The Blue Between Sky and Water (31 page)
Across the street from her mother’s home in the Clairemont neighborhood, Nur waited in a rental car. A mist of light began to illuminate the street. The red of the front door emerged from the shadows, and a decaying, once-white picket fence was revealed around the small ramshackle property. Nur recalled that her mother had always wanted to live in a house with a white picket fence; and she heard words rise up from a burial ground of memory.
Why can’t we use the trust for a house? Why can’t one fucking thing in my life go my way?
An old man walking an old dog peered into her car suspiciously as he passed on the sidewalk. The small sound of a cat rummaging in someone’s trash moved Nur’s attention. When she turned back, she saw a tragic version of Sam walking out of the house, closing the door behind him. His yellow hair was dusted with gray. He wore old jeans and a black T-shirt that seemed to be made entirely of sadness. It was hard to see the details of his face from afar, but there was no mistaking the weight of gloom pulling his skin. Life sagged and dragged in him, as if it couldn’t wait to leave him, and he walked with heavy steps and a vacant expression. Nur watched him until he disappeared down the street, around the corner. Strangely, she felt no anger. Not even when she tried. Only pity.
The doors of other homes opened and closed with men, women, and children leaving to start their days at work or school. Soon, two boys came out. Eduardo and Tomás, surely. They were skinny, with disheveled stringy brown hair, and had book packs hanging from their backs. Nur was squinting to make out their features when she saw a slight woman in tight jeans and a nice peach blouse walk out behind them. The woman turned immediately to lock the door and, in an apparent act of habit, the boys kissed her cheeks before running off at full speed down the street, disappearing around the corner where other students were also heading. They were already out of sight when the woman turned around from locking the front door. From her car, Nur saw the face of her mother, her hair pulled tightly at the back of her head. The years had not made her older and Nur was surprised how beautiful she looked. A rush of warmth flushed Nur’s chest and she felt weak with a sense of forgiveness. She fumbled with the car door handle until she was finally out, standing by the side of the car, in full view of her mother. The woman craned her neck to make out the person staring at her from across the street. Then, she froze. Even from a distance, Nur could discern the stone of her character and the contours of suddenly iced-up thoughts. Nur’s initial impulse to run into the imaginary outstretched arms of this woman was doused in the cool morning air and trampled by the old shoe growing larger inside of her. She stood motionless, her motherless fate holding its breath.
Her mother turned on her heels back toward the red door, reversing her motions of a moment earlier. Nur watched her, still unable to move, and noticed the smallness of her mother’s waist—and a memory intruded.
You sure don’t get this shit from me, Nubia
, her mother had once said, pinching the flesh of Nur’s belly.
Look how small my waist is
, she had continued, and Nur had sucked her abdomen in to hide as much of herself as she could.
The red door finally opened and Nur’s mother disappeared back inside. Nur exhaled. She felt her knees buckling and quickly got back into the car, where she gripped the steering wheel to steady her shaking. She stayed that way for what seemed like an eternity, and by the time she had mustered the strength to move her limbs, either to start the car and leave or to open the door and get out again—she didn’t know which she wanted to do—someone was knocking on her window. Startled, she looked up to find a police officer. He questioned her briefly and suggested she move along.
As Nur started her car, she looked up at her mother’s house and saw the corner of a curtain in an upstairs window lifted, a figure standing in the room. Then the curtain closed. Nur looked back at the officer, then drove away.
“There is something extraordinary about being rejected by one’s mother,” she told Nzinga. “It impoverishes the soul. It leaves holes everywhere and you spend your life trying to fill them up. With whatever you can find. With food. With drugs and alcohol. With all the wrong men you know will leave you, so maybe they will replicate the original hurt you felt. You do it to feel abandonment over and over because that’s the only thing you know of your mother. And it’s all you know to do to bring her close.”
“Oh, Nur, my child.” Nzinga, for once, did not know what to say.
“It’s okay, Zingie. I’ve made whatever peace I can with it. The biggest part is a commitment to being the kind of mother I always wanted to have myself. I have no choice but to have and love this baby, no matter what it means.”
“Ever since you were a little girl, Nur, you have had some kind of self-awareness. People live and die without ever knowing themselves the way you do,” Nzinga said. “Tell me, is this also why you insist on returning to Gaza?”
“Maybe so. I keep thinking about Rhet Shel. I don’t know how long Alwan will be around and Aunt Nazmiyeh is too old to take care of her. She has a big extended family. Uncles, aunts, cousins. But Rhet Shel will just get lost in the shuffle. They all have so many kids. I had trouble in the beginning remembering names and who was whose kid. There isn’t room for Rhet Shel to get the same love and attention. And she deserves that.”
The next shift began filing into the hotel. It was nearly five
A.M.
when both women succumbed to the trample of exhaustion. Nur lay in her bed looking up until a dream began to dance on the white ceiling.
There was a river, and the little boy of her dreams appeared for their Arabic lesson. “Khaled!” Nur cried. “It was you all along!”
“Of course,” he said.
“But where is Mariam?”
“She is waiting for my sister Nazmiyeh in the water well,” said a man’s voice.
“Jiddo!”
And Nur awoke to the sound of the noontime adan.
Nur was always on the way. Maybe it was the impermanence of foster care. The idea of aging in or out of home; of not having the option to return once you leave. She had no real anchors in the world, and so she was always on her way. On her way to herself. On her way to redemption. On her way to language. To something heavy enough to weigh her against the wind.
Getting back into Gaza was difficult, fraught with the trifles of officialdom and the inquiries of oppression. The Egyptians closed, then opened, then closed the border. Nur’s papers were missing a dot or a dash. Her answers were insufficient. They told her to wait. She talked to people. Sang into her womb. Then she found a way to the tunnels with other travelers. Young men with the grime of subterranean work on their skin and on their spirits led Nur and a group of travelers through, pulling their luggage in a trolley on a wooden track. She held on to a rail with one hand and her belly with the other as she descended steps into the cold, damp underworld. At the base of the tunnel, her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Small lanterns a few meters apart hung on a wire running the length of the tunnel, effervescent pearls shimmering in a black void that whispered of rats, snakes, and crawling, biting creatures. She kept walking. For twenty minutes. Then there was light and she was on the other side, back in Gaza.
She went to the nearest empty taxi at the border. “Can you take me to Nusseirat?” she asked. As they moved away, she saw a large group of people run to greet a woman and her children who had traversed the tunnels with her. They hugged and kissed in the habits of family and the tempers of love. Nur imagined Alwan, Rhet Shel, all the cousins and sisters-in-law surrounding her. She hadn’t called ahead to let anyone know that she had made it through the border.
They will be surprised
, she thought. Her heart pounded, anxious to arrive.
“Turn here,” she told the driver. As the taxi moved slowly down the narrow street, honking for children to get out of the way, a young boy threw his football at the car and yelled at the driver to stop honking.
“Let me out here. It’s a short walk and cars can’t get through much farther.”
Several children ran to help her with her bags. One of them tried to speak what few words he knew in English and Nur heard a young man yell, “Idiot! She’s not a foreigner! That’s Hajje Nazmiyeh’s kin.” Nur recognized him and waved. “Salaam, Wasim.” He nodded and ran to help carry her bags. The sun was still in the sky and life was bobbing along. Nur quickened her pace.
A child’s voice screamed, “Khalto Nur! Khalto!” and Rhet Shel sprinted out of a crowd of children. Nur whisked her up in an embrace. They hugged and kissed until Rhet Shel wiggled herself away, running ahead to announce the news. When Nur finally caught up, the women of her life had poured from their home and were waiting for her. Even the old widow who could not move well had come out.
In the warm midst of her aunt Nazmiyeh, Alwan, the sisters-in-law, a couple of the brothers, Rhet Shel, neighbors, and more children than she could count, Nur touched her belly. Laughter and conversations swirled around her. Tea and coffee and various sweets and snacks were passed around. It was the first homecoming she had ever had. The first time she had returned to a place that embraced her. She had always been compelled to move away. To leave and hope the next place would be better. Her hand still on the center of her world, Nur watched the room around her with joyful eyes. But for one interminable moment, all she heard was the heartbeat of certainty. Hajje Nazmiyeh looked at Nur’s hand, then at her face, and she pulled her near. She leaned into Nur’s face and whispered in her ear. “We will figure this out. People will touch their heads when they mention your name or your baby’s name. That’s my flesh and blood. But for now, take your hand off your belly so people don’t start thinking too much.” Nur pulled back to look into Hajje Nazmiyeh’s weathered face. Mischievous eyes that loved life looked back at her.
Nur had brought gifts from Cairo, but nothing made such an impression as the magical chocolate eggs. “This is a Kinder Egg,” Nur said, handing one to Rhet Shel, who could hardly believe her good fortune. She was afraid to open it, or eat it, or discover the toy inside, lest it be gone. But when she realized there was an entire box of them in Nur’s luggage, she invited her cousins. They peeled away the thin foil, gently, and experienced a moment of chocolate so sweet that everyone around them felt it. They stayed in the charm of that day until the house slowly emptied of guests and night slipped in. Rhet Shel fell asleep in her mother’s lap, and the old widow began to snore.
“Let’s have another gathering on the beach tomorrow in honor of Nur’s return,” Hajje Nazmiyeh announced, throwing a pillow at the old widow to wake her up. “But we’re not inviting
her
.”
Without opening her eyes, the old widow said, “I heard you. Nobody’s gonna come if they know I’m not the one doing the cooking.”
“
Fasharti
!” Hajje Nazmiyeh laughed. “Abu Zhaq will come.”
“Little girl,” the old woman wagged her finger at Hajje Nazmiyeh, trying not to laugh, “why are you always bringing up Abu Zhaq? Either you’ve had a little taste of that stuff or you’ve thought about it.”
Alwan and Nur both looked at Rhet Shel to be sure she was sleeping.
Hajje Nazmiyeh laughed. “I hear there’s nothing
little
about that man!”
Alwan threw a pillow at her mother. “Yumma! I’ll kiss your hands and feet and do whatever you want if you will stop talking like that!”
Hajje Nazmiyeh and the old widow laughed conspiratorially. “Okay, daughter. But you don’t have to worry. The only snake I’ve ever seen was your daddy’s,” Nazmiyeh said.
“Allah help this woman to find the righteous path.” Alwan threw her hands up in surrender and carried herself and Rhet Shel to bed.
“That’s what I keep saying,” the old widow said.
“You’re just as bad as she is,” Alwan huffed over her shoulder at the beekeeper’s widow.
Nur finally got up to join Alwan and Rhet Shel. “I love you both,” she said to the elderly women.
Hajje Nazmiyeh looked back at the beekeeper’s widow. “And how about this one? She doesn’t mind us talking about Abu Zhaq, but she won’t stop it with that American
I love you
stuff.”
The debris of the day’s merriment settled, and the percussion of the two hajjes snoring filled the rooms, lulling the house into dreams.
When I was younger, Hamas fighters captured an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit. Israel broke the ground open looking for him, but they couldn’t find him. They killed so many of us to get their soldier, but they couldn’t. Like a spoiled child having a tantrum, Israel hurled objects of death and destruction at us from land and sky and sea that mutilated, ruined, wrecked, and shattered us. But again, they came up empty-handed. Hamas was beyond their violence.
The Banter between Hajje Nazmiyeh and the old widow picked up again in the morning, alternating between lewd and silly, as they rolled grape leaves to make
waraq dawali
, cleaned chickens to make
msakhan
, and soaked rice and carved zucchini for koosa.
When Alwan woke up for work, Hajje Nazmiyeh had breakfast with hot tea waiting for her. “Don’t be mad at your old mama, habibti,” she said.
“That depends on how good the breakfast is.” Alwan smiled.
“You’re definitely my daughter! Nobody switched you at birth,” Hajje Nazmiyeh said.
Alwan made appreciative sounds as she ate the fried eggs, sunny-side up the way she liked,
zeit
and za’atar with warmed bread. The tea was sweet and flavored with a lot of mint.
“Yumma, this is perfect,” she said. “Don’t forget Rhet Shel has a music class at ten. I’m letting her sleep in with Nur,” Alwan said, heading out the door to deliver two caftans she had embroidered. But the old widow stopped her.