The Blue Between Sky and Water (32 page)
“You still have to drink this every day,” she said, holding the vial of marijuana oil.
Alwan gulped it down. “Tastes like a son of a whore!” she said, shaking her head to dislodge the aftertaste.
Rhet Shel was grudgingly leaving for the music lesson when her mother returned, and she begged to stay home so she wouldn’t miss the party.
“Habibti, it’s not a party. We’re just having ghada at the shore. I promise that nothing will start before you’re home.”
“But I won’t be able to help set up,” Rhet Shel protested.
“That’s too bad. Now go!” Alwan said and Rhet Shel went off in a huff.
Moments later, she returned, alarm swimming in her eyes, pursued by car horns and the noise of shouts in the street. The women of the house stepped out onto their stoop and found their neighbors doing the same. Some were jolted by curiosity and others were reticent, so some ran out into the camp while other crept. Cars packed with young men honked as they drove through. People soon began to pour into the streets and alleys, and streams of bodies emerged dancing. Through the chaos arose the news: Hamas had won. Gilad Shalit, the captured Israeli soldier, would be exchanged for one thousand Palestinian political prisoners.
Hajje Nazmiyeh hastily tied on her scarf and ran out the door, shouting, “Mazen!”
I said it before: We were used to being the losers. So the small victories were intoxicating, and all paused their lives to celebrate together. My khalo Mazen’s name was on the list and Teta hurried through the streets, her face and arms reaching to the heavens, shouting Allahu akbar. The whole of Gaza did the same. The same jubilation. The same relief and triumph. The same sense that Allah was merciful. That the dignity of patience and the humors of family were our wells of strength. Rhet Shel didn’t understand, but it was enough to know that school had been cancelled for a massive celebration.
As the Euphoria subsided, details of the prisoner exchange emerged. They would be released in stages, the actual transfer of one Israeli prisoner happening in Egypt after five hundred Palestinians were returned home. In seven days, Mazen would be returned home.
“Today is Tuesday, is that right?” Hajje Nazmiyeh asked.
“Yes, Yumma,” Alwan answered. “They said Mazen will be home, enshallah, on Monday.”
Hajje Nazmiyeh counted on her fingers. “That’s seven days.” She counted again to be sure.
“Enshallah, my brother will be home with us for the next family jomaa ghada.” Alwan kissed her mother’s forehead.
“Everybody and their cousin is at the beach today. But we should still gather there. I like praying by the ocean. It makes me feel closer to Allah.” Hajje Nazmiyeh’s chin quivered and she began to cry. “My son,” she whimpered. “Mazen is coming home. I didn’t think I’d live to see the day.”
You hear that, Mariam?
*
The beekeeper’s widow cooked without respite, invigorated by the recent score: Israel 1, Hamas 1,000. As the sovereign of the kitchen, she instructed her subjects, Nur and Rhet Shel, to pick vegetables and leaves from her garden, to hand her this or that, peel and chop this and that, boil, sauté, salt, and spice. “Allah is merciful. La ellah illa Allah. He gives us gifts when we don’t expect them,” she said to Hajje Nazmiyeh, who went off to the mosque. By the time she returned, the food was prepared and covered, waiting to be carted toward the ocean. Rhet Shel could hardly wait. The news of the morning had soaked through the day, and the elation hung like mist. She missed her brother, Khaled, and wished he were still there as she and Nur sat on the wooden planks of Abu Marzooq’s donkey cart with trays of food, bouncing on rutted roads and beach sand as other children ran alongside. When they got to the beach, they saw that the sisters-in-law had already laid blankets and the brothers were starting a firepit that would burn into the night.
After ghada, other families walked over and joined them. Hajje Nazmiyeh and the old beekeeper’s widow sat together, joined by other matriarchs of the camp; and the place where they sat became the head of the table, the focal point and command center of the shore. The ocean sprayed them and propelled the wind to caress their faces. These women sat in a circle of plastic chairs. They wore caftans stitched with a thousand years of embroidery and headscarves as old as Islam. They smoked argilehs even though Hamas had banned women from smoking in public. No one could get away with questioning these grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and their defiance was a public insistence on the dignity and authority of mothers. At the helm of this impertinence was Hajje Nazmiyeh, the eternal ringleader, who now basked in the grace of the ocean’s breath, anticipating redemption in just seven days. They spoke of a thousand Palestinian sons and daughters who would be returning home soon, praise be to Allah. All the women had captive kin in Israel, and each imagined and prayed for reunion. “Enshallah, Mazen and all of his comrades, all of our captive kin, will be with us the next time we gather like this,” said Hajje Nazmiyeh, and all the women raised their pleas to the heavens to bolster that prayer.
An idea occurred to Hajje Nazmiyeh and she whispered to the old widow. “Maybe Mazen and Nur will marry! He will need a wife and she needs a husband. This is the perfect solution if they agree, enshallah.”
“Americans don’t marry their kin like we do, and do you think Mazen will agree to be the father of another man’s child?” the beekeeper’s widow replied. “But Allah is great. His will shall be done.”
“She’s not American anymore, and my son is a kind, gentle soul,” Hajje Nazymiyeh responded with annoyance. “Allah is great. His will shall be done.”
Someone pulled out a
tabla
drum and the men formed a dabke line and danced. People sang. Rhet Shel and all the children played and fought and cried and laughed and danced and tattled on one another. Alwan was happy, in a way she had not been for many years. It was an inexplicable joy, perhaps the kind that comes from having been kissed so many times by death and then finally being spared. So she danced with other women around the bonfire. It was a rare thing for her generation to link arms with men like that in a dabke. But the night and the crowd gave cover to the offense against rectitude.
Nur danced, too, and the celebration continued until the sun tired and the day faded. Then they fell silent as the sky shone with streaks of gold and rust and fiery red. Nur saw a tear run down Hajje Nazmiyeh’s face as the yellow sun fell toward the edge of the ocean, pouring itself over Gaza’s waters. It dipped to a half circle, then only a crest as it tucked itself under the water, and the people watched in the silence of humility. Then it was gone.
To no one in particular, Hajje Nazmiyeh mumbled, “My mother once said this land will rise again.”
The bonfire was revived and it rose like a defiant fist. The moon arrived full, a welcome guest that they all greeted with awe. It was the same moon looking down on the world beyond their seaside cage and it made them feel free.
Everything seemed possible in those moments. The uncertainties and precariousness of old age, a disease in remission inside a mother’s body, fathers and brothers without work, a son returning after a life behind bars, a baby in an unmarried womb, and a little girl’s potential—bounded by an ocean and warships to the west, electrified fences and snipers to the east, and formidable armies at the northern and southern tips—could be redeemed.
It grew late, and as they packed up to retire home, a familiar song danced in the marrow of their bones, then hummed in their throats. Hajje Nazmiyeh sang it first, and the others joined in.
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
Khaled
“In the primal sympathy which having been must ever be.”
—William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”
I was there with the women of my life. I was in the colors. In the mulberries, magentas, and corals of a tired sun. In the blue between sky and water.
I was there, watching. Their conversations and laughter anchored the ground in place, tucked the shore under the water, hung the sky and decorated it with stars and moon and sun. All of this happened in Gaza. It happened in Palestine. And I stayed as long as I could.
Shortly after I completed and submitted this novel for publication, Israel attacked Gaza with particular savagery in the summer of 2014. For seven weeks, they pounded the tiny enclave, already imprisoned and under their siege. In the cold prose of statistics, 2,191 Palestinians were killed, the overwhelming majority (approximately 80 percent) civilians, 527 of them children; 71 Israelis were killed, 93 percent of them combat soldiers; 11,239 Palestinians were injured, 61,800 Palestinian homes were bombed along with 220 schools, 278 mosques, 62 hospitals, and the last remaining electric plant in Gaza. Through it all, Palestinian resistance fighters, holed up in tunnels with little more than bread, salt, and water, refused to surrender, and continued to fight a vastly superior military force. Despite the horrors and terror they suffered, Palestinians in Gaza supported the resistance because, in the words of one man, “We’d rather die fighting than continue living on our knees as nothing more than worthless lives Israel can use to test their weapons.”
I’d like to salute those Palestinian fighters. They willingly stepped into a realm where death was all but assured, for nothing less than the cause of freedom. Their courage was the stuff of legends.
I’d like to thank the following people for their contributions to this novel. Mame Lambeth was the first to read and comment on the full draft, then again on another draft. Before that, Martha Hughes, my primary editor, read the initial stream-of-consciousness ramble that was the beginning of this novel. She stayed with me, encouraging and cheering for me through my self-doubt until the story finally took form. Special thanks to Anton Mueller and Alexandra Pringle for believing in this novel, and to everyone at Bloomsbury who helped turn this manuscript into a book; to the team at Pontas Literary Agency for their excellent representation. My friend Sameeha Elwan, who took time from her hectic schedule to read this story, particularly for cultural and geographic competency of descriptions of Gaza, her home. Likewise, my friends Amal Abdullah, Hanan Urick, Jacqueline Berry, Rana Baker, and Professor Richard Falk, who read the manusript and offered valuable input. Ramzy Baroud’s book
My Father Was a Freedom Fighter
provided the basis for place (Beit Daras and Gaza) in this narrative. I am eternally grateful for the wisdom, knowledge, and friendship of these individuals.
From Conal Urquhart, “Gaza on Brink of Implosion as Aid Cut-off Starts to Bite,”
Observer
, April 15, 2006.
From Breaking the Silence,
Breaking the Silence: Soldiers’ Testimonies from Operation Cast Lead, Gaza 2009
(Jerusalem: Shovrim Shtika, 2009):
www.breakingthesilence.org.il
.
From Dr. Mads Gilbert and Dr. Erik Fosse,
Eyes in Gaza
(Charlottesville, VA: Quartet Books Ltd, 2010).
From Mahmoud Darwish, “State of Siege,” trans. Sabry Hafez and Sarah Maguire, in
Modern Poetry in Translation
3, no. 1 (2004), ed. Helen Constantine and David Constantine. From
Halat Hisar
[State of Siege] (Beirut: Riad El Rayyes Books, 2009). Used by permission of Syracuse University Press.
From Mahmoud Darwish, “A Traveler,” trans. by Sinan Antoon, in
Jadaliyya
(August 2011). From
La Uridu Li-Hadhi ‘l-Qasidati An Tantahi
[I Don’t Want this Poem to End] (Beirut: Riyad El-Rayyes Books, 2009).
From Nour Samaha, “The Voices of Gaza’s Children,”
Al Jazeera
, November 23, 2012.
From Chris Hedges, “A Gaza Diary,”
Harper’s
, October 2001.
From T. S. Eliot, “East Coker,”
Four Quartets
(New York: Harcourt, 1943). Used by permission of Faber & Faber.
From Aeschylus,
Agamemnon
, trans. by Edith Hamilton,
Three Greek Plays
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1937).
From William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,”
Poems in Two Volumes
(1807).
Mornings in Jenin
My Voice Sought the Wind
Susan Abulhawa was born to Palestinian refugees of the 1967 war. She is a human rights activist and frequent political commentator. In 2000, she founded Playgrounds for Palestine, an organisation dedicated to upholding Palestinian children’s Right to Play. Her first novel,
Mornings in Jenin
, was an international bestseller, with rights sold in twenty-six languages. She lives in Pennsylvania with her daughter.
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First published in Great Britain 2015
© Susan Abulhawa, 2015
Susan Abulhawa has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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