Chapter 12. The Path of the Moon #2
They settle into another silence. Haifa thinks back to her first and only other time in Palestine, when Nuhad had taken her for a visit to Nazareth.
Haifa is with her mother, playing in the garden and picking up fallen carob pods and seeing how far she can throw them. Can they spin? They must. They look like helicopter pods back home. But no, they’re too heavy.
Haifa, do you want to visit Haifa? Auntie Siham asks. Auntie Siham is old, much older than her mother.
Yes! Haifa exclaims. She has always wanted to visit the city she is named after.
But Mama and Auntie Siham have a murmuring low-voice conversation, and Haifa knows they will not go.
Mama is worried about the city, the changes, the soldiers.
She doesn’t want to dig up old memories, but Auntie Siham says it’s good for her to see it.
You can even visit the house! Why would I want to visit the house?
Why would I want to see what the Israelis have done to our home? Tayyeb, khayta, zay ma biddik.
Sorry, Haifa, we’ll go another time, her auntie says, giving her an encouraging smile.
It’s okay. Haifa shrugs and goes back to her carob pods. She catches her mother’s eye, and there is disappointment there, too. As if it’s Haifa’s fault that they couldn’t go to her mother’s birthplace.
Did Haifa the city disappoint this many people?
“I can’t believe the sweetshop is still there,” Rania murmurs, breaking Haifa out of her reverie.
Haifa clears her throat, settling back into the present. “Have you been before?”
“Of course.” Rania shifts again in her seat. Her face is pinched with pain. “Nuhad showed me around. Her new home and room. Their family’s sweetshop. Her school. But…” She trails off. “She—wasn’t the same. Even when we said goodbye, it felt final.”
“You only saw her one time after the war?”
“Of course not. We saw each other again.” Rania remains silent for several seconds. “But the old versions of ourselves—our friendship—were dead.”
Haifa nods.
“And I—I didn’t visit often after that.” Rania closes her eyes and leans against the headrest. “It was too much.” Silence settles between the cracks of the leather seats before she speaks again. “Did you hear the news?”
“News?” Haifa stares at her profile for a moment but even if Rania feels her gaze, she doesn’t meet it.
“About your grandmother’s home. You didn’t see the news? The neighbors told me yesterday.”
“The house? No. What happened?”
“A new couple bought it. They already started moving in.”
Haifa turns away and looks at the road again. Her grandmother’s home, bought and sold on the day she arrived. She doesn’t say anything for a moment.
“How—?” The question is unfinished, but Rania nods, a companion to Haifa’s grief.
“Who knows. New settlers come from all over America and Europe. They get tricked into buying it before they know anything about it.” Rania shifts in her seat again. Nazareth is already coming into view in the distance.
“It’s interesting. I…” Haifa returns to the memory.
“I keep thinking about what gets passed down.” She pauses again.
Rania says nothing. “Not like eye color or height. All of my mom’s—stuff—was passed down to me.
Confessions. Secrets. Horrible, wretched trauma.
And all of these Israelis get … what do they get?
Beach houses and mandatory conscription. ”
“We try our hardest to not pass down our shit onto our children. But it happens.”
“And this house—my mother’s childhood home—is passing down grief. It’s drowning people, and making them disappear, and haunting them.” Haifa’s grip on the wheel tightens. “And I—I’m haunted by my mom.”
They’ve left the sea behind them, and in the sky, the rising crescent moon appears faintly, opposite the falling sun. It’s like a drawing among the pale blue.
“Everything that happens in this world is a cycle. We always repeat, and redo. And make the same mistakes our forebears did.”
Haifa shakes her head. “My mom never even let me know what those were.” Sadness weighs on her shoulders. “She just gave me vague warnings. About everything.”
“You know the moon phases?” Rania nods to the faint moon. “It goes from total darkness in the sky to a full moon and back again. With all of the phases in between. Why else does God put these cycles in nature? We do the same.”
“How do I know what I’m repeating? How would I know?”
“There are worse things in life than not knowing,” Rania murmurs softly.
“Nuhad never told you anything. So what? The Nuhad I knew was … different—forever, since 1948. She was my best friend before. After the war, after Tariq’s death—that changes you.
She became an adult too quickly. We were just girls one day, and the next, we were forced to grow up.
To pick up the pieces of what was left and move on.
” Rania sighs. “You and Marina want so badly to know Nuhad, but this is life.”
“Is it so bad to want more?” Haifa rolls to a stop at a light and looks at Rania. Her eyes are sad. “I just wish I knew her.”
Rania meets her gaze for a moment, then looks at the light. “It’s green.”
Haifa sighs and drives them farther into the city. After a beat, she asks, “So what will happen to the house?”
“They’ll leave. Then the real estate agent will sell it.
Like they always do.” Rania shrugs. “They’ll hold an open house, and only Jews will be allowed to buy it.
Another person will move in, and the house will take its revenge.
It’s happened all my life. Since the war.
Shu bidi asawi?” She shifts and looks over her shoulder.
“Let’s stop by the church for a bit. I want to pray for your mother. ”
Silence keeps them in a shroud. Haifa stares at the rising moon. We are all echoing our ancestors in a cycle; like daylight shifts with the seasons, like fruit blossoms and then hibernates, there is a path of the moon in each of us.
The tires shift and bump beneath Marina’s seat as the car winds its way up the mountain road. She has been quiet the whole ride.
“Here,” Khaled says, pulling onto a small patch of dirt. Beyond the fence is a wide overlook. As Marina steps out of the car, the sky opens up before her, growing in breadth and air as she walks closer.
“Wow,” she breathes. Before her stands Haifa, a small enclave of a port city that she could cup in her palm if she so chose.
Seagulls flap overhead, the gentle beat of their wings a soothing symphony with the wind.
The sea widens into the embrace of the sky.
Each reflects the other: the two lungs of Haifa.
Somewhere below is her grandmother’s haunted house.
Somewhere, near the sea, is Tariq’s grave, a thought that pains her to recall with such clarity.
And in all parts, the ghosts of Haifa wander the streets, trailing at the edges with heavy shadows and the long gray fingers of memories.
“Ah, she finally speaks.” Khaled lets out a light exhale’s laugh. “I was starting to wonder if you were still feeling okay.”
She laces her fingers and cradles her head, elbows wide into the sky, as she looks out and breathes. She decides to be honest. “I don’t know if I’m okay.”
Khaled lets the silence expand, allowing her to fill it if she wants. When she refuses it, he points to the north.
“On a clear day, you can see Akka from here.” Marina squints, but the clouds are already forming. “And farther beyond is the border of Lebanon.” He pauses. “Then Tyre, then Beirut.”
“You know your geography.”
“Ah, Marina.” Khaled sighs, then expands his arms to hold the sea and sky. “When Palestine is free, I’m going to walk all over this land.”
He laughs suddenly, allowing his joy to grow wings and fly with the seagulls in the free air.
“I’m just going to walk,” he says, his cheeks red with hope.
“I’m going to lace up my shoes and walk from Haifa to Akka to the small villages at the border of Lebanon.
I’ll visit my uncles in Beirut and stop by Tyre.
I’ll circle round to Damascus.” His voice catches, but he clears his throat.
“What a world it would be. What a world—to just walk from here to Nablus. To Jerusalem. To see Al-Aqsa. I’ll walk all the way down to Gaza, then through the Sinai, and go into Egypt to see the pyramids. ”
“How beautiful,” Marina says softly, but the wind steals her voice and carries it out to the water. The ocean hears her instead.
“That’s all I want. I just want to move freely. To see baladi.” His gaze is straight out to sea. “It’s not much. But it’s my dream.”
There’s a pain in Marina, as if her heart is crying.
She’s had several dreams in life: to become whole, to swim freely, to visit Palestine.
But the weight of Tariq’s grave hangs on her, and despite wanting the simplicity and heartbreaking beauty of Khaled’s desire, she realizes that she just wants to give Tariq the justice and dignity he has needed for years.
“You have family in Lebanon?” she asks, because she can’t think of any words worthy enough to measure up to his dream.
“Yeah,” Khaled says. He turns around and leans on the fence, facing the car. “My mom’s brother studied at AUB and decided to stay. My grandmother has some family there. Everyone’s scattered.”
“It sucks.”
“The life of a Palestinian, habibti.” He smiles quietly. “Everyone takes different paths. I think I’ve got a couple of cousins who were resistance fighters back in the day.”
“Really?” Marina turns away from the sea now, too, and faces Khaled. Her elbow rests on the fence. “When?”
“In the 1940s. A couple of them fought for Haifa. How could you not?” He sighs. “But they were killed in battle. Buried in a mass grave.”
Marina tastes the words on her tongue as they roll around in her mouth. The tendrils of a plan begin to form in her mind.
“A mass grave?”
Khaled meets her gaze, his thick eyebrows lifted earnestly to frame eyes that look at her with concern. There is a light within them, too. “Yeah. In one of them.”