Tasting the Sky (5 page)

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Authors: Ibtisam Barakat

BOOK: Tasting the Sky
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Maha became ill. She wailed and would not nurse or sleep. Mother said she was going to take her to Um Ahmad, a neighbor who would give her an herbal remedy. Um Ahmad remembered ailments and their herbal cures the way one remembers names of friends or family members.
Bundling my sister in her arms, Mother said that my brothers and I could play in front of the house. As always, even though I was younger than my brothers, she instructed me to keep an eye on them and run and get her in case of trouble.
I sat at the doorstep thinking of Alef, who had disappeared when the last piece of chalk grew short, then crumbled into nothing between my fingers. Like me, he moves from home to home, I thought. I missed Alef and the white
dust he shed, like a pet, each time I ran my hand on him. Missing Alef made me miss the baby donkey, Souma, too. I felt Souma was gone forever. But Alef? Far away in my heart I knew that someday I would go to school, find a blackboard, hold a stick of chalk with my fingers, and once again draw him. He would wake up and yawn. He would jump to meet me and would once again live in my pocket and help me do all kinds of things.
My sister's loud cries coming from Um Ahmad's house interrupted my thoughts. But there was nothing to do. I busied myself by studying the shadows on the ground, the corners of buildings, and how, as people crossed the courtyard, their shadows imitated everything they did, just as younger children imitated older ones.
The shadows, I could see, were mixtures of colors—blue, purple, gray, and perhaps an unlit red that got sifted out at the end of the day to give the night its darkness. I followed the shadows of my brothers, who always locked arms as they walked. Then the shadow of a wheeled wooden cart appeared.
The man who pushed it had just pulled out a large tray of hot pastries from the bakery. The aroma of sweet syrup on baked goods filled the air. I felt dizzy with a sudden hunger as my brothers and I cut through the courtyard, exchanging glances that confirmed we could read one another's minds. We had not eaten pastries in a long time.
“This tray holds baked-to-golden-perfection
basbooseh,”
the man trumpeted. I knew the taste of
basbooseh
and loved it. Before the war, Mother had made this treat by mixing
semolina flour, yogurt, and sugar. She topped the mix with slivered almonds and baked it. When it was done, she drenched it with sweet syrup.
“Sweeten your mouth!” the man encouraged. I sighed. My chest rose and fell with his words; my eyes dug like spoons into the pastries. But I pushed my hands into my pockets, kept my hunger tucked under my skin. Basel and Muhammad stood on the other side of the courtyard. They too had their hands in their pockets. It seemed to me that while we were three children, we had the same feelings, as though we were one.
A woman called out that she wanted pastries. Leaning out from a window, she threw coins wrapped in cloth to the courtyard. The pastry man caught the money and hurried to deliver the sweets.
At that moment, my brothers swept to the cart with astonishing speed, clutched its big handles, threw their bodies against it, and wheeled it toward our home while I watched astounded. The cart was twice their size. The instant they reached the door, I jumped up and held it wide open for them. They slid the tray off the cart, carried it to the center of our room, and locked the door behind us.
Without tasting, chewing, or saying a word, we ate one piece after another, stopping only to take in giant breaths, until nothing was left on the tray except our sticky fingers spread anxiously on the metal. Then we leaned against the wall, our bellies distended before us, and awaited the unknown.
Fists pounded at the door, but we had become lost, entranced
by what we had done. The pastry man threatened to break down the door. We jumped closer to one another. Then his voice mixed with the voices of other people. Mother's and Um Ahmad's voices now joined in. “I'll protect this door with my body,” Mother shouted. My sister's cries, amid the clashing voices, rose like a siren.
“Open the door!” The command bellowed from every direction. Hands climbed up on the window bars.
“Don't eat more than a piece,” she shouted. “Open the door,” she now begged, her voice sticky like our hands. “Open the door,” men yelled out. The men at the door were frightening us. I wanted my dad.
Then the words of the man who had rented us the room rose above all the voices. “I have a key,” he thundered. We hid the tray behind us as the door swung open, and we watched in shock as the pastry man staggered in, drunk with anger. He wanted to see how many pastries were left. When he saw the empty tray, he looked around to see if we had emptied it into another container. When he realized that we had eaten every single piece, he stomped his feet like a beast. Charging toward us, he grunted that he was going to eat us alive, just the way we ate his pastries.
The crowd restrained him. Someone reminded him that we were hungry refugees and were to be pitied. “God shall compensate you,” another affirmed.
Now the pastry man covered his face with his hands and moaned that his own children were waiting to be fed.
“Allah Be'awwed,”
everyone said, trying to console him. “Allah shall compensate you.” Then the shopkeepers dipped their
hands into their own pockets. They donated money for a dozen pieces. “But you owe me for the entire tray,” the pastry man told Mother before storming away.
Now, after thanking the men and shutting the door behind her, Mother was overcome by worry that quickly turned into rage. She turned to us. “Where will we get the money?” she exploded. “Where?” She pinched our skin into pain buttons and twisted my ears till they turned hot like embers.
When my father came home, he too took a turn at hitting us. “We are only guests in Jordan,” he bellowed. “Stealing is not what a guest should do. We will be thrown out on the street if you ever behave like this again.” The blows of his belt left long, dark stripes on our backs. We named those striped bruises
shawarea,
streets. For many days, up and down those streets, our pain tingled like unrelenting rows of ants.
My parents imposed a tight curfew on us. We were not to set foot outside the door. “For three months,” Father seethed. But Mother shortened the punishment to one month, reminding him that he was not the one who had to stay in the house all day with us.
Grateful, we wanted to embrace her. She flicked us off in agitation. But our sentence of confinement was suddenly forgotten when the tiny people I thought lived inside the radio set announced a list of names approved for return to Ramallah. Our family's was included.
“Did you hear that?” Mother shouted as she raced to the radio, turning the volume up. We had. We danced and clapped to her happiness. Our family's name was repeated
again within an hour. And that night when Father arrived home we quickly ate our lentils. The key to our Ramallah home dangled from Mother's chest, beating out a rhythm along with her laughter.
Neighbors came to say goodbye. They had tears in their eyes and concern for us. But we did not dwell on the possible dangers. After living for two weeks in a shelter, a month in Hamameh's kitchen, a month in a classroom, then two months in Marka, what mattered most was how homesick we felt.
The pastry man also came. He forgave us. “We lost Palestine,” he said. “The pastries are nothing.” Then he flung his arms wide as though to throw away any crumbs of a grudge he had held against us.
We drove to the bridge that divided the east bank of the Jordan River from its west bank, where hills and valleys curved like the laps of a thousand mothers. Images of Ramallah filled my mind. And I wanted to know—would Ramallah be the same? And would we really be allowed to return?
We had heard that some men were asked to turn back at the bridge; their families were torn apart as the women and children were allowed to cross over to their cities but the men could not. When we arrived at the bridge, throngs of refugees were waiting to learn their fate. My father went to the area where the men were instructed to go. International Red Cross workers gave us blankets and cans of Spam and sardines. The tiny dead fish inside the sardine cans seemed to be lying helpless, waiting for something, just as we were.
My brothers and I were too worried to eat. We waited at the bridge for two days and kept looking in the direction where our dad had disappeared. We even refused the big chocolate bars a Red Cross worker secretly handed us after Mother told her that we had not eaten since we had arrived.
The hours of waiting piled up like the flies that buzzed in the camp. Then someone shouted out a list of names that included ours. “And take off your shoes, for all shoes must be inspected,” the voice added. Barefoot and trembling, I stuck close to Mother. After a long wait, a man brought back a giant cart of mixed-up shoes and tossed them toward us. Everyone dove in to sort through the pile and find his own pair. I threw myself at mine and quickly put them on. When no shoes were left, the moment for us to cross the bridge finally arrived, and together my mother, brothers, sister, and I crossed over.
We had been told not to wait for my father because it took longer to question the men. I wanted to wait for him no matter how long it took. But now that we had crossed the bridge, we were not allowed to cross back. I worried that he might be kept in Jordan. I tugged at Mother for answers. But she had none.
On the other side of the bridge, Red Cross workers, wearing porcelain-smooth white helmets with red lines on them, looked like police as they offered us candy and said, “Welcome.” We walked past them silently, gazing at the older people who had crossed the bridge before us and now knelt and kissed the dust as though it were the cheek of
someone they loved. Then we walked to where lines of noisy buses in dust and smoke clouds awaited us.
Drivers called out the names of many destination cities. We listened and waited. And when we heard someone call “Jerusalem-Ramallah,” my brothers and I charged onto the bus. We hurried to the backseat and stuck our faces against the glass, hoping to see across the bridge to where our father was. But the other side of the bridge had become hidden from us. Now we were in one country, our dad in another.
The ride felt long, and the belly of the old bus growled and sputtered on the winding roads until we arrived in Jerusalem. We took a second bus to Ramallah. A third took us to the edge of the gravel road where every day I had waited for my father to return home from work.
Now we would discover the answer to our most dreaded question: Had our house been destroyed? At first, we hesitated. We said the prayer of the desperate,
“Ya rab!”
asking God that He might be kind to our hopes. Then we raced toward the answer until it was before us. There, bathed in the setting October sun, was our house. Still standing.
We dropped everything and rushed up to it. We touched it. We kissed the stones and threw open our arms and pressed our chests and cheeks to it. We were home.
In the front yard, near the trench where we had hidden on the first day of the war, Mother picked up a large bullet, one that she believed had been aimed at her. And on the step in front of the green door, I found the shoe I had not
been able to put on. It had been lying there, waiting for me, for four months and thirteen days.
 
We walked around our house. Our summer garden had mostly dried up and died. Only the
nana
, spearmint, had survived. The birds had hollowed the tomatoes into shells. Ants trafficked in and out of the eggplants. The earth was dry and broken. The roofless room Father had built for water storage was open, its zinc sheet cover lying on the ground and the ladder thrown near it. The water supply had almost completely disappeared; what was left was covered with dust and dirt.
The shutters and front window were open. Beyond the iron window bars, everything inside was quiet. A bird fluttered through the bars and flew out. We wondered whether snakes and scorpions had also nested in our belongings.
Stuttering the name of God, Mother walked to the green iron door, its two sides sealed at the center with a large locked bolt. She pushed the key into it and pressed. But the key did not move, and when she tried to pull it out, she could not. The key was stuck. “The lock needs to be oiled,” she muttered. Where would she find oil?
Our house stood on top of a hill. On three sides there was nothing. On the fourth lived the Mahasreh, a cluster of related families who had moved to Ramallah upon the takeover of their town, Beit Mahseer, in the war of 1948. They were aloof and kept to themselves.
The Mahasreh house closest to us was half a mile away. We could not see the rest of their dwellings from where we
stood because they lined the stretch of road that connected our house to the Ramallah-Nablus road. To reach the road, we always cut through the Mahasreh area going and coming, and that annoyed them. They accused us of picking cherries, grapes, or figs from the trees and vines in their yards. We dreaded asking the Mahasreh for anything. But tonight, our only hope was to knock at one of their doors.
And although they did not say they were happy to see us again, they gave us a bottle cap filled with olive oil. Mother was grateful.
She put the oil on the key and waited till it slowly spread inside the bolt. Then she tried to turn the key—and this time it moved. She gave the two sides of the door a big push, and they flew wide open like welcoming arms.
Things in our house seemed to be exactly the way we had left them. To the right, the brown sewing machine was still nestled in one corner, the green bed in another. The red-and-yellow straw carpet covered the center of the room, and the honey-colored Formica cupboard divided the space into a living room and kitchen. But when Mother lifted the sky-blue thermos that sat on the tiny kitchen table, she gasped. She pointed to a hole that a bullet had torn in its base. The hole was large enough to stick my finger inside. “Someone shot into our house through the window,” Mother announced. Suddenly, our home no longer felt safe.
And the thermos was dear to Mother. She had bought it with money she earned from months of sewing. It had helped her save on kerosene by keeping water hot so she did
not have to boil more water every time she needed to mix it with milk powder. The bullet had entered the base of the thermos, left it, and settled inside the kitchen wall.
Mother took the thermos and went outside. We leapt after her and watched as she dipped cupfuls of filthy water into the thermos. Had the glass lining been ruined? We held our breaths as we waited for water drops to fall. But the thermos did not leak. It held water the way a heart holds a secret. We cheered. And Mother smiled.
A few moments later, we found another bullet, which had dug a hole through the headboard of the only bed in the room. It was buried inside the headboard's two metal layers. The slightest move made it rattle noisily. Every night before the war, my brothers and I had vied to sleep in that bed. We had settled on taking turns. Now we could not remember whose turn it had been on the day we left. From that night on, however, we pulled the mattress off the bed frame. No matter whose turn it was, we would sleep on the ground.
Searching the room for more bullets, we realized that we had no matches to light the kerosene lamp or the three-legged stove. Darkness quickly set in. How could we go to our neighbors again? So Mother asked us to sit quietly. Throughout the long night, I listened to the sound of her anxious steps on the tile as she moved back and forth between the door and the window.
When the sun rose the next day, my brothers and I set out to search for matchsticks in the yard, on the hillsides, and on the road. Mother raised her hands and asked Allah to guide our steps. We found handfuls of intact bullets and
filled our pockets with empty cartridges. We flipped rocks and found scorpions underneath them, tails standing up braided with poison. We plowed the earth with our fingers and eyes and searched sites of old fires, but we found no matches.
Then we remembered that our father once said he could start a fire by rubbing two flint stones against each other. Flint stones were everywhere, round and smooth like balls of dough. Basel broke one into two pieces. Its inside was purple and glittered as though it were a tiny piece of starry sky. He struck its two sides, but no sparks appeared.
None of us wanted to go back to Mother without a match or some fire. We trusted that God was going to help because Mother had asked Him to do so, and we needed His help. So we remained outside until the sun finally went to sleep, tucking itself under the thin sheet of the horizon.
The possibility of finding a match now seemed as distant as the sky above us. We walked back silently, shuffling our feet and wondering if God was unhappy with us. But suddenly, our prayer seemed to have been answered with more than the sparks we had asked for. We heard footsteps in the distance. A shadowy figure was walking on the gravel road. It was Father.
He brought us food, a large bottle of water, pockets full of melon seeds as a treat—and matches. We competed to show him the bullets in the thermos and the bed. “Soldiers must have combed the city house by house,” he said, shaking his head. After a long-awaited meal in the safety of our father's presence, and a few rides on his back around the
room, we all lay on the mattresses like matchsticks, our laughter spreading like fire among us.
 
With borrowed money, Father bought us more food, including a giant can of Nido Nestle powdered milk, which Mother struggled to keep away from our hungry hands. My brothers and I kept trying to reach into the can to eat the sweet powder, which tasted like candy.
In a short time, my parents cleaned the water-storage room. An elephant-size tanker then wobbled down the narrow gravel road and parked by our home. A man planted a giant pipe into the room and replenished the supply of water. Now we had enough to last us until December, when the rains would arrive.
Father found a job driving a truck for the Public Works Department. He said he was going to help repair roads destroyed by the war and to build new ones. Mother let us play outside as long as we remained within the reach of her voice. Once again, I could wait for my father at the end of the day. After dinner, I would wring my hands in delight and fear as he told us his favorite stories of buried treasures, taking us on endless thrilling journeys as he spoke. Our family seemed to be quickly returning to life as we'd known it. And now that Basel and Muhammad had decided I was old enough to play with them, I was happier than ever.
To celebrate their regained freedom, my brothers wanted to build a kite. The November wind would not stop them. Basel and Muhammad had learned how to make kites
from the Mahasreh boys before they stopped talking to us. Now, my brothers asked our father for reed stalks for the kite's skeleton. Alarmed, he said the kite might get us in trouble with the Mahasreh if it got tangled in their trees. But my brothers begged and pleaded, promising we would cause no trouble, until finally Father brought some common reeds and cut them into thin spokes for us.
Basel and Muhammad then begged Mother for dough. They needed glue and knew that sticky dough would work as a substitute. She gave them the dough and also some torn-up pieces of cloth that would become the kite's tail.
They measured the spokes, making certain they were of identical lengths, then wrapped a thread that turned the spokes into an eight-angled star with a perfect center. Using the dough, they glued the star to brown paper, attached streamers that gave the kite its whiskers, and added the tail. They would launch it in the morning.
The next day Basel held the kite's ball of string, steering it right and left the way my father steered a truck. Muhammad carried the kite, ran with it, then let it glide on the wind. The kite zigzagged and quickly took to the sky. We all ran, screaming encouragements to make it rise higher. It did.

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