The Blue Between Sky and Water (17 page)
That same day, Khaled watched an Israeli football team on television and repeated his father’s words as his eyes followed the lithe, muscular limbs moving in nice blue uniforms with shiny gold stripes. He repeated the plea to Allah when the camera panned across the fans in the stadium and he saw boys his age enjoying what seemed to be the most thrilling day imaginable. He continued his prayer to Allah. “And when the Jews are punished, please bring their uniforms to Gaza,” he said, adding for clarity, “the blue uniforms with the shiny gold stripes.”
Khaled thought it was he who brought the family good luck, not this newborn. After all, he was the one who worshiped five times a day and made
dua’a
to Allah. He resented the credit going to his infant sister, and he tried to outshine Rhet Shel in other ways. He helped his baba build the chicken house on the roof. He learned very quickly and soon his baba allowed him to take charge of the hammer, which, as everyone knows, is the most important job in building things. His father was a mere helper who sawed the wood and held it in place while Khaled hammered the nails.
Alwan smiled as she bandaged her husband’s battered hands, listening to him recount the day building the chicken coop with their son.
“Khaled was in such command that I just couldn’t bring myself to take the hammer away from him,” Abdel Qader said. “I don’t know how I will manage tomorrow, though. We still need another full day to finish everything.”
“I’ll pad the bandages more. Enshallah, your hands will heal quickly. The body heals very quickly, Allah be praised.” Alwan said, smiling coyly at her husband, and Abdel Qader began to grow hard in that instant.
“Is it healed down there? I’m sure it has been more than the required forty days,” he whispered.
“It has only been twenty-two days,” she said and lifted her eyes flirtatiously, adding, “but my body is completely healed.”
Abdel Qader started toward Alwan, his erection in full disregard of the scriptures that dictate a man shall not touch his wife for forty days after the birth of a child. Alwan hesitated, the weight of religion upon her. “Let me at least feed Rhet Shel first. My breasts are engorged,” she said, trying to hold off her husband and her own desire, but Abdel Qader was already pulling at her.
“Let her sleep. I can help you,” he said, wrapping his mouth around her breast. He suckled from one, then the other, and back again. The more he indulged that sin, the harder he became. Soon he was moving inside of her, making his world right again.
Later, as he lay smoking a cigarette next to his wife, Abdel Qader went through the inventory of blessings, beginning with Alwan. She had given him Khaled, who would, enshallah, grow into a strong man to carry his name. The chicken coop was nearly complete and he had not even used up a third of the loan, which meant that he could buy more chickens than he had initially calculated. He puffed on his cigarette and did the math over and over, rearranging numbers of chickens and chicks to discern the greatest return in as short a period as possible. He finally decided on fourteen chickens, twenty chicks, and a rooster, estimating that if all went as planned, enshallah, he could provide for the family and pay off the loan within sixteen months. The dance with these numbers, however meager, satisfied him. He inhaled the last of his cigarette in a long and contented breath, put it out in the ashtray, and turned on his side to sleep.
Allah is generous
, he thought, and concluded that his enduring faith in those trying times had earned him divine favor. Just then little Rhet Shel began to stir. Another blessing to be counted.
When the sky, land, and sea were barricaded, we burrowed our bodies into the earth, like rodents, so we didn’t die. The tunnels spread under our feet, like story lines that history wrote, erased, and rewrote. Our family still had chickens, I made money delivering their eggs, and I was in love with Yusra. Once, I found a single Kinder Egg at a store and bought it immediately. I put it amid the delivery to Yusra’s house and felt proud to give such a gift to the girl I loved, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty that I hadn’t given it to Rhet Shel instead. She always wanted one.
Khaled Fed the Chickens daily before and after school and watched their numbers multiply. He delivered orders to customers, which was the best of his chores because occasionally, some let him keep the change. He always picked the biggest eggs for Yusra’s house because it was never too early to start currying favor with his sweetheart’s family for the eventual day when he’d grow up and ask for her hand. On these days, he made a special effort to tame his hair with a dab of olive oil, making a perfect side part to divide his shiny black mane. He wore his best blue jeans and a white shirt buttoned to the collar, perfectly tucked into his trousers. He knew it would be years before hair would appear on his face, but he inspected his jawline nonetheless, in case he was an early bloomer.
Much to his irritation, his teta Nazmiyeh watched him with a knowing grin. “You delivering to Yusra’s family today, son?” she asked.
“No!” he lied.
“That’s good, because you look so good, I don’t want that girl getting sweet on you.”
Khaled contemplated the idea of Yusra being sweet on him, and he prayed that she be the one to answer the door. Usually, she did. Khaled would use his own money to make up the shortage in their payment. Life had become more hopeful for his family. There was enough money for what they needed. They stopped going to the UNRWA ration lines and could afford luxuries, like chocolate and pasta, which were smuggled through the tunnels from Egypt.
If he hadn’t already had a job, Khaled might have succumbed to the seduction of the tunnels. It was one of the few jobs that paid well and the Gaza businessmen who owned the tunnels usually hired boys and young men small and limber enough to crawl in the narrow passages back and forth, dragging, pushing, pulling baskets of goods and shuttling the empty containers back for more. They smuggled a vast list of banned items, like diapers, sugar, pencils, petrol, chocolate, phones, eating utensils, books. One enterprising tunnel owner even started delivering Kentucky Fried Chicken from Egypt. It was not long before Khaled saw his own friends leave school to work there. The first to go was Tawfiq, a slight boy of twelve years. His older brother had already been working there, but he was of no use after he lost his left eye and badly damaged his right one. Tawfiq was the next in line to help the family.
On that first day, as teachers marked Tawfiq and Khaled absent, the two friends were sitting in an orientation class with five other boys their age in the tunnel village, listening to instructions on how to operate the levers and pulleys used to move containers, and what to do if the earth shook from bombs or tunnel collapse. Khaled had gone even though he knew his mother and teta would take turns whupping him for leaving school if they found out. He was also sure they’d not tell his father, unless he did it again. He always got at least one warning.
Khaled went that day on an errand of friendship for Tawfiq, whose face ashened before he set foot in the tunnel. Each new boy was to be accompanied by an older, more experienced one their first week of work.
The tunnel village was an eerie town with closed doors and shuttered windows. There were no trees and children were rarely seen playing in the streets. The children here worked and almost everyone’s face was swathed to protect from the pervasive dust of excavation that hovered in the air like perpetual dry fog. Tawfiq knew to bring his
kaffiyeh
and wrapped it across his face. “I’m ready,” he said.
A gravel path led to the opening of the tunnel, which lay inside a goat shed in a deserted, brown garden. The newer tunnels were more sophisticated than this one.
Five-star tunnels
, they were called. One could walk nearly upright the full length of them. Lanterns lined the paths and structural beams added safety. But this tunnel was narrow and dark, with just one system of levers and pulleys. That’s why the owner only hired boys with slight bodies.
Tawfiq gripped the rope as he sat atop the plastic basket, and he looked back at Khaled as the rope slowly lowered him into the bowels of the earth. Standing at the lip of the tunnel, Khaled watched his friend tremble, then disappear into the dark hole.
“How can he see where he’s going down there?” Khaled asked a worker next to him.
“There are lanterns at the bottom.”
“What’s it like?”
“It’s cold as your mama’s pussy. Stop asking stupid questions.”
Khaled waited silently for hours until Tawfiq finally emerged, his face coated with filth. It was late enough that Khaled was assured a whupping, but not so late that his mama and teta would worry just yet. Tawfiq was given a day’s pay right then, and the two friends, one nine, the other twelve years old, had in their pockets the honest pay of working men.
“What was it like?” Khaled asked as they walked to a local store.
Tawfiq blew his nose and showed the tissue to Khaled. “It’s like that.”
Khaled looked at the muddy snot.
“There was another boy at the bottom. Mahmood. Real nice. We’re friends now. The shit that came out of his nose was even worse,” Tawfiq said, with something like envy. “You know what surprised me the most?”
“What?” Khaled’s face opened.
“It’s really cold underground,” Tawfiq screwed his face. “I thought it would be a lot hotter since down there is closer to hell.”
The two friends held that riddle on their young faces in contemplative silence until it faded into other thoughts. “Mahmood is already growing hair on his face. He showed me. He has a bunch on his chin but not much for a mustache,” Tawfiq said. “But he has a big gap between his front teeth. I bet girls make fun of it. Poor guy.”
Khaled did, indeed, get a whupping from his mother. His teta was not at all sympathetic, especially when he admitted going to the tunnels. “I better not ever hear of you going there. People die every day down there!” Alwan yelled. His teta Nazmiyeh added, “Every damn day!” They threatened to tell his father if he ever went to the tunnels again.
He promised he wouldn’t, but he continued to meet up with Tawfiq after school by the store whose owner said he’d try to get more Kinder Eggs.
On a day two weeks later, Tawfiq did not arrive at the usual spot where Khaled waited. Instead, Tawfiq had gone to the ocean, and the next day, he explained the reason.
Tawfiq had hopped into the plastic basket to be lowered into the tunnel as usual. But on this day, an intense rush of earth surged from the opening, tossing Tawfiq high into the air. He didn’t know what had happened or how or when he had landed sitting forty feet from where he had just been. He sat there in a haze, unable to see in front of him, but he heard people gathering, running, shouting, “The tunnel is collapsing!” The wail of ambulance sirens mixed with the wails of women running toward the familiar sounds of disaster. His friend Mahmood had been in the tunnel. The boy with the cheery smile, big gap in his front teeth, and sparse facial hair, of which Tawfiq had been envious, was no more. People ran to help Tawfiq, gave him water, then turned to help the others as they tried to dig.
Tawfiq walked away, then ran. And found himself alone with the blue expanse of the Mediterranean. “I just sat there for a while,” he told Khaled. “Then I went home.”
I was too young and jealous at first to see the enchantment that Rhet Shel brought to our world. I blamed her for my own hurt. When Baba killed Simsim, my favorite chicken, he yelled at me to stiffen my spine, grow up, be a man. He said, “Boy, you can’t name a chicken. This is meat, Allah’s blessing that keeps us alive.” He said, “Here, come help me pluck these feathers, son.” I did, and then I was in charge of slaughtering the chickens. Rhet Shel got my job of feeding them. It was not long afterward that the world changed, and I went into the blue.
Khaled would Steady his being, invoke the name of Allah, and mumble to himself before moving the blade deftly in one swift motion across the slender bird neck.
Rhet Shel, now three years old, was given charge of feeding the chickens. She would throw the feed with the fitful and feeble skill of a toddler, spreading the seeds only around her little feet, and sometimes in her braided hair, a daily spectacle her father loved to observe. Abdel Qader would stand in the doorway with his coffee and cigarette, watching Rhet Shel delight as the chickens flocked around her to eat. She tried to impose order. “No, no, no, chicken!” she would scold her feathery friends, pointing her chubby index finger for authority. “Let the baby chickens eat, too. Move, move. No, no, no. Bad chicken!”
Everyone who knew Abdel Qader understood that Rhet Shel was the song that made his heart dance. She was perhaps his greatest love. To Khaled, Rhet Shel was a nuisance who could get away with anything, praised for everything she did, no matter how infantile. She had no chores except feeding the chickens, which she couldn’t do properly, and when Khaled tried to correct her, his father yelled at him. Worse, Khaled was warned not to allow Rhet Shel to see him slaughtering chickens. “I don’t want her to be sad,” his baba said. And Khaled resented them both because nobody ever worried about his feelings. Did his father think it was easy for Khaled to kill and pluck? So what if Rhet Shel was a girl and so little? She wasn’t so innocent. It would be good for her to stiffen her spine, grow up. She should understand that chickens were not pets. They were meat, a blessing from Allah. So, he was only doing her a favor when he arranged it so she accidentally saw him killing her favorite chicken on the roof. It was the one with the white ribbon around its neck.
“I told you to spare that one, didn’t I?” Abdel Qader screamed at Khaled.
“Yes, Baba. But …”
“Don’t talk back to me! You did this on purpose. I specifically told you not to slaughter that chicken, and I tied the ribbon on it to make sure you didn’t make a mistake.”
“The ribbon fell off, Baba,” Khaled begged, then felt the hot slap of his father’s fury across his face.