Rhet Shel’s spirit seemed to expand and she ran back and forth on the beach, giving repeat performances of her tumbles and cartwheels as the three women watched her, water lapping at their feet. Hajje Nazmiyeh settled down, stretching her legs on the sand, and Alwan and Nur joined her. Every few minutes, Rhet Shel would run to Khaled to adjust his head so she could remain in his view while she played.
“My brother, Allah rest his soul—your jiddo, Nur—used to bring our family here when we lived in Beit Daras,” Nazmiyeh began, her eyes searching the horizon. “We thought the ocean would be different after we became refugees. I don’t know why. Maybe we thought it would be a refugee, too. It was just me and my sweet brother Mamdouh. We came here and walked right along there, holding hands like we were lovers or something. He was embarrassed at first,” she laughed, motioning toward the distance with age-spotted hands. “That was the day we discovered that only one of his legs was growing.” And Nur recalled the song of an old man’s wobbly walk.
Nur and Alwan listened quietly, eavesdropping on Hajje Nazmiyeh’s memories. “He was a good man. He was a provider and a protector. He took care of everyone around him. A good brother and son and husband. He was a good father and a good grandfather.” Hajje Nazmiyeh turned to Nur with moist, gentle eyes. “He loved you as big as these outdoors. You were too young to remember, but he gave your mother every penny he had so he could keep you. The two of you were on your way back here when he fell sick. He waited a little because he wanted to sell his car so he could have some cash.” Tears glistened on Hajje Nazmiyeh’s wrinkled brown face. “Damn money! You should have been raised here with your family, Nur. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get you back. I’ve been scared to ask you about your life. It should have been spent here with your family. I would have been your mama.”
Nur felt her own tears, but they got stuck in her throat and she choked when she tried to speak. She burrowed her hands in the sand and closed them around the warm grains, feeling them slide between her fingers. Hajje Nazmiyeh continued, “And let me say this to you, daughter. You need to think hard about that doctor. We don’t do these kinds of things here, and you have to learn that very fast. You might love him and he might love you, but he will break your life. Worse, when people find out, and they always find out, no one will want to marry you. Do you think about that while you’re texting him back and forth all day?” Hajje Nazmiyeh looked directly into Nur’s mismatched eyes. “I’m no fool, daughter,” she said, then smiled briefly. “Not when it comes to love. So now that he is texting you again, what is he saying?”
Nur hesitated, lowered her eyes. “He said he loves me and wants to leave his wife.”
“Well, that’s a change from last week. Where will his mind be next week?” Hajje Nazmiyeh clicked her tongue.
Nur looked down and took a breath as if to answer, but Hajje Nazmiyeh went on. “Don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say. I’ve lived long enough to know how this will turn out. That wife of his will cut off his dick before she’d let him leave her or take another wife. Those people aren’t like us.”
Alwan furrowed her brow. “Yumma, why do you have to be so crass? Khaled can hear you!”
Hajje Nazmiyeh ignored her daughter, “Nur, I can’t hold your American ways against you because I should have tried harder to bring you back. But you are here now and you mustn’t take this sinful path. That man better not come to our home unless it’s with honor to ask for your hand. Am I making myself clear?”
Alwan reached for Nur’s hand and the two women looked on, breathing the winds of the Mediterranean, watching two miracle children and trying to shoo away thoughts of the days ahead.
Watching her grandchildren—Rhet Shel playing with other children and Khaled immobile in his chair under the shade— Hajje Nazmiyeh reached for her daughter’s hand and squeezed it. “Tell me, daughter,” she said, sensing unuttered words in her child. “Did you make the appointment yet for the surgery?”
And there, the three women sat in a row facing the blue expanse, holding hands, awed by the close proximity of such contentment and imminent pain as Rhet Shel played at the core of all their thoughts.
No one dared say it, but they all understood that Khaled was slowly fading away. His breathing had become increasingly labored, depending more on the respirator, and the doctors said there was nothing more they could do for him in Gaza. His fate was in Allah’s hands, they had said, and Alwan assured, “Everyone’s fate is in His hands.”
My sister pretended to read one of my messages from the letter chart to Mama, but most of them got tucked away with her old school papers and drawings. Perhaps she was embarrassed not to read yet. Or didn’t want to share my words with anyone else. Perhaps one day when she’s older, she will find them and read of my inner world that escapes time and death and sits with Baba, Mariam, and great-khalo Mamdouh, and swims in the oceans and feels people without seeing or hearing them. Perhaps she will think it all a creation of imagination and memory. But she will also read how I loved her and know it was all real.
The Mechanics of this day happened as they usually did. Rhet Shel ran home from first grade and was greeted by her mother, who kissed her on the forehead before struggling out the door to her job at the co-op. After seeing her mother off, peeking in on Khaled was her next stop. She climbed up into his lap to kiss him, saying, “I’ll be right back, Khaled.” Then she hurried to finally go pee. Teta Nazmiyeh was cooking in the kitchen. Nur was still at work.
“Habibti, it’s just me and you and Khaled today. Nur is working in the south with a group of children and might stay at a hostel with some of her co-workers,” Hajje Nazmiyeh said to her granddaughter. “Your mama will be back around dinner. The center sold double the number of thobes and I’ll bet she comes home with some sweets!”
Rhet Shel squealed, jumping up and down. “Did you perform your
thuhr
prayers?” her teta reminded her, and Rhet Shel rushed to do so. A few moments later, she was climbing onto her brother’s chair. “I’m back, Khaled,” she said, pulling his face toward her. “Nur isn’t coming home today.”
Khaled didn’t blink. “Blink, Khaled!” Rhet Shel demanded. Her brother blinked. Twice. “Let’s do the letter thing.” She leapt to retrieve the poster-board chart.
She could read some words now, but most of what she copied eluded her, and she grew distressed about hiding another message. “Is this a letter for me?” Khaled did not react. “Is it for Mama?” Nothing. “Is it for Nur?” Still nothing. “Is it for Teta?” He blinked. “Blink two times if this letter is for Teta,” Rhet Shel said, and Khaled blinked twice.
Proud to be the bearer of Khaled’s message, Rhet Shel tried her best to decipher it. It was only a few words, but it made no sense so she gave up, handing the paper to her teta.
“Go grab the first person you see who can read and bring them here,” her teta ordered.
Rhet Shel returned moments later with a fifth grader. Hajje Nazmiyeh showed the little boy a shekel, reward for his trouble. The boy made his own scribbles, his face contorting in thought. He looked up a few times at Hajje Nazmiyeh unassuredly until she lost patience. “Don’t you know how to read, boy?” she barked. “Yes, Hajje,” he replied in a shaky voice. Then he lied. “It says, Mariam would like you to have a party. She … she, she said she never left and she … she is in Beit Daras.”
The boy and Rhet Shel watched the ash of shock suffuse Hajje Nazmiyeh’s skin. He snatched his shekel and ran out as quickly as he could.
Rhet Shel tried to comfort her teta, who was now sobbing. Hajje Nazmiyeh cried until it was laughter pouring from her face. Then she leaned to kiss away her granddaughter’s alarm and said, “We’re going to have another party.”
She got up and walked to Khaled’s chair. “Habibti, get your old teta a chair,” she said to Rhet Shel, and she proceeded to whisper words into Khaled’s ears, into his eyes, his forehead, his hair, his cheeks, laying so many kisses where her words went. Rhet Shel heard her teta say, “I knew it. I always knew it,” then speak endlessly to someone unseen. “I’m ready, my sister. I’ll save you this time.”
“Rhet Shel, habibti. You and Khaled and I are going to go to the souq to get food for tomorrow,” Hajje Nazmiyeh said. “Bring some of your friends so they can help us carry the bags. Bring five friends. All the helpers get candy.”
Nur tried to stop, but the torment of her inflamed heart pulled her deeper into the affair. Far from giving her relief, the texts, calls, and secret meetings only incited her heart until it conquered her will. Their communications were heavy with desire. She lied to Mama and Teta. Told them she was seeing patients in the south. That she was staying in a hostel to avoid nighttime travel alone. But she spent that night with him in a secret apartment he had arranged. He said he wanted to wake up next to her, but they never slept and he left while the moon still reigned over a dark sky.
Nur tried to enter the house quietly. A panoply of voices rose and fell around the central command of Hajje Nazmiyeh’s banter and laughter. She hesitated before entering, listening. Words of excitement and expectation flowered and hung in the air like decorations. As she turned the corner, she heard a small scream. “Khalto Nur! Teta, Khalto Nur is here!” Rhet Shel yelled and ran into Nur’s arms. All the daughters-in-law were there and a few women from the neighborhood with their kids. Some were sipping coffee, others sat around Hajje Nazmiyeh, preparing food. Dicing and chopping, crying over onions. Stuffing this or that vegetable, rolling dough, mixing rice with olive oil and spices. They looked up and cheerily greeted Nur, making space for her to sit in the crowded room.
“We’re having a party tomorrow for no reason at all!” Rhet Shel reported excitedly, mindful not to divulge the secret message from Khaled.
Nur walked to the center of all things, bent to her knees, and kissed Hajje Nazmiyeh’s hand. “Sit, beautiful daughter,” Hajje Nazmiyeh said. “I’m so happy you’re home. You work too much. May Allah look upon my daughters with His favor and goodness always, Amen.”
No one understood, but none refused the impromptu celebration. It was a random merriment, but perhaps not so unusual given that its source was Hajje Nazmiyeh. Rows of food trays lined borrowed tables. Steaming spiced rice with browned pine nuts, tender chicken, stuffed potatoes, zucchini, and grape leaves. Women all over the neighborhood pitched in, but the best and largest contribution came from the widow of the old beekeeper of Beit Daras.
“No one can throw a surprise hafla like Hajje Nazmiyeh,” people said.
They danced. The old matriarchs and patriarchs looked on at the young and clapped for them. They reminisced over a time and a place long gone. They swayed to the music and to the wind. Young couples with children came, and for one day and one night, troubles and fears lifted away. When the skies dimmed and there was no electricity, candles appeared on every ledge, on mounds of rubble, in windows. Men linked their arms, shoulder-to-shoulder, and danced
dabke
after dabke. Women joined them, or formed their own dabke line. Everyone asked what was the occasion, and they accepted Hajje Nazmiyeh’s answer, however puzzling: “Because life is magical and gives us second chances that should be celebrated.” Many agreed, adding that a good hafla was the best traditional medicine in their seaside prison. “We find our own ways to freedom. Zionist sons of Satan cannot imprison our joy, can they?” Nazmiyeh agreed, wheeling her grandchild wherever she moved, speaking to him in whispers. Some heard her say, “I always knew you were Mariam’s Khaled. I knew it was you,” and they assumed dementia was settling into the old matriarch.
Although Nur had met the beekeeper’s widow before, she learned that afternoon for the first time that the beekeeper had been her great-grandfather. This woman was her teta Yasmine’s stepmother. “But she doesn’t look much older than you,” Nur said to Hajje Nazmiyeh.
“She’s not. The old beekeeper liked them young and got himself a new wife after he wore the other ones out,” Hajje Nazmiyeh laughed. “This one was damaged goods. She couldn’t make babies and that was just as well. She loved your teta Yasmine and took care of her even though she was only a few years older than her. People like her, but she keeps to herself and doesn’t get out much. She has lived alone ever since your grandparents left. People buy herbs and such from her for colds and virility. And nobody cooks like she does. Not even me. But look at her, strong and fat and simple as a mule.”
Nur wished Jamal were there. She wanted to tell him about this new revelation. Another piece of her life discovered. She tried calling him to no avail, and created fantasies of a life with him where they would dance together at such haflas. She dialed and dialed, until finally he sent her a text saying that he would call the next day. “My wife is leaving me. Don’t contact me until I reach out,” the text said.
In time, cheeks were kissed good night and sleeping children were carried home. Despite a herculean effort to remain awake, Rhet Shel fell prey to sleep early in the night. Alwan followed her, spent, as soon as the guests had left. It was never easy to discern if Khaled was awake or sleeping, for his eyes were often shut when he was awake or open when he was somewhere else. Exhaustion was no match for the things stirring inside Nur, for which she had no labels. No words.
At the insistence of her old friend Hajje Nazmiyeh, the old beekeeper’s widow stayed, and she opened the stores of her memory for Nur to wander. Tales of her husband, the beekeeper, and his young apprentice, Mamdouh. How Mamdouh would sneak glances at Yasmine, thinking she did not see him. Stories of plants and trees in Beit Daras. Of Yasmine, who at first had not liked her, but who had become her best friend and daughter when they had no one else after the Naqba. Of Mamdouh, the grown man with a limp, who had worked in Cairo to save money to marry Yasmine. Of how they first had gone to Kuwait, then to America, and had only been able to return for visits. Of the love in Yasmine’s voice when she had called to tell the widow about their granddaughter, Nur.