Tasting the Sky (9 page)

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Authors: Ibtisam Barakat

BOOK: Tasting the Sky
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The school year progressed, and to my surprise, instead of separating me from Basel and Muhammad, it brought us closer together because they included me in their studies. When I asked a question, they competed to answer. And they showed me all the lessons and drawings in their books. The lines on the pages were planted with words that opened up like rows of flowers, each with a different shape. The many dots on the letters scattered like poppy seeds. I memorized everything my brothers taught me.
While Basel and Muhammad were in school, I played teacher with Zuraiqee as my pupil. I explained my lessons over and over. I bribed him by feeding him. I tried to make him pay attention by putting the paper right under his nose. Then he would try to eat it. Zuraiqee was a lazy student, I
thought. But with or without Zuraiqee, I studied. That made the time pass quickly until my brothers came home.
My brothers brought with them pocketfuls of knowledge about words from their teachers, and they also learned from the Jalazone schoolboys how to make all kinds of wonderful toys—skateboards constructed from wooden boxes and junkyard wheels, miniature wire cars with broom-long steering columns. They picked up new games, too—cards, tic-tac-toe—and learned the best way to spin a top. The pink-and-white, red-and-green tops in their hands spun on the tile like whirling dancers.
But because Jalazone boys also fought often, some days my brothers came home trying to conceal puffed-up eyes, torn clothes, or long scratches across their faces. I listened to details of their fights—the punching, the kicking, and the cursing—the way my father listened to radio broadcasts of boxing matches of the American heavyweight champion, Muhammad Ali, his biggest hero. I tapped my feet in cheers when my brothers told me they had won, especially in fights with the two Kanash boys.
The Jalazone teachers used harsh discipline to keep their classes under control. They kicked the students, called them names, slapped them in the face, dragged them by the ears, whipped them, and struck their hands with wooden sticks and rulers.
“Yabayee!”
my brothers exclaimed. “How painful!”
The world of Jalazone boys felt cruel to me, but I still wanted to know every detail of my brothers' experiences. I memorized the names of the unkind teachers, the names of
the lenient ones, the descriptions of boys who cried when hit and those whose faces “looked like monkeys eating sour grapes” as they fought to keep back their tears. The boys avenged their pain by ridiculing their teachers. Basel and Muhammad took great delight in describing the science teacher's nose; it was longer than the pointer he carried, they said. “He could smell trouble from the farthest corner in the room.”
I learned more about the cruelty of Jalazone life from the infectious diseases my brothers brought home. Bloody patches appeared on their scalps and made their hair disappear. They cried in pain, wanting so much to scratch their heads.
Father washed the spots with herbal solutions, but they made no difference. Mother, who had learned to give injections from a doctor in Jerusalem, took out the syringe and the needle she owned and boiled them for a long time to purify them. She broke open one of the tiny penicillin bottles she often bought when she shopped at a pharmacy, and tried giving my brothers a penicillin injection. But this also failed, and the patches continued to spread. My parents talked about the money needed for a doctor's visit. They could not afford one for a month.
Then Father had an idea—to wash the sores with Dead Sea water. He had heard that this small sea had earned its name because no plants, fish, or animals could live in it. Maybe germs couldn't live in it either. He took my brothers to bathe there. They brought back a bottle of sea water, and morning and evening, my father cleaned the sores and
daubed them with the salty solution. The tears in my brothers' eyes seemed more bitter than the water stinging their skin. But they stood still, hoping Father's guess would prove right. And it did. The patches dried up and disappeared. In no time, the hair returned. After that, my father brought home a barrel of Dead Sea water, thinking it would cure everything.
But water from the Dead Sea did not eliminate the tapeworms that filled my brothers' intestines and mine. We did not understand how dozens of foot-long white worms got into our bellies and made them ache. Finally, Father drove us all to a clinic in a tiny town named Al-Qubeibeh near Jerusalem.
We stood by a high window in the waiting area. Without a word, a somber woman slid the glass aside and handed each of us a large cup of castor oil. “Pinch your nose and drink it in one gulp—without taking a breath,” she instructed. If we could not keep the oil down, we were to drink again.
The thick, yellowish liquid looked and smelled nauseating. But the ache in our bellies was worse. So Basel and Muhammad and I took deep breaths, tilted the cups to our lips, and blinked that we were ready. “On the count of three,” Mother coached. When we heard the word
three
, we took big gulps. “Keep it down,” Mother begged. We each received a piece of licorice candy and a faint smile from the woman because we were successful.
I worried about my brothers catching diseases that we
would find no cure for, especially since Mother was always talking about the deadliness of cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases. And Basel talked about one of his classmates who had suddenly gotten ill and, within a week, died.
Jalazone Boys' School stories filled my mind. Now I could imagine all the details of my brothers' days. When the radio announced 10:00 a.m., I wondered if they had gotten into fights during recess and whether anyone had hit them. In the afternoon, I thought of them walking out of their school gate, passing by a soldier's jeep that they said sometimes waited at the edge of the Nablus road by their school.
When winter arrived, I pulled Mother's dress in worry each time lightning belted the ballooning clouds, spilling rain on the fields. The thunder sounded like bombs. When my brothers finally arrived home on stormy days, they were shivering, their teeth chattering like hail on glass, their clothes dripping puddles under them, their high plastic boots filled with water because we could not afford umbrellas.
On Fridays, when my brothers were home all day with me, the three of us would wait until the rain stopped and the sun broke through the clouds. Then we begged Mother to let us go outside. If the temperature was freezing, she did not let us leave the house unless we promised that we would stay nearby.
But one time, we snuck away. We had a secret goal—to see if the soldiers were still training on these frozen days. None were. But the deep trenches they had dug were filled
with water, and ice had formed lids on top of them. The entire place was ours.
We rubbed our hands and cheeks, shook our bodies to make ourselves warm. The world was washed clean by the winter rain, and it felt new under and above us. We could see our breath dance out of our chests as we made up songs about the soldiers, who were afraid of winter.
I was twirling in exhilarated laughter when I suddenly fell into a trench. Before I could make a sound, the sheet of ice began to close over me. My feet could not feel the bottom of the trench, and my hands could not hold on to anything to pull myself up. Horrified, my brothers lay on the ground and frantically broke the ice with their fists. Shouting my name, they kept thrashing until they finally pulled me out.
As we were walking home, my clothes froze on my body. I shook so hard I could no longer walk or cry. Muhammad took off his socks and put them on my feet; then he and Basel took turns carrying me on their backs.
At home, I could not stop shaking. “Where did you go?” Mother grilled us.
“She fell in a puddle,” my brothers said over and over.
I nodded in agreement.
Mother poured water into a bowl engraved with Qur'an prayers on the inside. She called it the bowl of trembling,
taset al-rajfeh.
If one drank from it, she believed, one got healed from heart-stopping fear.
She let the water sit in
taset al-rajfeh
for an hour to give the sacred words time to mix in thoroughly. Then, “Drink,” she said, handing me the
taset.
But I could not drink. I had
developed a fever and my throat had become sore. So she gave me an injection and kept me cool with a wet cloth she put on my forehead. She took my temperature repeatedly and cursed the world when my fever remained high.
Father helped by cupping my back because he believed it would purify my body. He dropped burning pieces of paper inside glass cups and turned them upside down against my skin. The fire instantly died, and only smoke remained. Somehow, the cups clung to my skin. He packed many cups on my back, and I had to keep still in order for them to stay in place. I hated those cups, but I let him do it. He let me sleep near him, covered me with his winter coat, and kept checking on me all night.
I recovered. But my brothers and I were not allowed to play outside again until winter turned into spring.
Trapped inside, I took my sister for rides around the room, told her made-up stories about a family of ants, and ran my fingertips over her open palm to tickle it as if my fingers were ant feet. I did not stop until, squeaking with laughter, she threw herself on the floor. I loved making Maha laugh. When it was time for her to eat and she made loud noises, banging her cup on the table, I joined her.
If she had no tailoring jobs, Mother knitted clothes for us, turned Father's old shirts and pants into new shirts and pants for my brothers, and sewed cloth bags for herb and dried fruit and vegetable storage. As she worked, Mother also listened to songs and programs on the zucchini-green battery-run radio my father bought after our old stove-size radio died and could not be fixed.
Rasa'el Shawq
(Letters of Longing) was the program Mother listened to most faithfully. It aired the voices of Palestinian refugees who could not return home after the war of 1948 or the Six-Day War. They revealed the shreds of their lives and hoped that relatives, or anyone who knew them, would hear the news and pass it on. I hoped to hear Hamameh's voice sending a greeting to Mother. I knew that would make her very happy.
On this program, people mentioned the names of their newborns, children who had finished high school, couples who had married, and relatives who had died recently. Sometimes they broke into tears as they asked questions and begged for replies and for
tasareeh,
visiting permits. Though I recognized none of the voices, I broke into tears along with them, especially when I saw Mother crying quietly. Radio letters were the only way the refugees outside could reach their relatives in our occupied cities. Many ended their messages by saying
Tammenoona ankum
, “Please send us word to ease our worries.”
Then Fairuz, the beloved Lebanese singer, wailed the show's theme song.
“Wa salami lakom,”
she began
,
Greetings, greetings:
People in the occupied land—
People who are planted
In your homes like trees—
My heart is with you,
I send you regards of peace.
Her voice was like a comforting hand, reaching from afar, easing the winter. She was singing about us.
 
Spring came with the songs of the new birds that arrived and the wild poppies that swayed in the wind. Mother opened the door, and I threw myself into the warmth, held the red flowers between my hands, and brushed my cheeks with their petals. Inside their cups the black spots were like tiny bits of tea someone had left from winter. I picked some for Maha.
Green buds on the tree branches were rolled up like bullets, and I ran my fingers over them. Daffodils, calla lilies, and tulips appeared like guests for a short time and left. But cyclamens were mine. They shot from under the rocks, unfurled their ears, and listened.
Spring also brought back the soldiers. Some seemed to be new to the hill. Occasionally, one or two of them wandered toward our home during the day and knocked at the door. The minute Mother heard the soldiers knock, she ran to the door to make sure it was securely locked. Father and Mother had agreed on a special knock so Mother could know for certain that it was him. If the soldiers came to the window, she pointed to the water room outside, just in case they were looking for water. If they continued to speak, she furrowed her brow, raised her shoulders, and gestured that she did not understand them even if she did. They soon left.

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