Chapter 1. Excised Limbs #5
Haifa had taken a packet of salt from her mother’s half-eaten lunch and stirred it into her glass.
There were only so many requests she could fulfill.
She handed it to her mother, thinking she would dip her fingers in it, maybe.
How was she to know the desire behind dementia?
But Nuhad took the glass of saltwater and drank it, sputtering and coughing when Haifa grabbed the glass back.
What are you doing?!
Saltwater. To cleanse.
Saltwater. Haifa doesn’t know why she had asked for saltwater or what sins she needed to atone for that would require such a cleansing.
Even being an emotionally unavailable mother was no great fault that only saltwater could heal; Haifa would have been happy with a simple acknowledgment. She allowed Nuhad to berate her for it.
Why can’t you give me this one thing?
One thing, added up over a lifetime, became a mountain of things that Haifa was always just short of, that she could never climb because it was always meant to be too high.
Nuhad had created this list of ideals for Haifa to aspire to—be pretty, be smart, be nice, have children, have a good marriage (no, not like that)—to make her better and to build her up, but in reality, it just made Haifa slow down and second-guess herself and wish she were better, wish she could climb the mountain of expectations and there, finally, at the top of that impossible mountain, Jabal Mar Elias, she would find her mother’s love and approval.
In one swift motion, Haifa unbuckles herself and exits the car, the door swinging behind her. She stands at the edge of the dirt field. The wheat stalks here are long and tall, murmuring golden in the still air, and she feels safe within their cover.
She screams.
It’s a high-pitched explosion that comes from deep within her being and vibrates all the way through her throat, her cheeks, and her head—she screams until she loses breath, panting, and keels over, hands on her thighs.
Haifa wonders when she will have done this ritual for the last time.
It began when she was a teenager one night, when the emotions overwhelmed her so much that she stopped the car and howled into the empty silence of an abandoned mall parking lot. There was no response.
Marina is Haifa’s best friend—they have a far better relationship than Haifa and Nuhad did.
But Marina wants to go into the past that Haifa was barred from, and Haifa’s inability to give her that has formed a tense standstill, blistering their relationship with a million small burns.
Each time Haifa tries to hold on, to go back to how it was when Marina was younger, she pulls back even farther.
The temporary bandages are fragile; they hold only until Marina becomes restless again.
She’s searching. She’s always been searching.
And how could she give her daughter what she needs when she herself was cut off from everything by her own mother and given impossibly high expectations in their place?
Haifa was the dream, her name holding all of the unfulfilled desires that she’d never been able to recapture as a single person.
How could she possibly be the living manifestation of Nuhad’s past: her city, her friends, her family?
Haifa became the dream of return, but Haifa was never able to return.
She wasn’t the real city with the real memories—she was hardly even a good daughter.
Half of the words out of Nuhad’s mouth were meant to reprimand her.
Haifa was never enough, but how could she be?
Dreams were only real in memory and sleep; in life, they became a wisp of illusion that you were left chasing.
Haifa should have been the one to drink saltwater and cleanse herself of this burden—this impossible dream.
She inhales and screams again, finally feeling the pressure in her head subside.
In the ensuing silence, Haifa realizes her shoulders are up by her ears and forces herself to relax.
She refuses to be like her mother. As much as it scares her to let Marina go—to see the city that she could never live up to—the hurt from being cut off from everything by Nuhad was greater, and she can’t pass that down to Marina.
She has to be better. And maybe, if Marina goes to Haifa, she’ll discover who they all were meant to be.
Haifa’s made her peace with leaving the past buried and fulfilling the dream in name only. Marina is the sleeper now.
Haifa almost turns back to the car, but a figure stops her.
She’s an old woman hunched in the middle of the golden stalks—her being is so ethereally light that Haifa would have thought she was a piece of wheat if it were not for her stillness in the midst of the gentle breeze. The old woman looks up.
It’s Nuhad.
Haifa’s heart pounds as she takes a half step toward this ghost. Her eyes are hauntingly deep wells that stare somewhere beyond Haifa.
“Don’t go,” the ghost whispers. She raises her hands and they’re scarlet, as if she’s just dipped them in fresh pomegranate juice. The ghost smears the blood against her chest, streaking two red lines, and holds up crimson palms to Haifa. “Already gone.”