Chapter 13. Return #4
Haifa grips at what is real: the wall, her arms, the floor.
She stands slowly and peeks out of the crack in the door.
The bodies are gone. Everything is silent, too, as if the realtor has also left.
Relief runs through her briefly before she reaches for her head, panicking.
She passed out—there is no pain when she presses against her skull, but she must have lost some time.
The darkness swallows her watch face as she tilts it up.
She reaches for the walls, searching for a light.
Fear keeps her from leaving the closet entirely, in case the realtor is still in the house somewhere.
Soft fur strokes her arms and she turns toward the sensation, facing a row of coats lining the back.
Coats in the closet—how ridiculous to have in a city like Haifa.
She turns and runs her hands along them.
They’re heavy, as if this were Sweden and not Palestine.
A light glow shimmers, brightening the very edges so that Haifa can see the fine hairs. Her fingers trace the soft lining up to the hangers. She pushes them aside, creating an opening and expecting to see the back edge of the closet lit by a small light.
But it’s a room. The light comes from the room itself, washing everything in a soft yellow glow, like feathered sunshine over a bookshelf on a summer afternoon. The entire room is empty, save for one chair in the middle where a girl sits.
She has the same face as Haifa’s ghost.
“Mama?” Haifa’s voice comes out in a trembling whisper.
She looks at her palms, wondering if it’s a dream, then back up to the girl.
She has two long, obsidian braids tied up neatly.
They fall in cascades over her shoulders.
A tiny bit of lipstick is smudged against lips lacking in lines of age and stress.
The girl smiles at Haifa—openly, as if to welcome her—as she walks closer.
“Haifa.” There’s a crooked tooth slightly overlapping another when she speaks, the same one that her mother had. “I’m so happy you’ve come to join me.”
“Is it you?” As her trembling legs finally reach the girl, she drops to the ground at her mother’s knees. She looks up. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m waiting for Tariq.” The girl says it with a strained little laugh, as if this is perfectly obvious. “What else?”
There’s a lightness in this girl who will become her mother—the familiar anxieties are here, but she is yet unscarred.
This is not the same ghost that haunts Haifa.
Twinkles shine in her eyes and she looks at Haifa with humor, but a bit of pity also pulls her lips down.
Haifa’s hand reaches for her mother’s knee—hesitatingly, slowly—and against the wrinkled, tendoned skin of her knuckles, she looks real.
“Why?”
“So we can be together again.”
“How?” Haifa asks, but she can feel it. This piece of Nuhad is part of the very bones of the house. “You’re…”
“However you came to be here.” Her essence flickers a little, in and out, and her face darkens for a moment. “I’m waiting for him. Not like last time.”
Last time.
“I’ll keep him safe when he comes back,” she continues. “I’ll keep you safe, too. Don’t worry.”
“Keep me safe from what?” Haifa’s mouth is dry.
“Anything. Everything.” Suddenly her mother’s face breaks and tears squeeze through the corners of her eyes.
She cradles her cheeks in her hands. “I’m so scared.
I’m so scared. Everything was so hard. I didn’t know what to do.
” Her voice increases in volume and she grabs at Haifa’s hands, taking them in her own.
Her eyes plead. “Please believe me. You have to believe me.”
“Mama.” Haifa stands, taking her mother into a hug.
She’s smaller, but she hugs the same. One thing the war didn’t take from her.
“Mama, it’s okay—I believe you. Hey, we’ll be safe in here.
This is our house, right?” She gives what she hopes is a reassuring smile as she brushes the scant tears from the girl’s delicate skin.
“Yes. Safe.” She nods, swallowing the tears. “We’re safe here. We’re safe in the house. My house. Our home.”
Seeing her mother so vulnerable and raw breaks something in Haifa.
There are no years of history pulling them apart and making it impossible to talk.
Nuhad is not her mother here—she is just a young girl.
The familiar frustration and worthlessness and never-being-enough Haifa holds around Nuhad melts from her chest; all that is left between them is a simple, beating heart.
All that is left is Haifa—and in this moment, that is enough.
“See? Everything will be okay.”
“I won’t abandon the home again,” young Nuhad says. Her face is firm. “This … this is the only place.”
“The only place for what?”
“Where I can wait for Tariq.” Her mother crosses her legs. “And he’ll come back. I know he will.”
“Your brother. Tariq.”
“I—I tried to tell you,” she says, and her voice is as small as she is. “I tried. I couldn’t, but I tried. Can’t that be enough?”
Her eyes well with fresh tears and as Haifa opens her mouth to respond and comfort this girl that becomes her mother, she flickers even more.
“Mama, yes. Of course.” She clutches her knee. “You tried your best—listen, no one blames you. Okay?” Nuhad wails and Haifa has to raise her voice over it. She gives her mother the words that she wishes could have been given to her. “You tried your best, and that’s enough.”
“No, no.” Nuhad sobs, her tiny shoulders shaking. “No, it wasn’t. I’m still here. Stuck.”
“No, you’re not. Come, let me help you.” Haifa stands and extends a hand. “Let’s get out of here together. You’re not stuck.”
“We can’t leave.” A cry rips out of Nuhad’s throat as if with claws through flesh and she grabs on to Haifa’s hand, not to pull herself up, but rather to yank Haifa back down. “This is our home!” The room spins and darkens into a blood red.
The house is protected. This is the protector.
Haifa spins and scrambles up to her feet, looking for the door to the closet. The sounds of the storm outside are entirely gone. She runs, the force of the ground vibrating up through her knees with each slamming footstep. The crimson laps against her heels and the door is so far, so far—
Haifa tastes salt on her tongue.
Tariq is no longer a burden of her grandmother’s soul; he is no longer a secret buried beneath the earth and tar; he is no longer an unattainable memory. He is here. He is real. He is in Marina’s arms as she scales the steps up to her grandmother’s house.
The stairs are covered in a water that does not come from the sky.
Tiny droplets drip down the street in miniature rivers and reflect against the night sky like clear metal; they shine against the regular rain.
As she rises, with each step, Marina feels her stomach ascend, like it does as a roller coaster climbs.
She is waiting for the drop. She is waiting to see her home again.
The strange water is pouring from the house, leaking from below the front door and pulled by gravity down, down, down the steps all the way to the port.
There it is: the drop. Butterflies. Marina looks up at the house that was her grandmother’s and should have been her mother’s and should have been hers and feels grief with love, hate with hope.
The small stone dwelling stands solidly, weathering the storm.
A FOR SALE sign is plastered against the window.
The house is like a magnet to Marina, pulling her inexplicably to its core. Whispers flutter in the air, caressing her ears and prickling her skin despite the rain. It is the same voice as the one that drew her to the sea:
Come closer.
Come to me.
Come.
The door is edged with grooves from ancient wood that sits heavily in its frame.
The age is undeniable—it’s older even than Nuhad would have been—and the deep wood grain is hypnotic.
Marina’s hand floats up without her realizing, and she takes a deep breath, filling her lungs fully with air as she touches the wood—
come inside.
Her finger slips into the grooves, and for a moment, it dips below the wood itself, disappearing into the flesh of the house. Marina yanks her hand back. Around her, the wind screams.
Tariq is still at Marina’s side; he looks up at her and points to the home. She nods despite the fear that racks her body from limb to limb. She can sense that her mother is here too.
She gingerly shifts Tariq’s body into the pouch of her shirt.
From her pocket, she takes the keffiyeh headband and wraps her knuckles inside the soaked cloth, hoping that she won’t bloody it too much to return to Hassan.
Marina braces herself as she clenches her teeth, and she punches toward the glass of the storefront door—but it swings open.
She stumbles into the open door with the forward momentum of her fist and hardly has a moment to gather her bearings before she realizes: she is inside her grandmother’s home again.
She stands, panting, in the dark storefront.
Breathe.
In.
Out.
Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Ba-bum.
The house is breathing with her, its heart beating in time to hers. They are one. They have been running toward each other for generations now, attempting to make up for the lost time by melting into each other’s skins.
Marina, taking care to not move Tariq’s bones too much, walks blindly through the darkness, still breathing heavily.
Rain batters against the glass. Tariq is no longer by her side and instead stands, half flickering, in the storm as he watches her.
In here, it’s quiet. A small light glows from beneath the crack of a door upstairs. She knew it. Her mother is here.
alive, alive, alive, alive alive alive alive . alive
life
They’re back!
They’re back!
They’re back. and they will never leave