The Blue Between Sky and Water (29 page)
“Mama, what’s that smell? What’s going on? Where is Rhet Shel?” Alwan asked, panic rising with each successive question.
“Habibti!” Hajje Nazmiyeh raised her arm in a loving invitation for her daughter to come closer. “Rhet Shel is with her cousins. It’s just us tonight. Sit and tell us what the doctor said. Whatever it is, we will bear it together.”
Still confused but reassured and now intrigued, Alwan gave the news casually. Looking at the old beekeeper’s widow, her face curled into a smile, “Your nasty medicine is working,” she said, and Nazmiyeh began yelling, singing incomprehensibly. She erupted in ululations. The widow laughed, shaking rolls of fat, and admonished Hajje Nazmiyeh. “Quiet, woman! The neighbors will hear. Do you want them coming to stick their noses in our business?”
“Oh, no,” Nazmiyeh said, laboring to contain herself.
“What is that you’re smoking?” Alwan pointed accusingly to a rolled cigarette.
Nur put her hand on Alwan’s shoulder. “Habibti,” she said. “Haven’t you figured this out?”
Alwan still didn’t understand. Then she did.
Hajje Nazmiyeh laughed harder and soon, Alwan was trying it. She coughed hard enough to gag but two hits were enough to make her head spin. “Allah forgive me! This is crazy,” she said.
“What are you talking about, child?” the old widow retorted. “Nothing to forgive. He created this stuff just like He created you. And He put it in your life to heal your body.”
Nur refused to smoke, instinctively moving her hand over her belly. That gesture, combined with the awkward way Alwan looked away, caught Hajje Nazmiyeh’s attention.
“There’s something the two of you are hiding and I want to know what it is,” she said, not laughing anymore.
Nur began to cry.
The old widow smacked her lips. “I can help. I can make a medicine that will help where you put your hand.”
Nur’s nature was unguarded. She moved in the world with a quality of defenselessness, which invited both protectors and predators. She was the most educated among us. The most privileged. The one with the most opportunities, greater promise, and a more assured future. But her pain was the most palpable, and her strength came from being needed. So we learned to protect Nur by needing her.
Days accumulated in Nur’s belly. The women of her home grew worried and Nur did her best to avoid conversation, which was no more than the same incessant question: “What are you going to do?”
Nur went daily to the Internet café, where she would sit with her secret shame, hoping to find a message from Jamal, or to catch Nzinga on Skype. She would type letters to Jamal. He never answered. She tried pleading, then she cursed him, hoping to provoke some response—anything to mitigate the sprawling wasteland of her heart. What a fool she was. How could she expect a man to love her when her own mother could not? She could not blame him. There was nothing to love. A fat home-wrecker with tree-trunk legs even Jesus couldn’t save. She went to the bathroom, knelt in front of the toilet, and stuck her fingers down her throat, but she stopped herself, hugged her belly, and got up.
Twice, she went by the office and waited, but Jamal neither entered nor exited the building. She was running out of time. Running out of money and out of ideas. She went to al-Rimal, the neighborhood where he lived, but did not see him walk in or out of his building. Nor his wife.
She walked to the Mediterranean, along the coast where so many conquerers had marched since history was born. Gaza had always been a place of warriors and survivors. Nur plucked what remnants of courage lay in the sand and walked back to al-Rimal, climbed the stairs of Jamal’s building, and knocked on his door. No one answered. She knocked again.
The neighbor’s door opened and a young woman in her twenties emerged with books in hand, clearly off to class. “Hello,” she said. “Are you looking for my brother’s wife?”
“Are you Dr. Jamal’s sister?”
“Oh, no. They don’t live here anymore. My family is renting their apartment for my brother who just got married.”
Something inside of Nur fell from its place, perhaps her heart, and she caught it before it would crash and break on the floor of her life. “Where did they go?”
“They moved to Canada. There was a big party and everything. Their immigration papers finally came through! They’re so lucky,” she said. “Sister, you don’t look well. Can I offer you a glass of water?”
“Oh, no, thank you. I’m an old friend. I’ve been away and didn’t realize they had already left. Thank you. May Allah bless you with success in school, sister. Salaam.”
A discarded old shoe, bewildered and pregnant, sat once again by the water. Thank God for the water. Nur thought she might cry, but she didn’t. A song washed upon the shore and danced out of her.
O find me
I’ll be in that blue
Between sky and water
Where all time is now
And we are the forever
Flowing like a river
O find me
Where it’s always day
And always night
There are no hours here
In the blue
Between sky and water
There are no countries here
No soldiers
No anguish or joy
Just blue between sky and water
As the sky grew dim, she headed back and stopped by the Internet café. Finally, the icon next to Nzinga’s name on Skype was lit green. Nur hurriedly began typing.
“Nzinga! I’m so happy you’re online. I miss you so much.”
“Hey, boo! I miss you, too. You still in Gaza?”
“Yes. Can you talk? I can borrow a headset. No picture, though. The camera uses too much bandwidth. The electricity might cut off at any minute and there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Of course, child. Slow down. Are you okay?”
Nur inhaled and tears leaked from her eyes as she scrambled to connect the headset. “Nzinga, I am desperate to talk to you. I am in trouble and I—”
“Is this about the grant?”
Nur had set up a small office in Nusseirat to hold individual and group therapy sessions for women and children and had been seeking funding. A small grant was forthcoming from the European Union but she did not want to accept American or European money. So she had corresponded with Nzinga about seeking funding sources in African nations.
“No, I mean. Yes, but no … it’s …” Nur was suddenly without words.
“Okay. Calm down and tell me everything. If we get cut off, find a way to e-mail me. I have been meaning to write to you because I am attending a pan-African conference in Egypt next week and was hoping I might be able to see you since we will be so close,” Nzinga said. “But tell me, darling, what is troubling you.”
“It’s Jamal.”
Nzinga made a sound that Nur knew was formed from pursed judging lips and raised eyebrows holding back curses she wanted to let loose around that man’s name. Nur had told her that it was over and had lied that she had moved on.
“He has left Gaza for good … with his family,” Nur began.
“Good riddance, Nur. I know you might be heartbroken, but I told you this would not end well. Thankfully it didn’t last long and now you can heal and get on with your life. I have news on the grant and now …” Nzinga stopped speaking. “Nur?”
The place inside Nzinga where she was a young social worker who met a little brown girl with curly black hair clinging to her dying grandfather had become populated over the years with the ornaments of memories, learning, and loving between them. Words formed in that space that Nzinga did not notice until she heard them emerge from her own mouth. “Are you pregnant, Nur?”
My sister spoke to me in the private moments before she slept. Then we visited in her dreams and she knew I would always be with her, even if she couldn’t remember those dreams upon waking.
The stem of a lollipop dangled from Rhet Shel’s lips. She made sucking sounds as she watched folded clothes stack one item over the other.
“Khalto Nur, can I go with you to Egypt?” Rhet Shel asked.
Nur paused and smiled apologetically. “Not this time, habibti.”
“Why are you going to Egypt?”
“I want to visit an old friend who used to take care of me when I was little. And I’m also going to see about a grant for our new office that you and I are going to paint when I get back.”
Rhet Shel smiled. “Can I pick the color?”
“Yes! In fact, I think we should have an entire wall just for kids to write on.”
“Whoa!” Rhet Shel’s eyes widened. “You’re going to let kids write on the wall?”
The look of astonishment at such a concept amused Nur. “Yep! And you can pick out the color to paint the wall.”
“When?”
“As soon as I’m back from Egypt.”
“When?”
“Just a few days.”
“What if the Egyptians or Israelis lock you out?”
“Then I’ll just wait until the border opens” Nur stopped what she was doing and kissed Rhet Shel’s face. “But you can bet that I’m going to come back.”
“Promise?”
Nur hesitated, then smiled. “I will also bring you gifts.”
The beekeeper’s widow moved in permanently. No one remembered when or how, but it was natural that her place was in our home. Her enormous body helped close the gap I had left. She suggested a remedy for Nur’s predicament. But everyone could see that it horrified Nur. It horrified them, too. But they thought Nur was still too American to fully comprehend what it meant to deliver sin. It was Mama who surprised them by saying, “The sin has already been committed. What she’d deliver would be, enshallah, a child of our flesh and blood.” The beekeeper’s widow spoke nonsense by suggesting that maybe people wouldn’t care since Nur had been raised in America and people there do that sort of thing. Teta looked at her sideways and said, “First of all, for once, my daughter is right and I am wrong. Aborting our flesh is also a sin. Even if people don’t know about it, Allah will know.” Then they began to scheme. Nur could deliver the baby abroad and come back as if she’d adopted a child. She could leave and pretend to have married and return with a ring. They could say her husband wasn’t allowed to cross the border. Or, they could just say she had already been married when she had first arrived in Gaza. A visit with her husband in Egypt, then a divorce, would explain the delivery. How the hell would anyone know differently? My teta and the beekeeper’s widow, even Mama, started to secretly fantasize about having a baby in the house.
Alwan watched Nur walk into the family room with a large suitcase. A kind of confession bent her posture into a plea. She was planning to leave very early the next morning. “I think I’m packed. The suitcase is nearly empty and, enshallah, I will fill it up on the way back. But you haven’t told me yet what you’d like me to bring back from Cairo,” Nur said.
“We don’t want anything,” Alwan began. “Just go and come back home safely.”
Hajje Nazmiyeh protested, “Speak for yourself! Um Zhaq passed away last month, Allah rest her soul, and Abu Zhaq might be looking for a new wife. I need to prepare myself.” She was already laughing. “Get me some sexy bed clothes. Just in case Allah sends me a husband.” Both Hajje Nazmiyeh and the old widow shook with laughter, more so because Alwan was predictably scandalized; and when Hajje Nazmiyeh could take a breath, she said to Alwan, “Habibti, I was only kidding. My thing down there hasn’t been used in so long it’s probably rusted out.” Now the two women were laughing so hard the old widow peed herself. “Look what you made me do, you dirty girl! Calling yourself Hajje.”
Nur and Alwan couldn’t help but join them as they helped the old widow to her feet to get cleaned up. Hajje Nazmiyeh added, “If it wasn’t for peeing we might forget it was even there!”
The old woman hurried to the bathroom, yelling at Hajje Nazmiyeh between gasps of laughter, “Curse you, woman! You made me pee even more!”
“You know it’s true. I haven’t been a widow half as long as you and mine fell off a long time ago.” Hajje Nazmiyeh could hardly contain her silliness.
“Thank God no one else can hear her!” Alwan whispered.
The beekeeper’s widow returned, lighting frankincense in a small bowl. They stayed that way into the evening, in this world of women, of mirth and myrrh. They made dinner and Rhet Shel came home, tired from hours of play. They all ate together, Rhet Shel laughing whenever the adults did, even if she didn’t know what they were laughing about. She told them jokes, most of which made no sense, but they all laughed to include her in the tight circle. Alwan bathed Rhet Shel after the food was put away and, though Rhet Shel was too tired to stay awake, she refused to go to bed, feeling that the adults would have fun without her. Her tired eyes would fall then flutter at any change in the volume of conversation until at last sleep wrapped itself around her, snuggling close with her mother. Nur bade them good night early and went to bed.
As the quiet of night suffused their home, the old widow turned to Alwan, who leaned against the wall cradling a sleeping Rhet Shel. “When are you going to cut them off?”
Alwan was startled, but gathered her wits and memory. “I marked it on the calendar. The doctors said that they will have space for me in two weeks, enshallah, unless Israel attacks us between now and then and the hospitals fill up again.”
“Don’t look so down. It’s the best thing,” the old widow said. “Now that the tumors are so small, once you cut them off you might be cured!”
“What good are they anyway after the kids are too old to feed from them and there’s no man to suck on them anymore!” Hajje Nazmiyeh began, but Alwan had had enough. “Yumma, stop it!” she snapped.
“Okay, habibti.” Hajje Nazmiyeh was apologetic and tired. “Just don’t be sad about it. I was trying to make you laugh.”
“Forgive me, Yumma. I’m tired,” Alwan said. “Good night.”
“Yes. Okay. Well … yes. Okay. Good night, habibti,” Hajje Nazmiyeh said and tried to get comfortable on her mat. Then she grabbed a small pillow and threw it at the old widow to interrupt her snoring. “I hate it when she falls asleep before me. Her snoring is ridiculous!”