullet came near our house; it whistled and whizzed as a stone repelled it. Land Rovers created clouds of dust while a helicopter hovered above the soldiers.
Had the fighting started again? I put on my shoes and laced them tightly. I had just turned four, and I needed no one to tell me what to do when I heard the sounds of war.
For three weeks, we were unable to go outside our house. The soldiers came to the hill in the morning and left in the late afternoon. They set up cardboard people and fired at them for hours. The sounds of the bullets filled my mind. I could hear bullets being fired long after the soldiers were gone. I even heard bullets in my sleep.
Mother complained that spending all day and night with us in a tiny room was giving her gray hair even though she was only twenty-four. “Gray hair? Show us,” we said. That made her even more furious. But it was our father, at forty-four, who really had gray hair, and a few white hairs, too.
Father said white hair meant that a person was wise. His own white hairs clearly allowed him to know many things, including what the Israeli soldiers were doing around our house. He called it
munawarat
, training for combat. The
soldiers were also conquering the territory, studying the hill in order to fight well on it, he explained.
But that made no difference to Mother. She was becoming more and more impatient, even hitting us if we went near the windows. Terrified of stray bullets, she complained about the windows so much that I no longer knew whether it was a good or a bad thing for a house to have them.
She also tried to stop us from playing war. But we liked our pretend wars. We imitated the soldiers, pointing our fingers or pointing bananas, spoons, or slippers at one another and making the sounds of shooting. Acting injured, we swayed and landed on our backs. We pretended we were dead for a moment, got up, and started the sounds of make-believe shooting again.
Mother did not seem to be mad at the soldiers who were shooting real bullets. Instead, she was mad at us! She cried when we talked back to her and shouted that we wanted a place outside to play. She cried while she nursed Maha, changed our clothes, and cooked our meals. If I asked her why she was crying, she would impatiently say it was onion that made her cry, even if she had no onions near her.
She had told me over and over that crying led to blindness. Did Mother want to become blind and not see the world outside our window? She seemed so anxious and sad. Then in the beginning of December, she made up her mind that she no longer wanted to live in a house that had become a prison.
“I'll go anywhere as long as it is far away from here,” she told Father. He became angry. They spoke for hours, until
she finally said that she wanted to take us to the Dar El-Tifl orphanage in Jerusalem.
“Orphanage?” Father exclaimed. “Our children are not orphans!”
“But you cannot protect them,” Mother shot back.
Father pounded the wall. “They are not orphans. They are not orphans,” he kept saying as he watched us gather our belongings.
I did not want to leave. I wanted to see my father every day and hold his big hand every chance I got. There would be no treats, no back rides, no truck rides, and no after-dinner stories about treasures without him.
I did not want to say he was dead. So I decided that if someone asked about him I would say I didn't know where he was. “Ask Mother,” I would say. Before we left, I built a stone person, a
qantara
, behind our house and told Dad that it was to remind him that I loved him each time he saw it.
At Dar El-Tifl, Mother looked the head administrator in the eye and said that Father had died in the war. The words made me ill. My father had become a secret.
We were admitted to the orphanage. In exchange, Mother would live on-site, care for infant orphans, and help staff a demanding night shift. During the day, she attended classes or studied. Mother's dream was to become more and more educated. It hardly mattered what she studied, as long as she was learning.
 
Winter came, and the cold at Dar El-Tifl dug deep into my flesh and lingered below my ragged clothes. It left me and
all the other children trembling, coughing, and crying for warmth, our noses red. Now I felt as though I had lost both of my parents, for I hardly saw my mother.
Nights at Dar El-Tifl were scary and long. Shadows of blankets, beds, and clothes looked like monsters. And to move meant to attract their attention. I wet my bed every night rather than leave it and cross the dimly lit yellow hallways to the bathroom. Wetting the bed warmed me up for a few moments, then kept me shivering until the morning. Many other children wet their beds, too, and every morning the bedrooms smelled like a barn and the sheets piled up like mountains in the laundry room.
Daily, we ate three small meals. After we had brought our empty plates back to the kitchen window, we were still hungry. We exchanged glances and sighs. There were no second helpings, and there was nothing to eat in between. Each meal was served at a set time. If you missed it, you had to fill your growling belly with water until the next meal. I ate the food that was given to me, not because I liked it but because our teachers were monitoring our every move. The exception was the falafel balls and sesame bread, which were served for breakfast once a week and tasted like treats compared with anything else we were given. Most of all, I was thankful we didn't always have to eat lentils.
My brothers were placed with the six- and seven-year-old children, my sister with the one-year-olds and toddlers. I was put in preschool with the other four-year-olds. My classroom had a blackboard in it and lying in its tray was a piece of chalk. “Alef!” I cried out. I ran to the board, wanting to pick him up,
hold him, take him with me. But my teacher came between us, saying that only she could use the chalk. I followed her hand, Alef swinging back and forth in it. When she was done, she put Alef on the table. He rolled off and broke into pieces.
In this class I did not speak with Alef, but I learned about two new members of his family, Ba and Ta. They lived with him. I wished I could live with Alef, Ba, and Ta, for I felt so alone and afraid at Dar El-Tifl.
Only the half hour of recess, when I could be with my brothers, made me feel safer. When the bell rang and the children hurried outside, my brothers and I met. I wanted to play with them, but they had games to play with those in their own classes.
I spent much of my time bending over and looking at my brothers and the playground upside down. I imitated those who squealed with excitement as they hung from two parallel bars I could not reach.
Things changed when a boy punched me in the face and made my nose bleed. He wanted to fight my brothers but knew they were strong and were always together. So he hit me instead. Seeing what happened, my brothers charged toward him. They caught him and dragged him to where I stood.
They kicked him, twisted his arms, slapped his face, and muffled his mouth. They asked me to tell them when to stop. They said they would hit him until I said
khalas,
enough. When I finally did, the boy sat up crying. His nose was bleeding now, too. Teachers took me and the boy off the playground. We lay down side by side, held our noses to stop the bleeding, and struggled to breathe.
The weekend following the fight, my brothers were expelled from Dar El-Tifl with no warning for having beaten up this boy and having had fights with other children. They were always ready for a fight on the playground, and Mother was too busy to keep track of all of us. So on an early February day, my brothers were sent to an all-boys orphanage in Jericho.
Horrified, I ran after the car that took them away. But the giant school gate clanged shut as the car left. I hit the gate over and over and shouted that I wanted to go with them.
Then I went to find Maha, who, having just learned how to walk, toddled like a duck. She was too young for me to talk to, but I felt better just sitting with her. Her teacher, though, said I must go to my own class. Now, it seemed only Alef remained in my world.
That night, while everyone slept, I stayed awake, stiff with fear and sadness. The night monsters appeared even bigger. But suddenly I left my bed and tiptoed through my fear until I reached the steps. I walked to my classroom.
Inside, a round moon met me, shining through the square window, its yellow light spreading like a rug under my feet. I stood in the lemony silence wondering, Will the moon tell on me? Then I walked to the blackboard and tapped on the chalk.
“I need you, Alef,” I whispered. I told him what had happened and how sad I felt.
Alef and I arrived at a plan. If it succeeded, I would be reunited with my brothers. Disobeying my teacher's orders, I planted Alef deep in my pocket and returned to bed.
The next day at recess I watched everyone play. I imagined
my brothers were with me. I stood aside for a long time, then ran to the classroom, where Alef and I carried out the first step of our plan. Before the bell rang and my classmates lined up to resume the school day, I tore up all the notebooks on their desks. Then I sat waiting.
My teacher was astonished. She asked me to stand, and with a wooden pointer she hit the backs of my hands till I thought my fingers were going to break. I did not move. I kept my hands open as I cried. She ordered that I stand in the corner and raise my hands against the wall. In defiance, I smiled to the wall the way my brothers had taught me to do after Father or Mother hit us. They told me this showed that on the inside they were never broken, no matter how bad the pain.
After my brothers were expelled, I found something in the school to tear up every day for a week. And every day I was hit. But one day a smiling woman came in, asked for me, and took me to the playground. She wondered out loud why I tore up things in the school. “Why act like unruly boys?” she asked.
I told her that I wanted to be expelled and sent to where my brothers were. “I want my brothers!” I exploded.
She understood. “If you tear up nothing for a month, I will arrange for you to visit your brothers in Jericho,” she promised. So I returned to my quiet ways and to learning more of the alphabet. I learned other things, too, including that a month was thirty days. I counted each passing day. And I hoped that the woman would keep her promise.
BOOK: Tasting the Sky
11.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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