The Blue Between Sky and Water Page 6

  The humiliation of that war soaked into their skins. Everyone staggered about drenched in another loss, new rage, and revived fear. People watched on their televisions as this Jewish army of Poles, Austrians, Germans, French, Brits, Italians, Russians, Ukrainians, Iranians, and others marched into Jerusalem, demolishing neighborhoods of non-Jews. It was a shocking moment that split the world in two: those cheering and those crying.

  Palestinians cried, but tears always dry up or turn into something else. Eventually, the abnormal was normalized, and the constant brutality of Israeli soldiers became the cost of living. People persevered, and they fought back, too.

  Nazmiyeh’s legs were still paralyzed when she gave birth to her eleventh son, provoking chatter that reverberated throughout the camp and entrenched Namiyeh’s reputation of mastery in matters of the marital bed. Women recalled how her husband had abandoned his entire family for her sake. How he had never looked at other women in that way, much less taken a second wife as some men had. Even now, when Nazmiyeh could not move her legs, she and Atiyeh had found a way to conceive another child. The women of the camp were mesmerized by the questions they dared not ask. How did she do it? They tried to imagine the mechanical details, and more women now sought her counsel in the particulars of intimacy and adventures of the flesh.

  Although most women considered it good fortune to have borne so many sons in succession, Nazmiyeh was devastated by childbirth and her inability to bear the daughter she had promised to name Alwan. She cried when the midwife announced that she had borne another boy. Her womb felt tattered. Her legs felt nothing at all. Her heart ached to see Mariam as she put the newborn at her breast to suckle. She exhaled the exhaustion of the years and began to speak to her unseen sister while the midwife, accustomed now to her friend’s peculiar postpartum monologues, boiled the placenta for the curative broth that she sold as treatment for various ailments ranging from influenza to sterility. Nazmiyeh’s fertile womb had been a source of good revenue for the midwife, for it was thought to be supremely blessed.

  “Oh, Mariam. Do you see, my sister?” Nazmiyeh spoke to the ether. “What shall I do now? I may not survive another one. My teats have not been dry in nearly twenty years.” No one understood why Nazmiyeh’s legs had stopped working, nor how they just as mysteriously walked again. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. Stories and explanations abounded, only adding to Nazmiyeh’s intrigue and legend.

  EIGHTEEN

  Destiny was redeemed in Teta Nazmiyeh’s twelfth and final pregnancy, from which my mother, Alwan, was at last born. It was the same year that my great-khalo Mamdouh called from Kuwait to tell her that his family would soon be moving to Amreeka. To “North Carolina,” he said. My teta didn’t know where that was, only that it was farther away from her. One of her sons was already engaged and planning to move to Saudi Arabia for work. Rather than returning and regrouping, family were leaving and dispersing. She thought Palestine was scattering farther away at the same time that Israel was moving closer. They confiscated the hills and assembled Jewish-only settler colonies on the most fertile soil. They uprooted indigenous songs, and planted lies in the ground to grow a new story.

  Nazmiyeh held her precious jewel to her breast, Alwan, the promised child. “She’s here, Mariam! She finally arrived, little sister,” Nazmiyeh mumbled during the delivery while the midwife collected the placenta and cleaned up the space. As they did with each newborn, Nazmiyeh and Atiyeh lay together, counting the fingers and toes, looking for birthmarks and committing to memory the inconsequential details in another milestone of love.

  “Now that we have Alwan, we’re not having sex anymore,” Nazmiyeh declared.

  Atiyeh gave a smirk, unfazed. “That’s what you say now. We both know you can’t live without it,” he said. “Besides, what will you say to all the ladies coming to you for advice? Your abstinence could affect population growth of Palestinians and we’d no longer threaten Israel demographically.”

  Nazmiyeh laughed. “Okay. I’ll give you some of this good stuff for the greater good of Palestine,” she said.

  The resistance in Gaza was growing and an underground railroad ferried weapons and organized fighters to join the PLO guerrillas. The plot to sabotage Israeli occupation took on a new urgency. At the same time as Alwan turned one, the fighters managed to destroy several gas pipes supplying nearby Jewish-only colonies, causing havoc for Israelis. In celebration, after three weeks of imposed curfew, Nazmiyeh decided to mark the occasion with a birthday party on the beach for Alwan, who was just learning to walk.

  The sons built a fire to grill fish and vegetables. Two of them were engaged and brought their fiancées. Mazen, now twenty, still had not chosen a wife and his brothers joked that he was like Yasser Arafat, “married to the resistance.” The family sat on blankets, smoked, laughed, and listened to the call of the water, which was too cold for swimming. Other families picnicked along the beach, too, glad to leave their homes after the forbidding curfew. A group of men walked about without their families, and soldiers stood menacingly as they always did at their posts.

  Atiyeh said, “Only my wife is more beautiful than the ocean.” Nazmiyeh sucked air through her teeth. “What do you want, my husband? I know you want something when you talk sweet like that.”

  He smiled, puffing on his argileh, and winked at her. “I’ll take one of those fish kebabs for now.”

  She looked flirtatiously at her husband and reached for a kebab, noticing a group of men behind Atiyeh walking leisurely toward them. One of her sons asked his brother if he knew those men. They were strangers. Nazmiyeh didn’t recognize them, either. Then one of the men smiled, waving his arm in greeting, calling out in flawless Palestinian Arabic, “Mazen Atiyeh! Salaam, brother! How are you doing?”

  Mazen’s body turned to stone. His brothers closed rank and hardened their faces, too. Atiyeh stood tall, ordering Nazmiyeh to get the little ones away. The strangers may have looked like locals and had the right language skills, but a true Palestinian would never greet his comrade thus while with his family. If at all, first dues and respect would go to the parents or at least the whole gathering, and even then, only the most familiar of friends would approach a man with his entire family. These men had called Mazen’s name to make him identify himself, and when they realized their cover was blown, they pulled out their guns.

  The armed undercover Israeli agents rushed up, shouting. The fiancées screamed for help while Nazmiyeh plucked her startled children from their sand creations. The women in other families on the beach collected their young, while nearby Palestinian men coalesced in a futile show of force as more soldiers converged. Sand was kicked up and the food trampled. The argileh was knocked over. One of the brothers was pushed into the smoldering charcoal of the grill and his burns reverberated over the tide. Then, a determined defiance pushed up from the chaos. It was Mazen. He had leapt to protect his father and rose above the melee, and when one of the disguised Zionists put a gun to his head, Mazen hardened with a ruthless resolve. Such an immediate threat to Mazen’s life brought an instant hush in the crowd, and it unveiled to him a courage he had always hoped lived in his own heart. Or maybe, he thought, it was a lack of attachment to life, a careless embrace of death.

  “THIS!” he slapped his chest hard. “IS JUST A BODY!” He hit the flesh over his heart with every word. His gray eyes seemed so sure of grace, so in possession of fate that even his attackers froze in that unpredictable moment teetering between life and massacre.

  People could see that the Israelis realized they had captured a prize. If they had been unsure before, they knew now that it had been Mazen, indeed, who had masterminded the sabotage to cut the pipeline to Israeli colonies. Soldiers were pushing others away, cuffing Mazen, but his voice still reigned.

  “SHOOT! YOUR GUNS CANNOT KILL ME!” he shouted. “BUT THEY WILL KILL YOU AS SURELY AS MY BODY DIES!”

  In the midst of the tumult of pushing, dragging, cuffing, blindfolding, shoving, beating, th
ere remained a quality of stillness, as if the air had ceased moving and hung by the threads of Mazen’s stand that day. As if the sun paused its fall in the sky to listen. And it was clear to everyone who witnessed those moments that Mazen had been a leader of the underground resistance. They understood that his defiance and unwillingness to submit quietly meant that the Jews would torture him all the more.

  “YOUR BULLET CANNOT TOUCH MY HUMANITY! IT CANNOT TOUCH MY SOUL! IT CANNOT RIP MY ROOTS FROM THE SOIL OF THIS LAND YOU COVET! WE WILL NOT LET YOU STEAL OUR LAND!”

  Spittle foamed in the corners of Mazen’s mouth as he was being dragged away, blindfolded and tied. Nazmiyeh could see the propulsion of blood pumping in his protruding veins as she tried to fight off the soldiers, holding on to her son. There was not enough space on that open shore to contain the love she felt. With all the force of that love, she tried to summon Mariam as she entreated Allah to protect her son, to protect them all from these devils.

  A soldier thrust the butt of his rifle into Mazen’s ribs, and Mazen winced in pain but would not be silenced. They had difficulty dragging him away, as if his feet had spread roots in the ground, and that emboldened others to try to stop the kidnapping. More converged, shouting “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!” Israelis began shooting into the crowd and several men fell as the soldiers hurried to their vehicles, hauling their prisoners. Even as Mazen was being stuffed into the back of their jeep, his voice could still be heard.

  “SOMEONE LIED TO YOU! THEY TOLD YOU THAT GUNS MAKE YOU STRONG. REAL POWER DOES NOT USE GUNS. REAL MEN DO NOT USE FORCE AMONG WOMEN AND CHILDREN! ALL OF YOU ARE DEAD INSIDE AND YOUR EMPTY DEAD SOULS ARE WHAT WILL FINALLY KILL THIS CRUEL MILITARY STATE!”

  The Israelis sped away. In all, they killed four, injured eleven, and kidnapped eight sons and daughters of Palestine that day. People stood on those shores at the crossroads of three continents, where spices and frankinsense had been traded before history was born. Now there was only the crying of mothers over a terrible nobility of resistance and blood in the sand that would be washed by the tide soon enough. “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!” they shouted and went about tending to the tediums of endless defeat, treating the wounded and cleaning the dead for burial, calming the children, walking home, cursing the Jews to hell, making dinner, and finally, finding a way to inhabit the night. Thoughts and talk of Mazen Atiyeh, son of Nazmiyeh, inspired imaginations, jammed the phone lines, and dominated coffeehouse conversations. They all contemplated the notion that they were bigger than bullets, even if their bodies were not, and that the Jews were smaller, precisely because of the guns they used to oppress.

  The story of Mazen’s stand on the beach against armed Israelis soldiers was passed from mouth to ear, gaining new dimensions each time, until it became local legend. It was confirmed that he had been among the top local underground resistance fighters. Naturally, there was anxiety that he might succumb to Israeli torture; so, many of his comrades went into hiding. But the Israelis never came for them. Mazen did not betray them in Israel’s dungeons, and that entrenched his heroism all the more. People spoke of his livid courage that day, and it imbued them with a sense of personal power, however small. No one was surprised three months later when Mazen was charged with plotting against the state, convicted on secret evidence, and sentenced to life in prison.

  It was then that Nazmiyeh began trying in earnest to summon Sulayman for help.

  III

  Destiny was inevitably dislocated, and some pieces got lost on the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans

  NINETEEN

  Nur and I never spoke, except in her dreams, but I brought her home. Then brought her home again. Nur was our missing link, the extra clothespin Teta Nazmiyeh needed when she hung the sky. She saw colors in the ways Mariam had.

  The Sun did not fully shine that morning in Charlotte, North Carolina, as if the day was not yet ready to rise. Rain falling on the roof had pitter-pattered pink and saffron drops in Nur’s heart, and now the morning was a wet gray, as her grandfather seemed to be. But his color brightened when he saw her walk down the stairs.

  “Good morning, habibti.” He smiled at Nur, who stood in her footed pajamas, rubbing her eyes with one hand and holding Mahfouz, her bear, in the other.

  “It’s CCP Saturday!”

  Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast every Saturday. Her jiddo rose from his chair. Nur liked to watch his wobbly walk without his cane and special tall shoe. He had one good leg. The other was shorter because a bad soldier had shot his growing plate. There was a rhythm in the way he would swoop lower to step with the short leg and then rise to his full height on the good leg. When he walked, his body moved up and down, side to side, front and back, in a fluid cadence that seemed to Nur like a song.

  “What shall we do today, habibti?” He picked her up and headed back to the kitchen, carrying her in the melody of his gait.

  “Jiddo, can we go to the duck park and ride the paddleboats and feed the duckies and will you tell me the story about how your growing plate got broke? And can we please also get ice cream? And then let’s go to the pottery place and paint some more ceramics. And—”

  “Well, that will be a full day for sure, but your old jiddo is going to need a nap sometime in all that. And it’s called a growth plate, not a growing plate.”

  Nur imagined a nicely painted pottery plate growing somewhere inside his leg. Sometimes she worried she might break hers, too.

  He sat her at the table and returned with pancakes. It was just the two of them and her bear, whose right eye was a green button her grandmother, Yasmine, had sewn to match Nur’s eyes, one green and one brown with hazel accents. Teta Yasmine had been in heaven for a while now, Nur couldn’t be sure how long, and she had promised her jiddo, on that day when she had found him crying on the sofa, that she would take care of him like her teta had. But for now, jiddo was the one who took care of most things. She knew how to cook cereal, which they often ate when she insisted on preparing dinner. But the most important things to learn were words, her jiddo said. Already, at five, she could read her picture books.

  “Jiddo, did my daddy used to eat chocolate chip pancakes? And what did Mahfouz do?” she asked, wanting to hear the answer he gave her every CCP Saturday morning.

  “Yes, habibti. He loved them. And we used to have CCP Saturday mornings just like this. Except that Mahfouz would be sitting right by the table, waiting for us to give him scraps, but we couldn’t because chocolate isn’t good for dogs. So, we gave him doggie treats instead,” he said.

  “Why did Mahfouz die, Jiddo?”

  “When dogs get old, they die and go to heaven.”

  “Was my daddy old?”

  “No, habibti. Sometimes accidents happen and … Why don’t we talk about happy things on CCP Saturdays. Okay?”

  She thought about his answer, her legs swinging under the chair. “Okay. Listen. This is happy.” Nur puckered her lips and blew.

  “Wow! I think I heard a little whistle come out!”

  She took a large bite of pancake that made her cheeks bulge as she chewed, still swinging her legs, and asked through a mouthful, “Jiddo, how come my daddy couldn’t see shine colors?”

  “Most people can’t, habibti. You know I can’t, either.”

  “I know. But how come? How can people tell if someone is mad at them if they can’t see shine colors?”

  Her jiddo smiled a brilliant pink with sapphire edges. “Habibti, very few people can see colors the way you do. My sister Mariam could. It’s such a special gift, I think we should keep it as our secret. What do you think?”

  Later, curled in her jiddo’s lap as they picnicked by the pond, she asked, “Will you tell me the story again of how they shot your growing plate?”

  Her grandfather wanted to tell her that story and a thousand more from Beit Daras, again and again, and her curiosity pleased him. He wanted her to know and never forget the place that burned in his heart. He also insisted that they only speak in Ar
abic. He once told Nur, “Stories matter. We are composed of our stories. The human heart is made of the words we put in it. If someone ever says mean things to you, don’t let those words go into your heart, and be careful not to put mean words in other people’s hearts.”

  “I won’t get upset this time. Please tell me,” she begged.

  “Okay, habibti. But if any part makes you upset, let me know and I’ll stop.”

  Nur’s grandfather straightened his robe and took a sip of his Turkish coffee from the demitasse. He liked to take his small propane cooker to these outings to make his coffee because it reminded him of the old days in Beit Daras, when he was a boy and food was cooked over an open flame outdoors. Her grandfather took in a soft breath, a waft of a time long gone, and began.

  “We had no choice but to leave. No matter how hard we fought, we were no match for their weapons. Not even when soldiers from Sudan—that’s the name of a country, habibti—came to help us. So, we started to leave with everyone else. It was just me and my mother—”

  “What about Sulayman?”

  “—Okay, yes, I didn’t forget about Sulayman. He was with us, too. No, he’s not a real person. More like an angel, but only my mother could see him, except that day. We all saw him.”

  Nur’s eyes grew wide. “Then he got big and went into your mommy and everybody said wow and it was scary.”