Chapter 10. Salt #4
Nuhad turned to the opposite counter. She felt off, like everything in the room had been shifted a half inch to the left and she was standing in her usual spot, wondering why she felt strange even though everything appeared the same.
The cups were stacked in a long tower in the corner and she stood on tiptoe to grab two from the top.
She filled them each with water, the sound trickling slowly and raising pitch as it reached the top.
A wave of sudden dizziness threw her off-balance and her vision went momentarily black.
Nuhad gripped the counter with white knuckles and blinked, hard, staring at the floor.
She waited until her feet were no longer shaking.
But there was a double vision. In one eye, she saw herself pick up the salt shaker and begin to salt the cups; in the other eye, she waited to steady herself, but her sight kept trembling no matter how much she breathed.
In her evil eye, the small crystals fell into the water.
Some sank to the bottom. Others dissolved instantly.
The color clouded momentarily and then cleared.
“Here.” Nuhad watched herself set the cups in front of the patrons and walk away. The aroma of pistachio nuts and atir heating up on the stove slowly filled the restaurant with sweet, earthy scents. She saw herself sit back down on her stool.
“Nuhad? Can you watch this for me, please?” Basel wiped his hands on his apron and set the spoon in her direction. As Nuhad stood, her vision finally cleared and her shakiness ceased.
The men sputtered and coughed. She turned on instinct.
“What is this?” The older one’s eyes blazed with fury and indignation. Water sloshed against the sides of his cup as he held it up, his hand shaking. “Are you trying to make me sick?!”
“Ugh!” the younger one coughed. “Is this … salty water?”
Nuhad took one, two steps toward them, but her father was already ahead of her. “Go. Take care of the atir.”
She lingered for a moment, watching her father walk to their small side table.
He would offer their sweets for free, she knew.
The younger one muttered something in Hebrew under his breath, but it sounded like Arabic.
Did they steal the curse words, too? Nuhad turned away and stirred the sugar water, careful not to let it caramelize and burn.
She squeezed a tiny bit of lemon juice into the mixture.
The men left, their shouts following them through the door. It slammed behind them, and though their voices were muffled, she could still hear them cursing their shop for a few moments before they finally petered out.
“I don’t know what happened.” Basel spoke from behind her, his voice low. “How would we get salt in the water here? We’re so far from the sea—the wells should be fresh.”
Nuhad shrugged, stirring the sweet mixture with a wooden spoon. She felt a surge of power, a sense of control for the first time since they’d had to move to Nazareth. She smiled to herself.
There are torn, yellowed sheets from another journal attached beneath the confession—Haifa can tell it comes from an old diary entry because she sees the date written in Sara’s hand.
15 December, 1948
Haifa breathes in sharply. These pages are from after the war. After the genocide.
I did something today for the first time.
I don’t know why I did it. I don’t even think I realized that I had done it until the cups were before them on the table.
I walked back to the kitchen with a strange, jumpy feeling in my stomach.
Baba was upset and I felt bad. He’s been worrying about the settlement so much.
Was it bad to do? I could have made them sick, and that could have made them angry enough to call the army. Or come back with guns.
The thin sheet of paper trembles in Haifa’s shaky hands as she follows the handwriting in the weak circle of light.
27 December, 1948
I can’t stop thinking about salt. Salt has become my revenge.
If the sea will not do it, I will. I feel such a sense of power when I pour it in their drinks.
I can always tell it’s them—they are rude and unyielding and speak in Hebrew.
They expect us to understand. Why? Why should we understand them?
The most frustrating part is how many words they’ve taken from our language to fill in the gaps of theirs.
Sometimes I hear one of ours, accented slightly to fit their tongue, and it makes me laugh.
A fabricated society speaking a fabricated language.
I keep salting the water. I cannot stop.
Haifa looks up, her gaze searching for something in the darkness through the open window. Now, it’s as if she wants her mother’s ghost to return, to appear on the back of the seat in front of her. Haifa needs answers. Her heart beats heavily, but she cannot hear it over the din of the plane engine.
7 January, 1949
The settlement is growing. There are more and more people moving in, and my stomach churns every time I see a new house.
I hate them all. It’s different from the way they did it in Haifa, where they stole everything as it was and moved in happily.
Here, they’ve built everything from the ground up.
That’s what Siham said. They even built their own water well.
The construction equipment and jackhammers went on for days to dig that well from the ground.
I know what I am going to do. I’m scared, but something has to be done.
If salt in a cup worked well enough, I can imagine what a well would do. If the sea won’t do it, I will.
Haifa’s entire body trembles as she flips back one page.
Salt has become my revenge.
The dots connect in her mind before she’s decided to accept their reality.
Her heart flutters on wings made of cobwebs from the past. This is why her mother needed saltwater.
It wasn’t just to cleanse herself from this deed—she wanted to relive what she had done. She wanted to taste her own revenge.
Darkness was a cloak that fell on Nuhad’s shoulders like velvet.
She stepped lightly on the dirt and stones, using the clouded light of the moon to illuminate leaves and twigs that would announce her presence.
The well was on the edge of the settlement, so Nuhad didn’t have to go in very far.
It was surrounded by new buildings, and slits from closed curtains revealed darkness inside too.
The height of the windows was to Nuhad’s advantage—their bottom ledges were just above her head.
She could slink against the wood panels of a house and not be seen from the window.
She shifted her weight as she examined her path. There was nowhere to hide once she was at the well; it was an open area. If she was shot at, she would have to run at least a few paces in any direction in order to use another building as cover.
Though the weather held a January bite to its wind, sweat still leached from her hands onto the container of salt.
She’d brought a large, industrial-sized case from the back storage of their restaurant.
She felt guilty about stealing from the family business, but this would hopefully make up for it.
Nuhad took a deep breath in, letting the night air fill her lungs.
She closed her eyes for a moment. There was nothing to be scared of.
If the gods could protect her home from sea storms, they could protect her now.
Tariq pressed against the back of her eyelids for a fleeting moment before she opened her eyes again.
“Yallah,” she whispered to herself.
The loudest sound was the beat of her heart and the rush of her breath as she stole her way across the open, unprotected space.
Nuhad’s eyes skirted from window to window, searching for any sign, any sliver of light, that would reveal that she had been spotted.
It was 3 AM when she had snuck out of her home.
The winter pinched at her legs and face and her stomach roiled with nerves; everything felt like a sign to go home.
She nearly stumbled over the wall of the well with the momentum she’d gained from her low, crouching run. Nuhad slid down the side of it, her face still open to a few houses. Her heart beat a rhythm: Go. Home. Go. Home. Go-home. Go-home.
She turned and snuck a peek into the well, her eyes just barely above the ledge. The dark water at the bottom reflected the gray, cloudy sky. She panted with trembling breath. It almost felt more dangerous to have her back to the houses.
Nuhad’s hands shook uncontrollably as she tried to open the container, her palms slick with sweat. She rubbed them against her jacket and tried again. The lid flipped open. Her heart began to beat a different tune.
Can’t. Stop. Can’t. Stop. Can’t-stop. Can’t-stop.
Nuhad’s eyes were everywhere: on the salt, on the well, on the settlement. She overturned the container, holding it with both hands around the large circumference, and shook the salt inside. It fell like torrential snowfall into the water.
“Come on,” she whispered.
In the still quiet of the night, a door opened. Nuhad’s vision sharpened, tunneling into one focus as the edges blackened. Her heart stopped for a moment with the sound. In the distance, a shadowy figure stood beside their door. The glow of a cigarette was bright against the night.