Chapter 10. Salt #5
Cursing silently, Nuhad held her breath and dropped the entire container into the well.
Before she could hear the deep splash, she ran, her head down and her shoulders hunched over.
Her legs stretched out before her in impossibly long expanses.
She tried to avoid the leaves and twigs, but a couple of them snapped beneath her hurry.
She waited for the bang of a gun, for the earsplitting pierce of a scream in the night, but only the sounds of her breath and the interminable silence were with her.
Nuhad stopped at a row of trees just outside of Nazareth.
Her legs, trembling from cold and nerves, fell to the ground under their protective canopy.
She glanced behind her, but there was nothing there. No one had followed her. There were no angry settlers or fiery torches coming after her. Nuhad had done it.
A laugh bubbled up in her throat and spilled over the trees. Tears pricked at her eyes, and Nuhad gasped between sobs and laughter. Her stomach ached with the continuous contractions. Nuhad doubled over, seeing Tariq in her watery vision.
She sat back on prickly pine needles, panting. The moon’s disappearing crescent peered out from beyond its cloud cover.
The walk back to Nazareth was quiet.
Haifa stands as a vibration of energy in line to exit the plane; her fingers tap against her jeans until it is her turn to leave. The walk to customs is long. She counts the number of strides it takes to reach it, attempting to avoid confronting the reality of what her mother had done as a child.
“Hello, shalom,” the guard behind the counter says.
“Hi.” Haifa slides her passport through.
The officer types on a keyboard for several minutes before picking up the passport and examining the sticker on the back.
It’s long, and yellow, and has a string of numbers that Haifa didn’t understand when the additional security slapped it on in Chicago.
Finally, she looks up at Haifa over the glasses that sit halfway down her nose.
“Your name is Haifa?”
“Yes.” One-word answers. One-word answers.
“But your last name is Italian.”
“Yes.”
“Where does this middle name come from?”
“My father.”
“And where is he from?”
This is my confession.
The words echo on repeat in her mind, and Haifa picks at a loose thread at the hem of her T-shirt. She loops it around her finger and counts how many loops she can make. Her eyes dart everywhere: the guard, her desk, the fluorescent lights above them.
“Here.”
“Here where?”
“Nablus.”
Three loops.
“So you’re Arab?”
Haifa nods. Five loops. Her finger reddens with tourniqueted blood.
“Where are you staying?”
“In Haifa.”
The guard sighs and snaps her passport shut. “Go down to the hall—”
Haifa’s heart drops into her stomach. The string snaps.
But before the guard can continue, Hebrew crackles through the walkie-talkie attached to her shoulder. She types on the keyboard, talking back into the microphone as she shuts her station down.
“Go. Go,” she whispers to Haifa, brushing her hand away impatiently.
Haifa retrieves her passport and rushes away, keeping her head ducked. If she had been sent in for further interrogation, they would have found her mother’s confession. And if they had found the confession—
She doesn’t realize that she’s made it to the exit until sunlight falls on her worn gray sneakers on the carpet at the door. Tears suddenly thicken her throat as she looks up.
Palestine.
Her country.
The days dragged on, hour ticking slowly into hour, as Nuhad waited for news.
School minutes slipped into work minutes, and at night, Nuhad lay awake in her makeshift bed, eyes tracking the darkness of the ceiling, for within its endless black, there were visions of settlers leaving and Palestinians returning.
If this worked at the Nazareth settlement, she could do the same thing in Haifa. They could go home.
“Have you heard any news of the settlement?” This question slid out of her mouth without her permission, but after nearly six whole days of waiting, Nuhad couldn’t bear it. Her hands trembled and, as in school, she wanted to sit on them to hide her anxiety nearly every moment.
The edges of her mother’s mouth turned down.
They were rolling waraq dawali, placing small pinches of rice and meat into each grape leaf and folding them.
It was a delicate balance, attempting to keep them tight but not so tight that they would burst in the pot.
Her mother’s were perfect—as small as a pinky finger.
“No. Why would their news come here?” She paused, then looked up for a moment. “I did hear that they had a sickness that went around, actually. Samir—the neighbor all the way down the street, next to the government building—had to go and fix something for them.”
“The well?”
Victoria picked up a pinch of rice and meat. “Something about the water, yes. It made them sick but I think they got it repaired.”
Nuhad accidentally tore the delicate edge of a leaf. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes in frustration. Deep within her throat, a lump began to form with the realization that her plan had failed.
“Habibti, be careful. We only have so many leaves.”
“Hader, Mama.” How could she share this grief?
They sat in silence together until the last of the leaves was stuffed with the spiced mix.
As Victoria lined them in concentric circles at the bottom of the pot, Nuhad bumped open the door to the backyard with her hip.
The new water pump gleamed silver beneath the lone sun, and Nuhad shivered at its cold touch as she bounced the handle up and down.
Even with several pumps, only a few drops came out.
Her calm, barely kept within, broke.
“God damn it ALL! God damn the settlers, god damn this water pump, god damn the WORLD!” Tears squeezed from her eyes unexpectedly, but her vision was hot and red. She swiped at her eyes and kicked the empty bucket, sending it flying across the yard.
“Nuhad? Nuhad?” Victoria emerged from the kitchen door, the scent of lemon and tomato trailing behind. Her forehead was creased with worry. Nuhad’s vision blurred and her mother transformed into two clear ovals. She clenched her fists. Her face was wet with grief.
“What? What, habibti, what happened?” Victoria clasped Nuhad’s shoulders and shook her a little. Nuhad let her head roll with the movement for a moment before snapping.
“Why won’t they leave?!” Nuhad grabbed on to her mother’s hands and stared her in the eyes. “Why won’t they just go away?”
“Meen, Nuhad? Who won’t go away?” Victoria’s face was drawn in concern; her eyes were piercingly wild with intent to understand.
“The settlers! The goddamn settlers and their goddamn settlements over the bodies that they killed.” Nuhad’s voice was wretched, pulled from a place deep within her gut.
Tears tore at her throat and clawed their way out, freshly watering her face again.
She tore herself from her mother’s grasp and sat on the stoop, giving up, her fury spent.
“Is that why you asked about them?” Victoria sat beside her and brushed aside some of her tears. Her voice was soft.
“Yes.” The word was ripped from her vocal cords. A confession. “I wanted them to become sick and leave.”
Victoria was silent with shock for a moment.
“Never mind. Never mind,” Nuhad said, feeling her mother’s understanding tip over the precipice.
“Nuhad, did you—did you have anything to do with their water making them sick?” Victoria’s eyes grew wider with each word. Her face revealed a painful realization: her own daughter had participated in this war.
Nuhad sat beside her mother, her body giving in.
“I just—I feel like I’ve been holding my breath.
Ever since April. Since that night. I’ve been waiting for so many things to happen: for Tariq to come back, for us to go back home and find and rebury his body, for me to go back to my old school.
For life to return.” The tears threatened their return, but she took a shuddering breath and met Victoria’s eyes.
“But none of that’s going to happen, is it?
I’m going to be stuck waiting. My breath will always be held. ”
Victoria winced at her words. She patted Nuhad’s hair gently. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“This is all permanent,” Nuhad said. Her shoulders deflated with this final realization.