Chapter 10. Salt
Salt
The salt was acrid bile coming back up her throat as Nuhad choked on the waves. The water pushed against her on all sides, pinching everything to her tightened middle. She was the focal point of the hurricane, but rather than an eye of calm, she was the source of the chaos. It was all wrong.
Nuhad looked down to her hands and feet and found weights attached to them; they were metallic and heavy and pulled her down even farther into the ocean’s maw.
Struggling to free herself, to breathe air, she instead could only gasp water into her lungs.
Her nose was just barely higher than the waves and she kicked furiously to stay above. She was so heavy.
There were screams—horrible screams, like the ones from that night. Nuhad twirled around in the water, splashing up against the angry, tossing waves, and finally, through the froth, she saw them.
Her family was lined up in a row on the shore: Victoria, Basel, Tariq.
Her older sister, Siham, was missing—she hadn’t been in Haifa.
They were in their pajamas and their bare skin shivered in the air.
There was something wrong, she could see it.
Etched into the gray of their faces was a knowing fear.
Her mother opened her mouth to scream, but Nuhad couldn’t hear it.
“Mama?! Mama!” Nuhad paddled furiously, attempting to get to shore, but the weights were so heavy. And she was so weak.
Saltwater blurred her vision for a moment, but she blinked against the foam.
She found the source of their fear. There was a soldier on the shore in front of them.
The gun attached to his hand waved wildly as he yelled at them.
Tariq cried—she could see his tears from here—and a wet spot formed on the front of his pants.
“Tariq! No, no—STOP!” Nuhad screamed, but none of them turned toward her. She splashed furiously, attempting to release herself from the water’s grip and get to the shore.
Her screams sliced the air in two as she watched. The soldier fired.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Each shot fired knocked one of her family members on the ground. They fell into the sand on their backs, and Nuhad could see, just barely, the blood pooling out around their bodies. They were motionless.
The soldier turned to face Nuhad directly and fired his gun at her.
She heard the sound, but her voice was torn from her throat and she silently screamed as her mother did moments before.
There was no pain, but Nuhad suddenly felt tired.
She felt so, so weary, and the weights were so, so heavy, and she had to stop paddling and allow the ocean to take her.
The waves smothered her gently as they pushed her down into the depths of the sea.
She opened her eyes, stinging, and watched as each of her family members’ bodies was thrown into the ocean.
They floated there for a moment before sinking to the bottom.
Nuhad followed them, allowing the weights to take her down, and when she arrived, she could see the whole city.
There were neighbors, their bodies piled on top of one another.
There were the fishermen with nets still in hand.
And there, completing the entire city, was her family with their store and the home that was protected by the gods.
If Nuhad lowered her eyelids, even just halfway, she could imagine that everything was normal.
Haifa was still Haifa. It was just underwater.
The people were all still here, drinking tea and smoking and watching the sunset together.
Nuhad’s body became as heavy as the weights, and as her feet trailed against the sand, she let the water enter her lungs.
Salt coated the lining of her throat, and the cold spring water filled her body slowly, a stream of bitterness flooding through her in all parts and steadily, quietly, dangerously into her lungs, until—
Nuhad awoke with a start, gasping and clawing at her neck. She coughed, the air coming in too quickly, and pulled herself into the fetal position on the bed. Her hair fell in her face as she attempted to regulate her lungs. Tariq was gone. Tariq was buried. Tariq was dead and it was her fault.
Uncertainty colored the walls and room for a brief moment before her memory painted them back: she was in her sister’s house in Nazareth.
Even after a week, she still wasn’t used to waking up here.
Sunlight streamed in dust-filtered air and brightened the red-brown walls.
Nuhad flipped onto her back and stared at the ceiling, silently watching a series of moments play across the white.
Nuhad? What happened?
The words had hardly escaped her mother’s lips before she took in the sight: Nuhad, covered in dried blood, seawater still dripping from her clothes, a haunting in her eyes.
On seeing her mother, Nuhad had tried throwing herself into her embrace, but Basel fainted almost immediately and Victoria had to push her away.
She slowly lowered his fainted body to the concrete instead, her arms shaking with frantic restraint.
She’d been given a needle and sutures by an overwhelmed paramedic and had to attempt to close Basel’s wound herself—the more they waited, the more blood he would lose.
Stay still.
Victoria poured a tiny bit of alcohol over the wound, and Nuhad saw her father’s eyes roll in the back of his head.
She held her breath, and it was as if all thoughts of Tariq’s death were wrapped up in that moment: if her mother could successfully stitch her father, it would fix everything.
He had already lost so much blood from his neck.
Her father would die if Victoria didn’t do it right then.
So, Nuhad concentrated on Victoria’s hands and how they trembled only a little.
When she finally sat back, sweat on her brow, Nuhad breathed.
And in the ensuing relief of releasing held breath, she wailed.
Tariq. Tariq.
Whimpers punctuated her retelling after her sobs subsided. Nuhad led her mother—leaving Basel, still unconscious, in the vicinity of a handful of stressed doctors—to Tariq’s body.
Where is he?
Where is he?!
Tariq’s body had been moved. Supposedly, it was picked up to be buried. Victoria knelt by the dark spot on the ground as Nuhad asked others nearby if they had seen who moved his body. No one had, and they pointed them in the direction of graves that were being dug.
After a moment of silent grief, Victoria stood and walked silently back to Basel. A man nearby helped them shift Basel’s body into the front of their earlier abandoned car, where his head lolled against the seat.
Please, do you have room in your car?
An old woman appeared at the window, her skin a leathered tan from years in the Mediterranean sun and her hijab tight against her cheeks.
Her face shone like the rising sun. Victoria said no, hajje, we need to find a hospital, but when the woman begged them to take her grandson—a young boy who didn’t even reach the window—Victoria acquiesced.
The old woman grabbed her face and kissed her three times on her cheeks.
Nuhad moved so that her thigh was pressing up against the warming inside of the car as both the old woman and grandson squeezed in beside her, endlessly repeating their thanks.
The car inched forward slowly and newly made refugees flanked them on all sides, still in pajamas, still covered in the dust of rubble or blood, still attempting to figure out what to do next.
There were women with their belongings in baskets on their head and elderly men whose canes tapped against the stones as they wandered, looking for a place to sit down for a moment.
Sweat dripped down all of their faces and in each of them, Nuhad could feel the same grief that she had suppressed.
None of them had made it to the boats in time, and now the Haganah had won.
Look,
Victoria said, but she needn’t have said anything. Nuhad froze as the car crawled past their home. It still stood strong and immovable, but now, the blue and white Zionist flag hung from within the window. Already. Outside, a Jewish soldier walked with his gun. It wasn’t enough to take the city.
Victoria said nothing but rather pressed on the gas and the car moved forward.
The hospitals in Haifa were overwhelmed; they needed to drive the forty minutes or so to Nazareth.
The Haganah hadn’t attacked there. Hospitals were still functioning, and they had a home to go to.
Siham had one extra room, and Nuhad could sleep in the salon while they waited for Basel to heal.
As they drove away, Nuhad twisted in her seat to stare at her home until it became a dot in the distance, covered by the mountain and busy streets.
When she could no longer see it, she turned around and stared straight.
She could feel the boy’s eyes on her but wouldn’t dare meet them.
Mama, your souvenirs!
Nuhad said this abruptly, the words coming out before she registered the thought, but her mother remained silent.
The small trinkets from Damascus and Jerusalem and Cairo had popped into her head, and the idea that the soldier would take them was entirely violating—her mother had worked over a lifetime to collect them all.
But the Sayadis had brought nothing with them.
They didn’t even have the luxury of debating what small, unimportant things to leave behind in the chaos of the night.
No one did. Mama, your everything. Mama, your Tariq. Mama, our world.