The Blue Between Sky and Water (27 page)
Soon, the flickering of Gaza’s candles slowly melted and ceased, one by one, as if the night, too, were closing its eyes as the festive bustle went home. A silence so pure yawned across Gaza’s skies and Nur remained awake until sleep at last subdued the clamor of her thoughts and the constant checking of her phone.
I stayed for Rhet Shel. It pained me that I could not animate my body for her, and it was all the more wounding because she was content with the blink of my eye. But then it was time. I was by the River Suqreir with Jiddo Atiyeh when Mariam came by with Mamdouh, holding a candle. I knew it was time to extinguish the flame. I took in a deep breath, and blew.
Alwan Awoke first, to what she thought would be a lazy Friday after the hafla. Nur was asleep at the other side of the bed and Rhet Shel was sprawled between them, her little body taking up most of the bed. Alwan smiled, pulling the covers over them as she got out of bed. She shuffled to the kitchen and put a pot of water to boil for coffee, then went to tend to Khaled. She checked his urine bag first, then bent to kiss his forehead. As her lips touched the cold surface of his skin, her hand felt the stiffness of his arm. She didn’t move, lingering in the awkward posture of a routine moment. Her heart shook in her chest and she cried, her tears and snot landing on his forehead, lubricating the point of contact between her lips and his skin. Her eyes trembled, then her whole body. She was afraid to straighten up, afraid to move her lips, her hand. She mumbled prayers, unsure what to do now. If she stood up, she would have to face her son’s death and her daughter’s broken heart.
Strong, kind arms wrapped around her and helped her to a chair. It was the beekeeper’s widow. As Alwan moved away from her son, she gave out a mournful howl. Hajje Nazmiyeh sprang up from her bed cushions and needed only to see her daughter to know what had happened. “Allahu akbar … la ellah illa Allah,” she began to whimper and pray, though she could not get up. Her legs were failing her again. The pot of water was boiling in the kitchen and the beekeeper’s widow began tending to the women of the house. She brought them both water and went back to make the coffee. She burned sage from the kitchen, suffusing the shock and sadness with the aroma of healing. Hajje Nazmiyeh pulled out the piece of paper on which Rhet Shel had written Khaled’s message. “I thought it was going to be me. I thought he wanted me to have a hafla because my time was up,” Hajje Nazmiyeh mumbled. “La ellah illa Allah.”
“Yumma, what are you talking about?” Alwan squinted through the fog of her mind.
Nur walked in just as Hajje Nazmiyeh was handing her daughter the piece of paper. “Look. You see? Khaled dictated this to Rhet Shel from that poster chart and I did what he asked. I thought it was my time to go and Mariam wanted me to have a party.” Hajje Nazmiyeh continued to moan. “Allahu akbar … La ellah illa Allah.”
Alwan unfolded the paper, trying to decipher the gibberish. She could see the scribbles of the neighbor boy who likewise had tried to make sense of the random letters. But there was no sense in it. It was all gibberish as all of their attempts to communicate with Khaled had been. Her son had been gone for a long time, and Alwan began to feel some strength in knowing her son had now found peace, at last. La ellah illa Allah.
“You see? My daughter, you see? Khaled sent that message to me,” Hajje Nazmiyeh repeated through her tears.
“Yes, Yumma. That’s what his message said. You gave him the farewell hafla he wanted.” Alwan tucked the paper in her pocket and knelt to sit by her mother as Nur dialed the brothers to come.
Just then they heard Rhet Shel, climbing onto Khaled’s lap. “Blink, Khaled.”
Nur dropped the phone and ran to scoop her up and the whole world was suddenly awash in Rhet Shel’s cry. They all concentrated on calming her, but at every moment when her crying would begin to subside, the sight of her brother would spur renewed sobs, until the brothers came and took Khaled’s body, and their house was once more crowded, first with family, sleep still in everyone’s eyes, then with neighbors and others who came to pay respects.
Khaled
“And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”
—Aeschylus
The morning when I left, our neighbors awoke to the somber cadence of Quran readings. People walked out in their nightclothes to discern the direction of mourning. Word spread quickly that something had happened in our home. Some could see that my uncles and cousins, who had left the celebration only hours earlier, were returning with dark rings under their eyes.
Ya Sater
, they all prayed in one way or another for the best.
“It’s the boy,” one neighbor said. “May Allah rest his soul.”
“That poor family. Is this what happens when someone dares to just have a party for no reason? Can’t we just be joyful without punishment following?” said another.
“Bite your tongue, woman. You’ll go to hell for questioning Allah’s will like that.”
For hours, people filed in and out. My uncles washed my body, prayed over it, wrapped it in a white shroud, and blessed it for burial. Mama and Teta and Nur draped themselves in black. Nur tended to Rhet Shel, who was mercifully distracted by our cousins and went to play outside.
Many of the women who came to pay their respects were curious about Nur. They said it was a miracle how she had found her way to her family after a lifetime with Americans. Some of them looked both ways and shrank their voices to whisper about “her and the doctor.”
“El doktor Jamal?”
“Allah keep the devil’s tongue away! Astaghfirullah! Don’t make that kind of talk about a woman’s honor! And while they are grieving? Astaghfirullah.”
But those were only a few. Most women came to help. There was enough food left from the hafla to feed visitors paying their respects, and more food arrived in the following days of mourning, while recitations from the Quran reverberated through the walls of our house. Out of respect, none of the neighbors played music, and they kept their televisions turned low. People came and went on the song notes of Allah’s words, entering with bowed heads, drinking bitter coffee. The men and women gathered in separate quarters. There were no adornments, no makeup or polished nails. No colors. Such is the order of grief.
The old beekeeper’s widow stayed and helped, especially since Teta’s legs were still not working. She took charge of the kitchen, ensuring the constant flow of food and clean dishes.
A woman no one recognized arrived. Everyone noticed her because she did not cover her hair, and though she dressed modestly in black, her gait was buoyed with money and social status. There were whispers: “She’s el doktor Jamal’s wife.”
They heard her express condolences to Teta and Mama. Nur finally came out of the bedroom and Maisa seemed startled by Nur’s shocking eyes. But she quickly regained poise, expressing condolences on behalf of herself and her dear husband. She said Jamal was away and it was too bad that Nur’s position with the center would be coming to a close soon. “How time flies,” she said, and added that her husband had enjoyed Nur’s enthusiasm. “He said you were fun,” Maisa said pointedly, and left.
At Mills Home, the institution where Nur spent her adolescence, residents were required to attend church services three times per week. Nur was the only Muslim on campus, and when she was caught smoking pot in the church basement with a friend, she was punished equally for the offense of her religion. The administrators and houseparents looked at her with revulsion. Her chores were doubled and she was banned, indefinitely, from everything but school and church. She saw only one way out of this imprisonment. So, one Wednesday at Chapel Service, she walked down the aisle to accept Jesus. She was baptized that Sunday and they all rejoiced. “You’re saved now,” they said. She was forgiven and her punishment was lifted, but in private, Nur worried for her soul and prayed to Allah.
Khaled’s passing altered the energy and routine of the house. They had not appreciated how large Khaled’s silent presence had been. How much of their lives had revolved around filling and emptying the bags that had delivered nourishment and received his body’s waste. Or the amount of time that Rhet Shel had spent with his letter chart. Nur realized that Rhet Shel had learned to read and write far beyond her years by trying to decipher these sessions with Khaled. For a while his chair sat in its place, like a stem without its flower. But the family soon sold it and Khaled’s place slowly shrunk as Rhet Shel made new friends and began spending more time playing in the neighborhood. Nur took time off from her job. Hajje Nazmiyeh insisted on it.
“I have allowed many things from you with regard to that man, but no more,” Hajje Nazmiyeh scolded Nur for the first time. “You are like a reckless teenager. Despite your age and education, your emotions are like those of a neglected child finding love for the first time. He is a cheating husband and an opportunist who has disrespected your love and violated your honor. And if I ever see him, by Allah and His Prophet, I will cut his dick off.” Hajje Nazmiyeh paused, corralling more of her outrage. “This is not America where everyone fucks whoever they want whenever they want because it’s fun. This is Gaza. This is an Islamic place. I should have been more foreceful in preventing what has happened between the two of you.”
Nur cowered, hung her head, lowered her eyes. Her mobile phone testified to more unanswered texts and calls than she cared to count.
Then, Hajje Nazmiyeh softened, and she pulled Nur close. “Please just trust me. I will not allow you to be the fool. Do you think that wife of his came here to pay respects? Of course not. She doesn’t care if we live or die. She came here to show you that she had won. It was a declaration of victory.” Nazmiyeh repositioned herself, as if she didn’t know what to do with her own body. “I wanted to slap the hell out of her. But how could I at such a time? I was so angry, even though you’re the one who did wrong. But I would have done it because you’re my flesh and blood and because that kind of terribleness should not be laid on the doorstep of a grieving family.”
Electrified by her own words, Nazmiyeh could not stop. It felt good to feel angry indignation. She rocked her weight from one side to the other and went on. “I’ve watched you check that phone every few seconds for days. He isn’t going to call or write back. Lick your wounds all you want in private, but in public, your head better stay high.” Hajje Nazmiyeh shifted again, charged with her own convictions. “This is one thing I will teach you. The other thing is that here, in your birthright land, culture, and heritage, what you do affects your entire family. And protecting the family must come before your individual fancy.”
In the wake of Hajje Nazmiyeh’s words, the loosely knit root of Nur’s being was both unraveled and restored. Was this a choice between the woman she had been and the one she wanted to be? The untethered one who lived by her whims and an unhingeing freedom? Or the one descended from a family grounded in an ancient earth who was accountable to and fortified by the love and loyalty of family?
As Nur stood there, Nazmiyeh’s lecture fading in the noise of her inner turmoil and anxiousness to see Jamal, a text appeared on her phone and made the world stop for the time it took her to read it.
“Please do not text. Things are very bad at home. I am trying to hold on to my family and I am being forced to write you a letter that you will receive later today. Please know that I do not mean a word of it.”
The old beekeeper’s widow had been married before she wed the beekeeper but had been divorced because she couldn’t bear children. The beekeeper was nearly sixty when he married her. She was twenty, five years older than Yasmine, her new stepdaughter for whom she cared after the Naqba of 1948. She was a simple woman of amiable character, distinguished by an impenetrable intimacy with dirt and food. Her days were spent digging, planting, harvesting, and cooking. And when she slept, she took the earth with her, under her nails and between her toes.
Over the days of mourning, when the old beekeeper’s widow stayed with the family, she observed Alwan’s frail physical condition and probed her for information. “Child, I am half blind, but I can feel sickness coming through your ribs. Tell me what the doctor said,” she inquired, her massive body pouring over itself in sensuous maternity.
“It’s the evil disease. I will go soon to have my breasts cut off,” Alwan answered, not believing her own words.
“Have faith in Allah, Um Khaled, and let me help you. We have our own Arab medicine. For centuries we’ve healed ourselves,” she explained. “Let me help you, child. We are family and old friends.”
“May Allah grant you long life, Hajje. I have put my fate in Allah’s hands and will do whatever He puts in my path. Tell me what do do.”
The old beekeeper’s widow gave instructions to her Yasmine’s granddaughter, Nur. She drew pictures of the plants and where to find them in her garden. “Abu Shanab, the gardener, might be there. Just show him these pictures and tell him I sent you. He will help,” she said. “Take Rhet Shel with you, habibti, and make sure no one knows about this garden!”
As Nur turned to leave, the beekeeper’s widow continued. “And then we are going to talk about what is making you sad, okay?”
Hajje Nazmiyeh heard her and chimed in. “Good, sister. The more of us talking sense into our child, the better.”
Nur liked the sound of
our child
and managed a small smile as she took the picture instructions in one hand and Rhet Shel in the other.
On their way, walking through narrow alleys and the tightly woven lives of lifelong refugees, Nur contemplated the pictures of what looked like cannabis plants. Her smile broadened and she quickened her steps. The garden was located near the western edge of Gaza that was somewhat dangerous to till due to landmines and proximity to Israeli posts, but the beekeeper’s widow had done so for years. Nur opened the gate and was stunned to find rows and rows of various plants, manicured and nurtured. Among the various herbs and vegetables grew marijuana plants the likes of which she had seen only in images of drug busts. They were separated in an arid section of the garden, all of them coated with sticky resin. Nur and Rhet Shel began to cut and collect as many as they could. Nur reminded Rhet Shel not to tell anyone about their secret garden, which compounded Rhet Shel’s excitement; and with thrilling collusion, they filled their bags. Abu Shanab came just as they were nearly done. He seemed put out by the intruders and repeated the warning not to tell anyone about the garden.