The Blue Between Sky and Water (19 page)
There he is. With a camera. Will I be on television? He asks Mama what happened. He wants to know if there was anything wrong with me before the invasion. Mama tells him that I had episodes and spells that came and went.
“They found him like this and brought him here,” Mama says.
“Then he started shaking. He was having seizures. We had taken refuge at the school. We left the house because the bombs were getting too close. Everybody was running for safety to the UN school. Khaled and Rhet Shel were with me,” Mama says, and yet I wonder if she is speaking of me at all because I do not remember any of that.
“My husband, Abu Khaled, left us there and went back to save the chickens.” Mama’s voice is cracking, like she will cry. Then she does. She cries and Teta thanks Allah for his mercy and asks Him for strength to endure His will. Mama speaks again.
“We were in the UN school and Rhet Shel wandered off when I fell asleep. We couldn’t find her and Khaled went to look for her. We were sure she was in one of the classrooms with the other children and Khaled was just looking in the school.”
But I don’t recall going to look for Rhet Shel. I see the top of Mama’s head in my peripheral vision moving back and forth against the mustard-colored curtains my uncles had hung for us. Mama is wearing a black hijab and from the corner of my eye I see a black line formed by the back-and-forth motion of her head. She always rocks herself when she cries.
The man speaks, asking what happened next. Mama doesn’t answer. The black line is mesmerizing and I think I should leave to be with Sulayman. The man tells Mama to lean on Allah because our strength is in Him, and Mama and Teta proclaim the Oneness of Allah in response.
“And then both children were gone. I got everyone in the school to look for them. Then Israeli helicopters started firing,” Mama says. Only now do I realize that nothing I saw then was real. There was no birthday celebration. I replay it all, roam the details of memory, and see the face of horror. Of merciless terror. The Jews had destroyed Gaza again and killed my father. Teta says, “May Allah bomb them, too, for the sake of the Prophet.”
I want to leave now. The black line of Mama’s hijab is gone and she is no longer crying. I can hear Teta making coffee.
“We finally found Rhet Shel roaming in the ashes of the schoolyard. She was sucking her thumb wildly and I had to yank it out of her mouth to understand her. But all she said was that Khaled had brought her back and then left. She didn’t know where he had gone, and she refused to say anything else.”
I don’t remember that.
“A few hours later the men came running, carrying Khaled.”
I remember that. They carried me to Mama and she was …
“I was so happy to see him I just held him and cried.”
Nur loved in a way that was adamant, persistent, and reckless. Her heart wasn’t smart enough to set limits on its generosity. Maybe that’s what rejection by one’s mother does. It retards the heart. Makes it love wrong, love too fast, without limits.
They still talked. Even after Nzinga married and had kids; after Nur aged out of the child welfare system, graduated from college, then graduate school; after South Africa’s apartheid system fell and Nzinga returned to Durban with her family, the thing between them remained. It changed as they needed it to. Its parts were made of motherhood, sisterhood, womanhood, comradeship in struggle, political activism, mentorship, friendship.
When Israel began a devastating assault on Gaza in December 2008, Nur had been working as a psychotherapist for the City of Charlotte, helping teens confront histories of rape, incest, abuse, neglect, drug use, and inconceivable traumas.
“Makes sense you go into that field,” Nzinga had said on Skype. “All us wounded women make a career of trying to put other people back together.”
Shortly after Israel’s assault, Nzinga emailed a video link to Nur.
Darling Nur,
Howzit?
Here’s the video I told you about. I remembered you did a paper on Locked-In Syndrome in college and thought you might want to take a look at this. I checked the last name, of course, as I always do with stories from Gaza. Unfortunately, it is not the same as your grandfather’s name.
I was very moved by the extraordinary things being done to care for this boy by his mother and grandmother, who have clearly lost so much.
Let me know how things turn out at your fund-raiser. You are doing wonderful things, Boo. I am very proud of you.
Love,
Zingie
Nur clicked on the link and watched the eight-minute documentary. It showed a close-up of the boy in the film, and she stared at his face, the white streak of hair. He seemed familiar. His name was Khaled. Two women sat against mustard-colored curtains. The older one was his grandmother. His mother refused to believe that he was comatose, insisting, “I know he can hear me. Sometimes he blinks when I ask him to.”
The phone rang in Nur’s office. It was nearly eight in the evening. Someone from the organizing committee for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund fund-raiser was letting her know that they finally had confirmed the speaker’s attendance. He was a Palestinian psychologist, one of a handful in Gaza. After six months of calling, writing, and meeting with elected officials and State Department bureaucrats to secure travel permission from Israel for the speaker to leave Gaza, they received news that Dr. Musmar would be allowed to cross the Rafah border and fly to the United States from Cairo.
“Great,” Nur said, reaching for a bag of potato chips as she hung up.
Nur was orderly and neat. She was even methodical in the excavation of her stomach, filling it with junk and emptying it by provoking a gag reflex with two fingers, then brushing her teeth immediately in a consistent pattern that brought regimen and precision to self-abuse and self-loathing. She worked endless hours, paid or volunteer, perfecting the habits of loneliness and escape by rescuing others. And daily she tamed her wild mismatched eyes with the strict symmetry of brown contact lenses.
The energy of the day was hurried and expectant. Nur managed the volunteers, ensuring that each aspect of the fund-raiser was well staffed. Organizations always sought Nur’s help with events because she brought order, if not imagination, to everything she did.
She put three volunteers at the registration desk, ten at catering, and two were coming to run the babysitting service. The sales tables were manned, ushers were in place with seating charts, and she assigned several volunteers the task of filling donor gift bags at a corner table, where a man she did not recognize was helping. Tall, with dark features and a substantial mustache, the unfamiliar volunteer created a gravity where he sat. His presence tugged at Nur until she finally approached, ostensibly to check up on progress with the envelopes.
Months later, she would probe that compulsion toward him. What had been so special about him? There had been many people she did not know or recognize at the event, most also Arab with features like his. Why had he caught her attention?
“Hi, Nur! We’re almost done,” said one of the volunteers.
“Great! Looks like you’ve cruised through. We still have a couple of hours before the patrons arrive,” Nur said. The stranger at the table stood up, tall indeed, and shy. “My name is Jamal.” He extended his hand.
His voice was strong but gentle, accented with the lilts and timbre of Arabic. He was slender, almost concave, as if deliberately trying not to assume more space. His clothes fell loosely, somewhat wrinkled against his brown skin, and his hair was disheveled, perhaps too long. His brown eyes were intent, set under drooping eyelids that gave him a quality of sadness. In contrast to the general disorder of him, his mustache was meticulous. Symmetrical, trimmed, combed, perfect. Nur thought him beautiful.
“I’m Nur,” she said, extending her hand.
Touching his skin thrilled her, however briefly their hands met. Then words were lost and the silence between them grew awkward.
“Nur, do you want us to distribute the envelopes to each seat?” asked a volunteer.
“Oh, yes. Thank you so much!” Nur responded with more enthusiasm than was warranted.
As the volunteers left the table, Nur thanked Jamal for helping out.
“It was my pleasure,” he said, shifting his weight.
“So, what brings you here?”
“I’m just visiting,” he said, with more self-assurance now.
“Well, you’re in for a treat. The speaker is amazing. I’m sure his talk will be very inspiring.”
A smile climbing one side of his face, he asked, “Who is the speaker?”
“He’s a psychologist from Gaza. Doctor Musmar. It was a nightmare trying to get permission for him to leave Gaza.”
He raised his brow, as if with curiosity. “I’m looking forward to hearing him.”
Nur looked around. “He must be here by now.”
“You know him?”
Strangely eager to impress, a lie spilled from her lips. “Yes.”
She quickly tried to retract, but could only do so with another lie. “Well, only by e-mail.” Fabrications formed faster than she could think, and the more she spoke, the more entangled she became in random forgery. “We’ve corresponded about a particular patient that I was interested in. It’s a very sad case …” She searched her memory of the video. The white streak of hair. She couldn’t remember the boy’s name. “… a young boy in Nusseirat …” She was glad to at least recall the name of the refugee camp. “He’s in a coma. Well, not a coma …”
“Are you a mental health clinician?” he interrupted.
“Yes, I work with DSS in Charlotte,” Nur said, relieved by that small truth.
“DSS?”
“Department of Social Services. I work with teens transitioning into the foster care system from difficult circumstances.”
“But tell me about, please, what is your interest. I mean, sorry, my English is out of practice. I just am curious why you are interested in this patient particularly. He is so far away.” Now, he was the clumsy one.
Nur leaned into the authority of knowledge and conjured the documentary video. Using the jargon of her profession, she spoke of the boy’s mother, who believed her son could hear her. “Locked-In Syndrome,” she called it, explaining that it was rare. That a part of the brain—the brain stem, she said—is injured and disrupts all muscle movement without affecting cognition or perception.
And when he did not immediately respond, fidgeting uncomfortably, Nur stepped deeper into the morass of impromptu dishonesty. “I am planning to go to Gaza to work with this patient and others at a psychotherapy center there,” she said.
He looked down, shuffled his feet uneasily, almost guiltily.
“Doctor Musmar! There you are!” the committee president yelled from across the room. Nur looked behind her in search of Dr. Musmar, but there was no one there. When she turned back, he tried to smile apologetically. Her face reddened and she hurried away.
“Nur, wait, please,” he called, trying to stop her, but several committee members were already gathering around him, reaching out to shake his hand.
Nur found a corner away from the crowd, from where she could see him occasionally searching the room. Was he looking for her? She slid deeper into the corner until it was safe to leave early.
At home now, she ate, then vomited.
The Tuesday following the fund-raiser, she received a brief e-mail from him.
Dear Nur,
I looked for you immediately after the talk and for the rest of the evening without luck. I finally manage to track down this e-mail address. I hope it is correct. I want to apologize, sincerely, for not telling you immediately who I was. I don’t know why I just played along, and I’m ashamed for it. I will be a happy man to know that you have forgiven me. Please at least let me know that you received this e-mail.
Sincerely,
Jamal
She read it several times, wrote, edited, and erased a response, and spent the day thinking of little else. She wanted to talk to Nzinga, but it was too late in Durban to call by the time she signed in to Skype.
Dear Dr. Musmar,
There’s nothing to apologize for. I’m glad you wrote to me. I was terribly embarrassed after our conversation and decided to leave early. I hope you had an enjoyable time in Charlotte.
Kind Regards,
Nur
Her e-mail was time-stamped 4:30 A.M. and the response she received was at 4:38 A.M.
Dear Nur,
Please call me Jamal and please do not feel embarrassed. You were delightful and charming. Truly, I can’t tell you how happy I was to have met you. I would really like to correspond with you more, especially regarding your theory on the boy in the documentary. I am aware of this video because the boy—his name is Khaled—was brought to our clinic by his mother, and I have a file for him. A local filmmaker interviewed Um Khaled when he heard about her son and the mysterious circumstances of his condition. (He had no significant cuts or trauma to any part of his body or brain that might give doctors a clue to understand how he went into this coma; or perhaps it is not a coma, as you said.) There just wasn’t much we could do for him, but perhaps I can learn something from you that may help him.
I don’t know if you are still planning to come to Gaza, but I have a grant that could pay you a small stipend for a year, with modest accommodation at our hostel. I’ve attached an application if you’re interested. I hope you will consider it.
Warmly,
Jamal
Their correspondence continued, a daily construction of an epistolary refuge where Nur went for a sense of purpose. On the edges of memory, Nur found a moment when her grandfather had told her that her mismatched eyes were just like his sister’s eyes. “I think you’re the only one in the family who inherited her eyes,” he had told her so long ago. “And we have a very big family that you’ll meet someday soon.” She imagined finding an older woman in Gaza with her eyes; being surrounded by her big family; finding the place where she belonged.