Chapter 5. Living Stones
Living Stones
Marina stands in the cool morning shade of the overhang, watching her grandmother’s home across the street.
Hassan’s story of the little girl rings in her ears.
Marina searches for her face, blue from shadows in the shapes of fingers round her neck as she peeks out from behind the curtains, but her imagination clatters and falls flat against the reality of how simple it looks.
It’s just a house. Rania and Hassan were both wrong.
White stone, a storefront beneath, a FOR SALE sign in the window.
There are two abandoned and empty flowerpots sitting on the balcony above.
Something is missing in this simple picture.
It strikes Marina as a deep loss; it’s not a matter of a missing wind chime or welcome mat.
It gnaws at the edges of her stomach inside and begs her to reverse time.
She almost expects to blink and see her grandmother sitting on the steps, but she doesn’t.
Marina is the sole Sayadi standing here.
The loneliness of it hangs on her shoulders, and in this loneliness is another, different kind of sadness.
Marina has hung hope on her grandmother’s house as a key to the past and a way to discover who she is, and yet, standing here, all she feels is loss—of herself.
Of her grandmother. Sadness emanates from the emptiness of the stairs.
A sudden lump forms in her throat. Marina swallows around it roughly.
Beside her, Rania sits on a bench and stares unflinchingly ahead.
A mosaic of people passes before them, and in the blur reflected in Rania’s sunglasses Marina can see a woman in a suit, a teenage boy fixing a button on his shirt, a gray cat streaking across the street.
These ones drift by, but there are some sitting and staring, like them, their murmurs low.
The house is open. All will wait to see what happens within, and this waiting weighs the air. It’s heavy to breathe.
“Now,” Rania finally says, nodding to a couple walking toward the house. The man is pointing at the sign, his other hand wrapped in his wife’s. “You see how they’re dressed? How they carry themselves? Americans. The only ones who ever even consider buying this house. Go in right after them.”
Marina nods, attempting to focus. “Okay.”
A bystander yells out to the couple in Hebrew, but they do not stop. Marina can’t understand what he says, but she can feel it to be a warning.
“Be quick, be quiet, be discreet,” Rania continues. “Do not delay, as much as it calls to you.” Her eyes are hard. “If you need any help, yell. And then run.” She fixes her gaze on Marina. “Fhimti?”
“I understand,” Marina says, swallowing again. Her foot falls off the curb without her permission and she crosses the street breathlessly, but her knees, weak with nerves, stall her at the last second. She turns back to look at Rania as she stands at the edge of the street.
Deeri balik, Rania mouths. Be careful.
Emboldened by the slight nod she gives her, Marina turns to face her unassuming ancestral home.
A breeze blows past, scattering old leaves that sweep and fall in front of her, their hard edges scraping the pavement.
Water drips from their veins and rot carves jagged holes in their flesh.
Marina takes a deep, shaking breath and steps over the pile, refusing to look at it as she walks into the storefront entrance.
She watches until the couple has entered the house’s door at the top of the steps, then climbs them herself.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
Her knees still shake as she counts the steps, wanting to commit everything to memory. It may be her only chance to see her grandmother’s house.
Walls: concrete. Worn away at the edges, and in one corner it’s eroded so fully that the metal piping underneath juts out. Marina reaches out to touch the walls—
I feel her,
—and the house shudders beneath her touch.
It’s just an old house resettling, Marina reassures herself, but as she repeats this in her mind, her stomach drops.
Haunted houses aren’t real.
She opens the door to the realtor ushering the couple down one hallway.
He catches her eye and waves her in, telling her, “I’ll be with you in a moment!
Feel free to look around.” He says it in English, and they all disappear down the narrow hallway.
It’s been painted a light pink. It looks like the inside of a throat.
Marina slides past the entrance and finds herself in the kitchen. A deep anger begins forming, low and slow, in her chest. She wipes her fingers against the kitchen countertop, which is marble and new, as is the round kitchen table made of pressed, pulpy wood.
The window above the kitchen sink suddenly opens and through it blows a fresh gust of air.
It is overwhelming and lacking all at once, as if Marina were standing atop a mountain, swallowing the wind and still feeling hungry for oxygen.
It is a light-headed exhilaration for only a few seconds before she recalls Rania’s words. This house is sick.
Legs trembling, she turns to find the living area. There are two sofas and a little bookshelf beside the window. Marina walks over to the window, which faces the sea. Of course it faces the sea. A droplet of water, seemingly from nowhere, is gathered on the sill.
Beside the window is a painting. Marina is drawn to it as if it were the only light left in the world.
In it, the water glitters softly beneath a setting sun.
A small fishing boat bobs along the waves beneath its glow.
She can feel that it comes from her grandmother—a memento passed on through time.
It reminds her of the painting Nuhad kept by her bedside in hospice.
But where the golden-haired woman mournfully looked out to sea, this painting holds entirely the opposite feeling.
It is a peaceful kind of joy—perhaps one that the woman on the shore longed for.
They are two sides to the same painting; the canvases call to one another as if from opposing banks of the same timeline, the same ocean.
Marina leans closer. The layers are cracked and mottled now, and the white of the canvas is slightly yellowed.
The age speaks for itself. The painting is older than the occupation.
Older than this entity. It’s a time capsule from an era when Nuhad still lived here as a girl.
Inexplicably, Marina feels she knows this.
She reaches for the painting, mesmerized.
Below the canvas the colors begin to ripple and move, taking form and shape. The walls begin to disappear around her and open into a dream. Like a whisper, or a butterfly’s wing, a soft tendril of a memory caresses Marina as she makes contact:
The setting sun dappled every inch of the coast in a rich, orange hue.
Sparkles of light glittered from the sea’s reflection and cast diamonds across leaves and stones.
A cool breeze blew through. Nuhad shifted silver and bronze coins from one palm to another, seeing how fast she could go without dropping any.
“Makes me want an orange,” Rania said, looking out at the horizon.
Marina jerks her hand back, gasping. She clutches at her heart, which is pounding loudly against her chest. She saw the sunshine against the water as if she were there, heard young Rania’s voice as if she stood in front of her.
A soothing shhhh sounds from behind her, as if window blinds have been closed gently. The tile beneath her foot jerks up suddenly, and Marina trips, falling into the memory of the painting:
Nuhad followed her friend’s gaze and laughed, suddenly and loudly, for it was the last thing she expected her to say. “The sun reminds you of oranges?!”
Rania grinned sheepishly and shrugged her shoulders. “Look at it. Does it not look like a giant glowing orange in the sky? There’s no earthly orange that could compare to the fruit of the sky! Zaki, wallah!”
Both girls snickered. Nuhad lightly shoved Rania in the shoulder for her absurdity and she fell back, her face so comical that Nuhad’s little laughs turned into huge, belly-splitting guffaws, and in turn so did Rania’s.
The two girls clutched at their stomachs, their abs starting to ache from joy.
Nuhad grabbed Rania by the hand and steadied herself.
A couple passed by, hand in hand, and suppressed barely kept smiles at the pair of girls.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “Ya rab. You’re ridiculous.”
“The two clowns, please!” the man at the stall cried. His eyes twinkled at them as they looked up. “The two jesters, please! Come, yallah. What can I get you girls?”
His stall was their favorite—they’d determined this after months of taste-testing fish dishes from all over Haifa.
It stood right up against the sea, the scent and taste of salt infusing into the fresh, grilled fish.
The fishermen who frequented the Sayadi store ate at this one, too, which is how Nuhad knew it was objectively the best one.
There was a dessert shop just next door, and when they had saved up enough change between them, Nuhad and Rania would split a piece of knafeh or mtabbaq.
Ramadan was the best time to buy from the dessert shop, because at all hours, the pans would be warm and sticky with sugary atir from churning out orders for huge meals each evening.
Not only that, but it was the only time that Nuhad could eat her favorite dessert of qatayif, small soft breads stuffed with sweet cheese and nuts.
“Two catches of the day!” Nuhad played the part of alleged jester and put on an affected air, sticking one foot out and bowing. She waved her hand with a flourish.
The man laughed and shook his tongs at them. “Two catches coming right up!”