The Blue Between Sky and Water (30 page)
“Yumma, why don’t you sleep with us in the bed? Besides, your snoring isn’t exactly a symphony,” Alwan said, carrying Rhet Shel to the bedroom.
“I like it out here. Go to bed. I’ll be fine. Just leave me some things to throw at her when I need to,” Hajje Nazmiyeh said, reaching for more pillows.
Alwan laid Rhet Shel in bed next to Nur. A sweet sense of night washed over her and she walked into the outdoors. The alleyways were speckled with moonlight. She wanted to keep walking toward the ocean, but the sound of her footsteps dislocated the quiet. So she sat on the stoop of their home and leaned against the metal door. In the stillness there, she became aware of a hum of crawling, fluttering, and creaking little lives moving in the crevices of the peaceful darkness. She welcomed it all into her body, thanked Allah for the widow’s medicine, and asked Him to keep her on this earth a while longer.
Nzinga was married with three children by the time Nur completed her master’s degree. She attended the graduation ceremony (Nur’s third) with her entire family and they created a noisy island in the audience. Nzinga’s children waved signs with Nur’s name, and they all whistled and clapped when her name was called to receive her diploma. Nur smiled broadly and blew them a kiss from the stage.
Getting to Cairo was a long and exhausting journey, though much easier than Nur had expected. The Rafah border was open, and crossing it was relatively uneventful. Getting through Hamas security took only a few minutes, which was typical, and the Egyptians made her wait only a couple of hours. Then she was on her way, bouncing in the back of a taxi van heading to Cairo with other passengers. She rested her hand on her belly, rubbing a lullaby to the secret beneath her navel. She wasn’t the only woman in Gaza to ever be in such a predicament. However few or many, they all went to Egypt if they could, and returned with emptied wombs and hollowed eyes.
Nur looked at the time on her phone, eager to get to the hotel where Nzinga was staying. She still had at least two hours. The immense, ancient silence of the Sinai desert enveloped her, its rolling sand hills speeding past her window. She closed her eyes and watched her thoughts assemble into dreams.
There, Khaled picked up words off the ground, small beads scattered about, and strung them together, making a necklace. Is that for me? she asked.
Of course
, he answered. Was it always you in my dreams? Again,
Of course
. What should I do, Khaled?
Help me pick these all up.
Nur looked at the word beads. “Nice,” “Light of Jiddo’s Life,” “Smart.” She reached down to gather them, but fell forward. The taxi had slammed on the brakes. Nur’s head hit the seat in front of her. She was the only remaining passenger. “Golden Tulip hotel!” the driver yelled back.
Nur waited, impatient to see Nzinga, who was in a workshop until seven o’clock. It was six now. She walked out and roamed the streets of the Zamaalek neighborhood. Evening was casting its shadows and soon darkness walked the streets with her. In Gaza, she loved the thickness of black nights. They were kind and comforting. But here, the night was nervous and the darkness vibrated with threats she couldn’t see, despite a few street lights. Were they real or was it true that pregnancy made women more alert and protective of their bodies? She hurried back toward the lights of the Golden Tulip.
Nzinga was in the lobby, asking for her at the reception desk.
“Zingie!”
They embraced excitedly and tearfully. Whatever emotions had accumulated in Nur fell away. Everything washed out until there was nothing but a little girl with a baby in her belly holding tightly onto Nzinga’s hand.
*
They talked endlessly, and later, at a late dinner, there was still so much to talk about. Their conversation jumped between relationships and drifted across continents, and eventually ended up in the past. Nur said, “You know, foster care was adequate. I never faced or witnessed the horror stories you sometimes hear about. There was enough food, shelter, all the basics were there. No one abused me there. And yet, it was somehow intensely wounding.”
Nzinga listened with attentive, maternal eyes as Nur continued. “On the ride through the Sinai, it occurred to me why that is. And it’s the same reason why you are the one person in the whole world that I needed to see most at this hour.” Nur paused, moving her food around on her plate. “It’s all about having a thread that links your years. To have another living person who just knows you. Someone who has seen you from childhood. That’s the missing piece in Gaza. They love me there. I know they do. It’s almost instinctive. But I wonder how much they know me. They don’t see me as you do, Zingie. Flawed and scared and—”
“Wait a minute. That’s not how I see you,” Nzinga protested.
“I mean … I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do. I can’t have this baby in Gaza and I can’t abort it, either. And there’s nothing for me in the States. My only connections there are institutions and a handful of friends that I’m not close to anymore.”
“Well, first things first. I don’t see flaws and fear when I look at you. I see strength, determination, smarts, sass, kindness, love. I can go on, but I bet that’s what your family sees, too. Second, I know you’re scared and this seems like an impossible situation. But it’s not. You’ve always lived your life the way you wanted. That’s the thing you got from not having family. You got a chance to own your decisions, make up your rules and live by them. But now you have the family you always wanted and you think it’s a choice between being true to the person you are, the person you made on your own, or living by new social rules to protect and love the family that also protects and loves you,” Nzinga said. “How am I doing so far?”
“You make it sound so simple, but it’s still an impossible choice,” Nur said.
“Am I right to say that, one, you want to remain in Gaza? And two, you want to keep and raise your baby?” Nzinga continued her distillation of Nur’s inner chaos.
“Yes.”
“We know you can’t deliver the baby in Gaza without being married. But how about raising an adopted baby in Gaza?”
Alwan had hinted to her of that possibility and of others, which Nzinga had also apparently considered. They talked through scenarios until the world did not seem so grim.
Because Nzinga’s family had been active in the anti-apartheid struggle and she herself had risen to prominence in her field of social work and community organizing, she had been able to arrange a fellowship grant for Nur through government offices. This was the news that Nzinga shared with her now. “You know, Nur, the African National Congress has always been supportive of the Palestinian struggle. So, many international government programs are open to Palestinians in particular,” Nzinga said.
Nur touched her belly and said, “This is probably the only time in my life when I’ve been happy to be fat. I can go back and stay for another month to figure things out. I can’t thank you enough for helping me get a grant to continue the counseling project. It feels good to do something meaningful. The fellowship could give me the time away that I need and I won’t have to go back to the US.”
“What about the other thing? You know you can’t be doing that now.” Nzinga’s words landed heavily on Nur. “Oh, Nur, don’t look at me like a question mark. You know how I always ask you to show me your nails when we Skype?”
Nur was more puzzled. “Yes.”
“I was never looking at your nails, darling. I was looking for the two marks over your knuckles that are made by your teeth.”
She stretched her hand in front of her, seeing calloused old brown marks that had once been raw and red, however small. She didn’t think anyone had ever noticed them, the place where her two front teeth would press down on her hand when she made herself vomit.
Nzinga took her hand lovingly. “That’s how I knew you were home when you went to Gaza. You didn’t have those red marks anymore.”
“No, I don’t do that anymore,” she said, tearing up.
“Maybe you don’t see this now, but I think that man had something to do with that. Just feeling truly loved by a man, even if it was only for a while, is something I don’t think you’ve ever really felt since your jiddo passed away,” Nzinga said.
“Maybe. And maybe it’s one of the reasons I always looked for Tío Santiago,” Nur said. And as the hours yawned, Nzinga asked about the last meeting she had had with her mother. “I don’t want to rehash that again now,” Nur said.
“Actually, Nur, you’ve never spoken about it. Every time the subject came up, you’d say you didn’t want to rehash it, just like now. You’re about to be a mother and maybe you should go there with me now, so you can hear, out loud, about the kind of mother you don’t want to be,” Nzinga said. “I have all night. Let’s get some coffee first, though.”
Nur’s Tío Santiago had been a source of love for her, however brief and intermittent his presence was. Sometimes, Santiago would call Nzinga to ask about Nur when she was still in school. Then he would disappear for long stretches of time, and Nzinga knew he was either in rehab or prison, or using heavily. When they met in Cairo, Nur showed her the old harmonica. “He was a kindhearted, haunted man,” Nzinga said.
The waiter poured two small cups of Arabic coffee for the women.
“Arabs sure know how to make coffee,” Nzinga said, flirting with the young waiter, who smiled good-naturedly and replied, “Arabs invented coffee, Madam.”
“Is that right?” she asked, holding him in place with her vast brown eyes. “Let me ask you something, son.” She scanned his dark skin and wooly hair. “Do you consider yourself Arab or African?”
“I am Egyptian, Madam.”
“Is Egyptian African or Arab?”
“It is both, Madam,” he said, and he continued when he saw that she clearly had more questions. “And as an Egyptian, I am proudly African and Arab. They are not mutually exclusive.”
“Are you saying that because I’m black?” She went back to flirting.
“Do you consider yourself black or African?” The waiter gave it back. “Isn’t black a pigment category that white slavers invented to reduce the inhabitants and diverse cultures of our continent?”
By now, an immense smile had unfurled on Nzinga’s face, the gap in her front teeth like an accessory to her benevolence.
“Ooooo. Handsome, and damn smart! If I were younger, you’d better watch out. What you say is true, but you know, now we own the word
black
and we put our unity in it and get power back, you see.” Nzinga laughed, raising a Black Power fist. “Did you meet my young friend, Nur?”
At that, Nur and the waiter both blushed as they nodded politely to each other. Then Nur spoke to him in Arabic. “Thank you, brother, for this excellent coffee.”
“You are welcome, sister,” he answered, and walked away.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Nzinga whispered, “You should go for that fine brother, Nur!”
“Nzinga, you remind me so much of my aunt Nazmiyeh. I never made the connection before, but you’re so similar.”
“She sounds magnificent,” Nzinga said. “You should learn to flirt a little. No harm in it.”
“That’s the last thing on my mind right now,” Nur sighed.
“It’s gonna be okay. The first decision you need to make is whether you’re going to keep this baby. You know how I feel about it, but this is your life and your body.”
“I think you know what I want, Zingie.”
“Say it.”
Nur hesitated, lowered her voice. “I want it.”
“Want what?”
“To keep it,” Nur said; but Nzinga’s expression demanded more. “I want to be a mother.” A tear formed and fell from Nur’s eye. It ushered more silent tears and then more words. “I want someone to love who will love me back. Someone who is mine. Not in the owning way, but in the spiritual way. I want to know what that feels like.”
“Love is the best reason to have a child, my child,” Nzinga said. “And this baby has already changed you. I’ve known you for most of your life and tonight is the first time I’ve ever seen you cry since you were a baby. That’s a good thing. Everything is going to be all right, Nur. That’s where you start. Even if it’s hard. It’s gonna be fine. You’re gonna be just fine, beautiful girl.” That made Nur cry all the more, but she did so without sound, with some happiness, too, and relief.
“Is there something else on your mind?” Nzinga asked. She waited long for an answer.
“What if I’m a bad mother …” Nur finally managed, then gulped those words back into her throat with a sob.
Nzinga took her hand. “There is nothing in you that remotely resembles your mother, Nur.” Nur said nothing, and Nzinga continued. “Let me ask you this: Do you love Rhet Shel? I mean, do you look at her and want for her the best that life can possibly give her?”
“Of course.”
“That is your proof that you are not your mother and never will be. I’m sure you’ve figured out along the way that she is a classic textbook narcissist.”
“I’ll tell you about the last time I saw her.” Nur looked away, then back at her coffee. She took a sip, placed the cup back gently. It was two
A.M.
now. The night stretched over Cairo as Nur inhabited a trauma of memory.
We were locked up in Gaza. Of one and a half million people, five or six could trickle in or out each day through Egypt. Misery leaked into the streets and fermented under the sun for years. But seeing Nur helped me understand the freedom we did have. We wanted to consume the world outside our borders, to take in the sun of another shore, open our eyes to a moon of another sky, walk the ground of another earth. We wanted to live, to move and travel, to work, produce, and export. Our prison was not being allowed to see or do, and our escape was to find ways to taste the rest of the world. Nur was allowed to move as we couldn’t. But rather than taking in all there was, she went everywhere trying to empty herself, because her prison lived within her, and the escape she longed for meant disrobing herself of her skin. Until love was planted in her belly and began to grow there.
It was easy for Nur to find her mother’s address. She and Sam had moved to San Diego and had their twins, Eduardo and Tomás, who were in middle school when Nur decided to visit when she was still in college.