Interlude
rania misses her friend. she misses her so much it hurts.
I miss my family, I miss my family, I miss my family.
They are gone.
when rania walked past nuhad’s home, it had a flag in the window. it’s called israel. she couldn’t stay long, her mother rushed her past, because there were soldiers there, soldiers that she did not know.
There is a man here, but I do not know him. His fingers slide against the door’s edges, seeking the catch that will allow him into the store. My hinges tighten—it is the first time I have had to do this—but he has a gun that he rams into the glass and the shards fly. It hurts.
His dusty green clothing melts into the darkness of the store as he slides up the staircase, cigarette ash falling over each step in a way Victoria never would have allowed.
He breaks in again—a violation—and enters.
He slings his gun over Basel’s chair as he looks around, nodding, and walks to the radio to turn on the news.
He forages through the kitchen for food and dumps the clothing out of the closets, setting shirts and pants aside as if they were his. They are not yours—I am not yours.
I want to scream.
that night, rania heard them. the screams. she heard everything.
but she wasn’t in the old town anymore, not after their adopted jewish family locked them out of their home.
they meant to go back. her father wanted to go back the very next day with a locksmith, or a blacksmith, or a battering ram if he needed to.
but the next morning the haganah bombed the najjadah building. and that evening—
they never made it back. that night, rania heard the screams, but she didn’t see the way people ran through the streets as though their lives depended on it, or the tramplings, or the corpses. no, that night they stayed with an uncle and aunt on the outskirts of haifa.
and when rania’s family did go back, after the city fell, she stood off to the side, in shock, as her father shouted fearlessly at the soldiers.
he demanded that they force their adopted family out of the house, but they laughed.
the soldiers laughed in his face. and rania stood there, weak and trembling, scared that it would be a bullet instead of a laugh into his chest for defying them.
and later, she was ashamed of the fear she felt.
My family feared for their lives and so they left in the middle of the night, when the wood was warm and the walls were dark, and scrambled out of the front door, even taking care to lock the door behind them.
The screams reverberated through my stones and shattered the walls.
I thought they were coming back. They left, and the streets—filled with terror—swallowed them into the masses.
This violation pains me; it grows sharp claws that scrape against the plaster and tears a hole in the bottom of the floor, allowing water from the sea to slowly trail in with each passing day that my family isn’t here.
But they will come back. The ghosts of their faces linger in the mirrors, putting hands to glass, and the memory of their scent floats through the hall.
The man senses it too. I know he can. We both know: they will return.
I test the strength of the hinges and the porousness of the walls and I lie in wait.
I have faith, still, but the soldier is still here—now he has brought a wife and she, too, takes from the closets and sits on the furniture and settles, the blood on both of their hands staining everything they touch.
The water rises slowly and something forms—hard and cold—deep within its still reflection.
It—hurts. I miss my family.
and now rania misses her old life. she misses nuhad and nuhad’s home and the beach.
she misses her own home that still exists but has become an impossibility, somehow.
she is so far from the sea now … it hurts.
and her best friend feels far—nuhad lives in nazareth, which isn’t much distance at all, but she doesn’t see her every day anymore.
there is no running through the beach with sandals in hand.
there are no more dates with fresh fish by the water.
and also … nuhad isn’t the same. tariq died, and nuhad isn’t the same.
nothing is the same.
rania misses her friend.