Chapter 3. Home
Home
Despite having only ever known a life of occupation, Nuhad lived as light and airy as any other teenage girl.
At sixteen years old, she held fast to the rituals that bound her to this existence.
Her hair was often in two long, obsidian braids that she wove together each morning, murmuring responses to imaginary conversations in the mirror before running outside, whipping those braids around her back as she gossiped about the boys in her neighborhood with her best friend.
She stole her mother’s lipstick, carefully applying it before smearing it off in half embarrassment as soon as she stepped out, the presence of both British soldiers and neighborhood aunties making her nervous to carry on with red lips.
Her long legs would pump forcefully against the sand as she ran along the beach toward the waves, wishing for nothing else than to float away on the sea foam. How else was a girl to live?
Nuhad lived in a small stone dwelling that overlooked the coast of the Mediterranean and sat above her family’s store.
It was one of several stores connected all in a row on the street and above which sat other flats.
A warm, welcoming place that always had a candlelight glow in the window, her home served as a gathering place.
Family, friends, and customers often poured in and out at all hours of the day, bringing snippets of conversation and laughter that wove through both levels of her home.
Even Rania, Nuhad’s best friend, visited so often that she’d carved her own little nook in Nuhad’s bedroom, where an extra shirt, her mother’s mascara, and an extra few of her hair clips sat in Nuhad’s dresser.
Though Nuhad tried her best to be a teenage girl, the wooden staircase would creak each time she traversed downstairs, revealing her plans.
Nets were wound about the floor of the store, and she often found her feet caught in them just as she happened to be in a rush.
But Nuhad was beloved, and her charming smile helped her slip out of conversations with customers and slip into the city’s alleyways, cutting through to the beach, or Rania’s house, or wherever it is that teenage girls go to daydream.
It was easy to steal away in the mornings—the entire city came to the Sayadi family store for fishing supplies.
Regulars would arrive in the early hours of dawn to outrace the heat, their pockets jingling with coins for line and bait.
The Sayadis lived as the birds did: with the dawn.
But as the sun reached its highest point in the sky, Nuhad’s mother and father would lock the door and creak upstairs to sleep away the heat.
As twilight fell in shades of persimmon and violet, amber and rose, the fishermen’s raucous voices announced their return, their fish having been caught and cleaned, and stories alighted off of their tongues about the biggest catches.
Every Christmas, Easter, and Eid, their customers would bring the Sayadi family fresh fish.
Nuhad’s father, Basel, would take them to be grilled, and her whole family would sit by the sea: eating, laughing, and licking their fingertips one by one.
That afternoon, during the midday siesta, Nuhad slipped away again. Her feet were impossibly light against the stone steps in the back of the house. The alleyway was tall and narrow, the buildings so close together that the sun hardly ever touched the small gap between.
The pathway was a map engraved in stone in her mind; after sixteen years, Nuhad could walk toward the beach blindfolded. It was the only time she understood what her father meant when he spoke of their history.
“This home,” Basel would start, “is a symbol of our heritage. Not just the home, but the entire city. The sea.” Nuhad would always share a secret smile with her mother, knowing the passage of his stories and how they always came after a couple of glasses of araq. Even now, she smiled.
“Dar Sayadi has always had its roots in the city of Haifa,” Basel would continue, not needing to wait for any encouragement. “Some branched into southern Lebanon. Some went to Akka. But there has always been one anchor to our lineage: fishing.”
When she was younger, it didn’t take Nuhad long to piece it together. “Is that how we got our last name?”
“No one knows.” Basel’s eyes were always bright as he spoke of their family history.
“Did we become fishermen because of our last name, or did we get the name Sayadi because we all already were fishermen? Maybe the two have always been intertwined—you cannot have one without the other. It reminds me of a time from my childhood, fishing with my baba.”
There Basel would remain, his tales of tricking fish and how the different seasons brought them different spoils going long into the rest of the night. Nuhad—though she’d only fished a few times—knew what to do by heart.
The sea opened up wide before her, its deep blue waters crystal clear with the sun high in the sky. Nuhad spotted Rania and waved. She crossed the empty street easily—most were having their midday naps.
“Hi, Rania, keefik?” She kissed her friend on the cheek and plopped beside her on the bench. An orange tree shaded them from the summer’s harsh rays.
Rania smiled at her. In the shade, her hair was dark auburn, matching her playful eyes. As soon as she stepped into the sun, however, her curls would flash red and freckles would appear across her nose.
“Relaxing.” Rania leaned back on spread hands and shook her face up toward the orange leaves. “Soaking up the sun, ya’ani.”
“Ah, a’anjad?” Nuhad laughed and leaned back with her. “The boardwalk of Haifa is the hottest new spa!”
“Until everyone wakes up and chaos ensues again.”
“Chaos? Never,” Nuhad said, letting the sarcasm drip from her voice. Rania swatted her arm.
“Relax! By the order of the hottest new spa, I command you to relax,” Rania said. “Or else I’ll grab the soldiers for you.”
Nuhad looked where Rania’s eyes were drawn, squinting to assess.
A pair of soldiers walked atop the seawall.
The younger man had a freshly shaved face and brown, wet-looking hair that was combed back.
He looked up, catching her eye for a brief second before she looked away quickly, turning her attention to Rania. “Yallah. Take me to jail.”
“I’d go to jail if it meant one of them was my captor,” Rania said, lowering her voice and waggling her eyebrows. Her cheeks flushed slightly.
“A’aib, Rania!” Nuhad gasped in a mocking tone. She reached for a word in the recesses of her memory—one that her father always used. “They’re our occupiers.”
“But mashallah, Nuhad, one of them is blond!” Rania said, stretching out the word. She scooted closer to where her thigh touched Nuhad’s. “The tall one looks like one that always walks by my house.”
“Blond?” Nuhad wrinkled her nose. Grabbing at the edge of her braid, she caught a scent of her own perfume. It was that of the sea, the salt carried on the winds. “Blond?!”
Rania stuck her tongue out and Nuhad laughed, making a face back at her. The braid spun in her fingers.
The sound of chairs being dragged made Nuhad turn.
A waiter stood on the patio of a café, bringing two tables together.
She stood and stretched, watching as others trickled onto the streets and life slowly returned with the cooling afternoon.
Siesta was over. A breeze of wind picked up and carried the scent of Turkish coffee on its sails.
As more people walked out of their homes, yawning and chatting, a vendor caught Nuhad’s eye. She nudged Rania. “Look, art!”
They both grinned and Nuhad grabbed her friend by the wrist and they half skipped, half jogged toward it. A flowy white sheet covered the stall from the sun, and as they walked underneath it, paintings of all shades reflected against the white in a rainbow glow.
“Ahlan wa sahlan,” the vendor welcomed them. He was a short, stocky man with a full beard and a bald head that shone with sweat. He was stacking the rest of the paintings around the stall but spread his hands wide. “Please, please. Take a look around. What do you like?”
“How sweet!” Rania squealed. She pointed to a small postcard painting of a gray cat on a doorstep licking one paw.
“Ah, for a lovely girl such as yourself, this cat is perfect. You have cats that come around your home?” he asked. Rania nodded. “Of course you do! How could they stay away from such a beauty? For you, I’ll give you a good price.”
His voice faded in Nuhad’s ears.
“Yaiy,” she murmured under her breath. Her attention was drawn to a painting of the ocean.
It was the blue-green sea against the orange-red setting sun, where a small silhouette of a fishing boat stood against the light.
A young fisherman sat on his boat; the thin line of his pole cast far out into the water.
“Wow,” Rania chimed in, coming to stand at her elbow. Her breath tickled her skin. “It’s so beautiful.”
“It’s so…” Nuhad’s voice trailed off, but her mind finished: Haifa.
Nuhad dropped the coins into the vendor’s palm and tucked the painting under her arm. Her fingers traced the edges of the canvas as she and Rania walked away.
“Let’s go hang it up,” Nuhad said. “I want to put it in the living room, where everyone can see it—they’ll be amazed. My very own art piece.”
“Can we go back through the beach again?”
“Do you even have to ask?”
The two girls held hands as they raced toward the sea.
It was a much longer way around, but neither cared as they unbuckled their sandals and felt the sand between their toes.
The wind sprinkled frothy bits of water in their faces and Nuhad tasted brine against her lips.
She gasped, not for want of air, but for the overabundance that filled her lungs and heart.