The Blue Between Sky and Water (28 page)
“I won’t tell,” Rhet Shel promised, looking up at his surly face. “I’m a good secret keeper.”
Nur knelt down, searching Rhet Shel’s face. She kissed her and held her for a moment before they headed back. “But don’t keep secrets from us,” Nur said.
They returned hours later, as the muezzin’s call to evening prayer spread from so many minarets propping up the sky. “Good timing,” said the beekeeper’s widow. “Let’s go through what you got.”
Nur and Rhet Shel unloaded their bags. “Is this enough, Hajje?” Rhel Shel asked proudly.
“It’s perfect, habibti. Enshallah, this will help your mama. First thing we need to do is dry these out. I already made sure the roof was clean and lined with blankets. We just need to lay them all out to dry in the sun tomorrow. Then we will start working on the medicine,” said the beekeeper’s widow.
The next afternoon, Nur and Rhet Shel worked closely with her as she repeated cycles of soaking the dried leaves in solvent obtained from a local welder, extracting the oil, washing, and filtering. The beekeeper’s widow worked with the same enchantment she brought to cooking food. She never measured anything, and she knew by smell, color, or texture when to add another ingredient or start a new step.
Hajje Nazmiyeh’s legs were functioning again and she left to visit neighbors. The beekeeper’s widow suspected that her paralysis had been much more temporary than she had let on.
By evening, they were ready to evaporate residual water from the last wash and siphon off the medicinal oil. Rhet Shel had grown bored and had gone off to play with her friends. Alwan, too, had left in the early afternoon for the co-op. Only Nur and the beekeeper’s widow were at the house. “Nur, habibti, I don’t live so near and at my size, it’s hard to move around. I would like it if you came to visit me more,” the beekeeper’s widow said, pouring a bucket of solvent into another through a funnel lined with filter cloth.
“I will. My contract at work is almost up and I …” Nur didn’t know how to finish her thought.
“Yes, about your work. Tell me there’s nothing between you and that doctor,” the large matriarch said, her words gentle but firm.
Nur looked down at her phone. “I don’t know,” Nur began, but she hesitated when she met the astonished eyes looking back at her. “I mean …”
The old widow stopped what she was doing and searched the face of her Yasmine’s American granddaughter. Nur looked as if she could have been the daughter of Mamdouh and Yasmine instead of their granddaughter. “My child, you are beautiful and educated. You come from a good family. Any woman in Gaza wishes she had your height or your strength and independence. You will meet someone who is not married and who deserves your love. El doktor has a family and he is not leaving them. Unless you’re willing to be a second wife—”
“No,” Nur interrupted her.
“Yes, and that is exactly what his wife will say. I don’t doubt that he truly loves you, but even if he wanted to divorce, his elders would not allow it. It would shame Nazmiyeh’s sons, too. There is no room in Gaza for such things. It would hurt everyone, you most of all. You must heed your elders, my child,” she said, stroking Nur’s face. “Now hand me that pipe and suction bulb.”
In high school, Nur fell in love with a boy named Clay Jared, who loved her, too. Mrs. Whitter, her foster parent, forbade her from seeing him. But Nur could not defy the commands of her heart and got caught sneaking a call with Clay Jared. Mrs Whitter snatched the phone, imprisoned Nur once again, and said she was a “nigger-loving truant even Jesus can’t save.”
Nur listened to the beekeeper’s widow, helping as instructed with the medicinal recipe, which made the house smell bad. Nur looked again at her phone, hoping for a new text from Jamal. She hoped the electricity would come on soon so she could see if there was an e-mail from him. She knew it wouldn’t be good. But he had told her he was being forced to write it.
Nur watched as the black oil climbed into the tube every time the beekeeper’s widow pinched the suction bulb. “Alwan needs to take six doses of this every day. It tastes like manure,” the widow said, and Nur recalled her pot-smoking college days. She wished she had put one of those plants aside for her own use.
Electricity lit the room and Nur rose quickly to see if she could get a connection on her laptop. Within minutes, she was reading the awaited letter from Jamal.
Dear Nur,
What we did was a mistake. It was wrong and I am sorry that I have not been direct in saying that. I am married to the only woman I have ever truly loved and am committing myself to rebuilding my relationship with her in the wake of my betrayal of her love and the family we created together. As the official ending date of your temporary employment has been moved up due to the death in your family, I would be grateful if you could gather your things from the office when I am not there during the hours between noon and two, when I will be home with my wife.
Kind Regards,
Dr. Jamal Musmar
Nur read the letter, then read it again. And again. She ran to a local Internet café to print it out before the electricity went off. She needed to stab herself with every word, for as long as she could. She needed to bleed to stop from calling or writing to him.
She folded the letter in her hand, then unfolded and refolded it as she made her way alone to the shore, where families lounged on blankets or in plastic chairs, swam in the moonlit ocean, and huddled around bonfires. She walked through evening’s shadow, looking for the blur of Jamal’s form, waiting for her. But she knew he would not be there. Slowly, her body dissipated into a haze, until there was nothing there where she stood except a tattered old shoe clutching a letter, crying. At last, crying. Alone in the fog of night and heartbreak on a shoreline glittering with moonlight, Nur cried, the whole of her dismantled into three parts: an old shoe, a crumpled letter, and a missed menstrual period.
Teta wouldn’t admit it, but she needed the beekeeper’s widow, and she believed that it was Allah’s infinite wisdom that had brought her into their midst.
Days passed in a surreal tedium. The widow’s malodorous laboratory of solvents, buckets, filters, funnels, strainers, boiling pots, and suction bulbs filled and emptied until the flask of black oil was made for the next day’s installments of the foul medicine, which Alwan consumed obediently, trusting in Allah’s will. Nazmiyeh, too, came to accept the beekeeper’s widow as the new sovereign of her kitchen, ruler of all she could survey of dishes, pots, and ladles. And the two old women, who had lived their lives through the same pains of war and loss, and who were themselves family by marriage, became the closest of friends. Although Hajje Nazmiyeh’s pride would not allow her to be anything less than hospitable, her true self did not soften toward the coup in her kitchen until life once again inhabited Alwan’s eyes.
At first the two hajjes talked of meaningless pleasantries, of which Hajje Nazmiyeh would quickly tire. But then memories and old stories crawled from the sediments in their bones. Ghosts of Mamdouh and Yasmine and others they loved breezed through their words. The beekeeper’s widow remembered the days of Um Mamdouh and Sulayman. They laughed, the beekeeper’s widow recalling the town gossip during the years when Nazmiyeh was paralyzed but kept making babies. Sometimes tears fell. They both regretted the day Mamdouh and Yasmine had left Gaza.
“Well, you sure are the best cook I’ve ever known. No one could deny that,” Hajje Nazmiyeh admitted. “But wasn’t I the prettiest girl in Beit Daras?”
The old widow laughed. “You sure drove a few boys crazy, Nazmiyeh, and more than a few hearts were broken when you married Atiyeh.”
Satisfied by that validation, Nazmiyeh wholeheartedly abdicated her kitchen to its new queen, who was happy to teach her how to make medicines and remedies.
“I’ll tell you another secret, Nazmiyeh,” said the old widow, and her student perked up. “The plants that I make the medicine from are hashish leaves.”
“Allah keep the devil away!” Hajje Nazmiyeh said, shifting in her seat, unsure what to say to the beekeeper’s widow, someone she had always looked upon as a pious woman who would never veer into the moral ambiguity of hashish.
The beekeeper’s widow laughed. “The young Nazmiyeh of Beit Daras would be tantalized by such a revelation. She would ask to try it,” she said. Hajje Nazmiyeh stared at her, surprised and tantalized, indeed. She squinted with eyes that were suddenly half her age, cocked her lips in a sly smile, and erupted with laughter that even the neighbors could hear. And when the two of them had laughed enough to empty their bodies of all misery, Hajje Nazmiyeh collapsed it all into scheming whispers. “Do you mean that all these years that I have known you, you smoked hashish? How could I not know such a thing?”
“Um Mazen, I’m still a god-fearing woman. Allah made this plant for all who inhabit His earth. He did not forbid us to use it,” she said, and Nazmiyeh agreed.
Although they were nearly the same age, the widow established a kind of maternal affection toward Nazmiyeh and a new order was forged in this home of women where an alliance of matriarchs brewed and got high and plotted and prayed for the restoration of life in their home. For Alwan’s healing, Nur’s recovery, and Rhet Shel’s blossoming.
Mama was true to her faith, and she judged those who weren’t. But the creep of death in her breasts changed her. It loosened her grip on social rules, and she held on to Nur instead. Mama and Nur found in each other a shared fear of loss, loneliness, and longing for love, and it made sisterhood form there.
After Six weeks of the beekeeper’s widow’s awful concoction and the general sense of healing it infused in her body, Alwan set out very early in the morning for another physician appointment. She and Nur rode the brown taxi van in intertwined solitude. At the clinic, the nurse drew blood from Alwan’s arm as they both looked on. “We test for markers of the wicked disease and this will tell us if they are higher or lower. But, unfortunately, Um Khaled, we can’t trust these tests completely anymore because the kits come through the tunnels without any refrigeration or regulations. So, we don’t know if they’ve gone bad in the sun or from any other exposure. We will do the best we can with what we have for you and leave the rest in Allah’s hands,” the nurse said. “We can get you an X-ray now. But there are many patients ahead of you. It will probably be three hours and then the doctor will see you.”
“
Alhamdulillah
.” Alwan thanked Him for all things.
As they waited for the doctor and Alwan clasped and unclasped her hands, fidgeting her fingers and knuckles, Nur squeezed Alwan’s hand, slipping out of her own solitude and into Alwan’s. And the two of them sat thus, with the same quiet longing for life, more and more of it, no matter how tortured.
In the examination space behind a curtain, Alwan insisted that her sister, Nur, be allowed in as the doctor palpated her naked body, under a loosely draped flowered sheet. The two women kept their hands interwoven.
“Okay. Put your clothes on and we will talk,” the doctor said.
Alwan dressed hastily with Nur’s help and the two women emerged from behind the curtain to find the doctor holding two X-ray films to the light, comparing them. They had both seen the one in his left hand that showed two tumors the size of peanuts in her breast.
“Alwan, I’m not sure what is happening,” his lips said, but his eyes spoke another language. They told Alwan that the film in his right hand, the one without the peanuts, showed that the tumors were barely visible.
Nur’s hand still in hers, Alwan said, “I feel that I am getting much better.”
“Well, as you know, X-ray is the only imaging we can do and it’s not reliable, but compared to the first films a couple of months ago, it seems that the tumors have shrunk. It happens sometimes that people go into remission and tumors don’t grow further, but I rarely see tumors shrink to this extent. They’re still there, but they are much smaller,” he said.
Alwan and Nur looked at one another. They squeezed their hands. “Thanks be to Allah. Only He knows the unknown,” Alwan said, careful not to tempt fate.
While they waited for the taxi van, Alwan found a small clearing and knelt in grateful prayer. In the van, Nur carried on excitedly about the widow’s medicine. About sharing the good news with the rest of the family. She said how wonderful the next jomaa ghada was going to be with all the brothers, sisters-in-law, and children.
“Stop talking like that, Nur. It is bad luck to go on about Allah’s blessing. It invites the evil eye,” Alwan said. “Besides, there’s something else I want to talk with you about.”
Alwan lowered her voice, steadied it with compassion. “Nur, I noticed that you have not used sanitary napkins lately, and …”
Nur’s face fell. She hadn’t seen this coming. “What?”
“Nur, you must know that I am on your side.” Alwan moved closer as Nur began to sob. Since that evening on the shore with the letter, tears lived close to her surface.
Some time passed in silence. Then Nur said, “I’ve never been grateful to be fat until I realized. I thought it would allow me to hide it for a while.”
Nur looked out at the street, and Alwan could see the barren, lonely desert in her eyes. She confessed that she had written to Jamal about her situation, but he had not responded. She said she had first thought he needed time to think, but a week had gone by without response. She thought maybe he hadn’t received the e-mail so she resent it. And as Nur spoke, Alwan could see the fog of depression in her eyes.
“Son of a dog. I would have never imagined him so lowly,” Alwan interrupted her. Then she stated the obvious. “You cannot have a child out of wedlock here. We have to figure something out and we must tell our mother.”
Something in the way she said
our
—our mother—made Nur sob harder.
“Okay. Cry it all out, but too much crying is also not allowed in Gaza,” Alwan joked, even if truth tinged her words.
As they entered the house, Alwan thought something was burning, but Nur recognized the smell. Hajje Nazmiyeh and the old widow were red-eyed and didn’t seem to notice anyone else was there.