The Blue Between Sky and Water (5 page)
Those same shores of Gaza had been a place where the Barakas and other villagers had gone for occasional Friday family outings. Once a place of joy, swimming, barbecuing, now it was a morass of anxiety and misery that stuck to Nazmiyeh’s every movement, to every effort to find Mariam in the crowds. And when she finally located her neighbors, the realization that Mariam had not left Beit Daras pushed Nazmiyeh farther into desperation. She blamed herself for not having forced Mariam to leave with her. She cursed her little sister for being so stubborn and imagined yanking her by the ear when she found her. She knew what must be done, but she would have to wait for nightfall to elude Atiyeh’s family, who would surely stop her. She slept early to rest before another journey, and for the first time in her life, she recalled a dream. It startled her awake amid the sleeping bodies around her. A little girl who looked like Mariam, with dark coiled hair and a foreign name, but without colored eyes, showed Nazmiyeh papers and said, “Teta, these are from Khaled. Want me to read them?” She nodded yes and the little girl said, “It says, Mariam is waiting for you. She left the water well.”
Though Nazmiyeh had promised Atiyeh she would wait for him in Gaza, she set out in the darkness back to Beit Daras, stepping over and between the nightmares of families asleep on the ground.
The night was black, thick and smooth, as Nazmiyeh walked the desert path back to her village. Stars tinseled the world above her, but she could see neither what stood before her nor what lay beneath her feet. She stopped to pray, bowing and bending in pleading worship. She asked forgiveness for her sins. She called upon Allah to guide her. She begged to find her sister Mariam alive, then entreated the earth to clear her path of scorpions and wild animals. Soon she could see the glow of a fire in the distance and set out toward it, believing that Allah had illuminated her path.
Along the way, she stumbled upon other Palestinians heading in the opposite direction. They could sense one another in the dark, the way fear immobilized them. “Who is there?” a woman’s voice asked in Arabic and Nazmiyeh relaxed upon hearing the Palestinian
fallahi
accent. “I am trying to get back to Beit Daras to find my sister,” she replied, and the two women moved closer until they could see one another. Several children clutched the woman’s thobe and remained silent as the two, strangers to each other, embraced as if lost family. The woman spoke of unspeakable horrors in her village, warning Nazmiyeh not to return. “I cannot bring myself to describe what they are doing to the women,” she said. Nazmiyeh wished her a safe journey and both prayed for themselves and one another before one set off toward the calling waters of Gaza’s shore, and the other toward the distant flames.
It was nearly daybreak before Nazmiyeh reached the water well in Beit Daras where Mariam often hid when she played with other children. She called softly into the well, but no response came. She was spent, dirty, and thirsty, with blistered feet and nostrils full of sand. The fire had subsided and Nazmiyeh could see uniformed soldiers meandering on the scorched earth. Most were on the hill, looting the larger homes. Their plunder hadn’t yet reached the Masriyeen neighborhood, giving her time to drink from the well before reaching her home undetected. She went into each room, whispering Mariam’s name, but there was no answer. She looked in the kitchen and bathroom, then went to the carved-out space in the wall between the kitchen and the big room, their eavesdropping spot. She paused before turning the corner. It was the last place to look.
Please Allah, let her be here
.
And there, curled on herself, Mariam was sleeping with her wooden box of dreams, knees tight against her chest. Nazmiyeh dropped to the floor and embraced her sister. “Oh Mariam, habibti!” she sobbed, fear and exhaustion sliding off her shoulders.
Mariam awoke and clung to Nazmiyeh, burying her own sobs in her sister’s bosom.
From the window they could see some villagers in the distance being allowed to leave. Soldiers were taking their belongings and jewelry, but they were allowed to leave. Nazmiyeh felt hopeful. She had been right to come back. To have had faith in Allah. It would be all right. They would give the soldiers whatever they had and go on their way to Gaza. She could walk those thirty-five kilometers again today. They were going to be fine.
Allahu akbar.
Nazmiyeh pulled her sister closer, as if to tuck Mariam whole into her body. She kissed her sister’s face and her tears fell, streaking the soot on Mariam’s cheeks.
Neither saw nor heard the two soldiers until one of them yanked Nazmiyeh by her headscarf, pulling it off. Mariam gasped. Nazmiyeh’s abundant copper curls breathed, exhaled, and sliced through the air when she swung around to face her attackers. Her penetrating eyes made the soldiers step back, look at each other. And smile. The soldiers spoke in foreign languages and seemed not to understand one another, using hand gestures to communicate. She moved in front of her sister and began taking off her three gold bangles, the
shabka
of her dowry. Her husband had broken with tradition and put them on her wrists before their planned wedding. One of the soldiers took them, but the other was not interested in gold and didn’t take his eyes off Nazmiyeh. He moved closer and lifted a fistful of her hair to his face. He inhaled, closed his eyes, grabbed the back of Nazmiyeh’s head, and forced her face to rub against his crotch.
As the soldiers handled her, ripping her clothes, forcing her onto her back, baring her flesh, Nazmiyeh ordered Mariam to turn away and close her eyes and ears as tightly as she could. She said it would all be over soon and they would go on their way. She could endure this, she thought.
Nazmiyeh did not understand what the soldier yelled before forcing himself into her. She clenched her teeth, biting the agony of rape lest it escape from her voice and reach Mariam’s ears.
“Scream!” the soldier demanded in his language as he shoved himself harder into her. “Scream!” He pulled her body up by the hair, but Nazmiyeh understood neither his words nor his desire to hear her suffering. Instead, she continued to endure the assault as silently as possible. She could not see Mariam and was unsure where her sister had gone. She closed her eyes, remembering her husband, Atiyeh, that beautiful man, on their first night together. She had held her voice then, too, knowing that his mother and sisters were probably listening behind the marital door. It was a devious complicity of memory that provoked her to jerk her head violently, trying to uncouple that image from this reality. The soldier thought she was resisting, which pleased him.
The other soldier took the place of the first one, who now tried to thrust himself into her mouth. He slapped her repeatedly. “Scream!” he ordered. “
Scream!
”
She saw his eyes, gray slits in sacks of fat. His lips were moist with drool and sweat ran from his brow. The grip of her jaw tightened on itself and the soldier grew angry and moved away, mumbling in his language. “I know how to make this whore scream!”
He returned dragging Mariam by her hair, like a limp doll, her wooden box of dreams clutched to her chest. The sisters locked their eyes for an interminable instant, though not long enough to fit a word before the bullet to Mariam’s head rang out through eternity, her wooden box of dreams falling open, its contents spilled. From the terrible knowing that the sun would never fully rise again in her life, a wild howl bellowed from the depths of Nazmiyeh.
The soldier with the gray eyes laughed, excited by the scream he had so badly wanted to prise from her, and he pushed aside the other to fuck the bloodied body of this voluptuous Arab woman. Nazmiyeh’s wail continued as he ejaculated in her body, then the other moved in to pollute her as she stared at Mariam in an expanding crimson puddle. With an exhausting will, she kept screaming, as if her voice could lacerate reality thoroughly enough that she wouldn’t ever have to face it.
Two more soldiers arrived, aroused by the vulgarity, and yanked her by the hair into a new position. Even those defiant locks were defeated and limp with sweat. More soldiers moved in and out of her body, scraping away her life until they had had enough. She lay there, a hollow carved-out thing streaked in spent tears, crusted blood, and dried fear. She listened to the hiss of her breath and surrendered to the silence of wanting to die, waiting for them to kill her, too.
Then, Mariam moved. Her little sister rose from the corpse on the ground and crouched before Nazmiyeh. She cupped her sister’s swollen, tearful face in her small bony hands, gently, and repeated words that had passed between them before, “You are the most spectacular person I have ever known, my big sister. Don’t ever forget how special you are, or how loved you are. We will always be together.”
“I don’t understand. How are you talking to me?” Nazmiyeh asked, without uttering a word.
“Everything that happens is as it should be. Someday, this will all end. There will be no more hours, no more soldiers, and no countries. The most anguished pains and blissful triumphs will fade to nothing. All that will matter is this love,” Mariam said, though her lifeless body lay in its blood.
Nazmiyeh tried to gather her sister’s body into her arms, even as her apparition continued to speak. “Please leave me here. I do not want to leave Beit Daras,” Mariam said. “You must go now. Have a daughter, and name her Alwan. Now, go!”
“Go!” An Israeli officer who just arrived at the scene called out to the soldiers to leave the Arab woman and take the body of the child to be burned with the others. Without a word, without looking at anyone, without fear, Nazmiyeh summoned a cold punctilious rage to gather her sister’s papers, notebooks, and pencils. She covered her breasts with Mariam’s box and what remained of her ripped clothes. She stood on borrowed strength, semen and blood running down her legs, and walked away with broken steps, without looking back.
The soldiers seemed not to care. No one grabbed or called after her. It would not have mattered to her if they had. One foot after the other, Nazmiyeh was carried by her little sister’s words. The feel of Mariam’s palms on her cheeks. The maturity of Mariam’s voice. The love. When she finally became aware of her surroundings, she had already walked six kilometers on the path to Gaza, where other fleeing Palestinians converged. It was then that she saw a group of men engulfed in flames. As she came closer, she realized they were Zionist soldiers, and she saw her mother and Mamdouh lying on the ground. Atiyeh was there, too, trying to lift her brother. Nazmiyeh ran toward them, trying to call out, but sound was still locked in her throat. The rage and resolve that had carried her this far dissolved and her legs felt wobbly. She pushed on, and when her voice was liberated, what emerged from her lips was a promise from another time and another place.
“Alwan!” was all she could yell, and she kept hollering that name into the wind until she reached what remained of her family.
My teta Nazmiyeh hung the sky every morning, like a sapphire sheet on a clothesline pirouetting in the breeze.
The Refugees moved about, beset by confusion for days. Sufficient tents were not distributed for weeks and people slept on the earth, with stones and insects and animals. Bodies accustomed to hard work and pious habits still awoke before sunrise, only to be met with the sluggishness of dormant fate that carved up their days into repeating lines and rows. They lined up five times a day for salat. They lined up twice a day for bread and soup. They lined up for communal toilets. Queues even invaded their dreams and shaped their rebellious thoughts, such that when some imagined fighting back, they thought of lining up first for weapons, then marching off as rows of fighters. And when the United Nations officials arrived, the refugees lined up to put their names in a registry, handwritten entries in thick notebooks. In return, they received small booklets to be stamped once for every ration received. As the reality of their predicament crystallized with every passing year, the refugees held on to every bit of proof of home to pass onto their children. These ration booklets would thus accumulate into pieces of identity and inheritance, sometimes framed in museum halls.
When Nazmiyeh walked away from her rapists on that fateful day in 1948 without once being stopped, she understood that Mariam was still with her, that what she saw had not been a hallucination. Mariam’s persistent soul protected her. She was sure of it and she never doubted her sister could hear her. So she spoke to her often. At first it baffled Atiyeh to watch his wife speak to no one while she cleaned, while she bathed, washed their clothes. After each salat, she’d say, “Habibti, Mariam.” Before they made love, she would call out to Mariam not to watch. In time, Atiyeh grew accustomed to it and even considered that Mariam was perhaps watching over their family from the unseen realm. After all, Nazmiyeh reminded him, hadn’t he once been struck mute by the sight of Sulayman?
“Do not doubt an existence merely because you cannot see or hear it, husband,” Nazmiyeh said to him. “I know I saw and heard Mariam that day, as I see and hear you now before me. She is the reason we survived our journey here when Zionists went on a killing spree after Sulayman set their soldiers aflame.”
When her first child was born, a boy with gray eyes, Nazmiyeh saw only the eyes of her rapist and she cried out to the shadows, “This one is the son of the devil. Is Allah testing me? How can I love this thing? How do I love a son of the devil?”
Astaghfirullah!
The midwife put the baby to Nazmiyeh’s teats, but she pushed him away and continued to beseech what she could not see. “Mariam, tell me!”
“You are delirious right now on account of the labor, but your crazy talk better stop before you let this baby starve, woman!” the midwife warned.
Nazmiyeh turned her head and spied something in a dim corner of the room. She grinned, then laughed. It was knotted up and all-wrong laughter. The midwife, a woman from Beit Daras who could remember the hajje who had shat in the river and spoken to the djinn, surmised that Nazmiyeh was her mother’s daughter and was at that moment speaking to the forbidden realm. She looked to the corner of the room to see the object of Nazmiyeh’s gaze and saw nothing but random papers with childish drawings in an open wooden box. The midwife quickly collected her things, muttering Quranic verses, and left in such a hurry that she forgot to collect her fee from the husband waiting outside.