Chapter 13. Return #6
Marina is being pulled into the wall.
From where Haifa is slowly sinking into the floor, she reaches toward Marina with her free hands, but Marina is already being taken.
Past the wall feels airy and spacious, but ice-cold, as if her body is suspended in a wintry forest at night.
The unseen hands scrape at her back and legs as they pull harder, and her skin is torn asunder as if by the knifepoint of icicles.
Her back half is in the wall now. It burns with cold.
Haifa’s mouth opens, but Marina can’t hear her—her ears are in the wall now.
Stay. Please.
Marina gasps, but her breath is shallow—the wind steals the air—and her torso is leaning diagonally into the wall.
There is no space to inhale. The walls are enclosing her face inch by inch, and she blinks furiously, as if that would keep them at bay.
Her lips purse outward in an attempt to extend the air into her body.
It feels like drowning. She’s drowning here, in her grandmother’s home.
“Why?!” she screams. “Why are you doing this?” Her voice sounds loud in her muffled ears.
The hands stop scraping at her back, and Marina takes this as hesitation.
“We are your family!” she yells, and in her desperation, tears begin falling down her cheeks, absorbing into the wall.
In the ceiling above, the shadow of Death looms.
“We are your family! We are your family!” She sobs. “We are your family.”
The walls and floors expand for a brief moment, as if the house takes a breath; the hands at her back retreat slowly, sadly. The window shutters open halfway and for a second, Marina has a shred of hope that they will be released.
But in the absence of anger, in the truest hollow that it leaves behind, is sadness.
Slowly, water leaks from the edges and corners of the house. The salt that the house has protected itself with starts to dissolve and form saltwater. It bleeds through the walls and stones, darkening them as it drip drip drips.
Haifa, still sinking into the floor, looks at Marina. Without even being able to hear what she says, Marina understands:
We’re going to drown.
Water leaks in greater quantities as the house releases its grief—Marina can feel that it misses its family, but they are gone. They’re all gone, and the house has nothing left besides this gasping, intimate heartache.
The shadow descends, seeping into the cracks of the house and back into the stones of the city.
As it passes, Marina can see the bodies inside: crying, hungering, their mouths gasping.
Death takes its weight with it as it falls back below the sea, where the city still lies.
It returns to its home. The storm abates in its absence and the ceiling clears. Only the salt of grief remains.
The water is at Marina’s ankles. At Haifa’s chest.
She can see Haifa’s lips moving, pleading with the house.
Her face is red; sweat and tears cover her skin in a thin sheen.
Marina joins: “Please,” she sobs. “Please. We’re your family too.
” But this realization only sinks the house more deeply into its mourning, and the saltwater pours in greater amounts.
The water is at Marina’s calves. At Haifa’s neck.
Haifa is looking directly at Marina; she has given up on attempting to convince the house and is now trying to say her last words to Marina.
She can’t hear them, but she sees her lips move with one phrase spoken over and over again: I love you.
Marina cries, nodding with what little movement she can, and says, “I love you, too.”
The water is at Marina’s knees. Haifa has been submerged. Her hair floats above, on the surface.
Stripped of the fables and the lore of haunting, the house is sad.
It’s lonely. Marina should’ve known that it would never let them leave.
It misses its family, and everything she’s seen has pointed to that: from the journal that it revealed beneath the tiles, to the sea that it led her to, to the various rooms that Tariq showed her.
Always—always, it has been grief.
A rumble begins to heave against Marina’s bones; something feels like it’s hitting against the structure of the house, again and again and again. The suspended skin of Marina’s face shakes with each hit, and after the third charge—
A young girl emerges from the closet. She floats over the water and past Haifa and Marina, her gaze locked on to something beyond them. As she turns in to the kitchen, Marina gets a glimpse of her face and she chokes on her shock. In its familiar contours is
Nuhad
stands in front of the door of her childhood home. She has followed her daughter all the way here, back to the place of her birth. In its embrace, she should feel happy and content. She should feel enveloped by the sunset-colored, salt-flavored, smiling-peopled Haifa and her sea. But she doesn’t.
It almost feels good to return and see that the city has felt the same rage for all of these years.
And why shouldn’t there be a storm? There should be that and more, over the entire city of Haifa, over all of Palestine.
There is more than enough grief for it. Tears from the sky pour on Nuhad, washing her in their salt.
She stares at her home and weeps with her city.
Her skin is as pale as the night is dark—but no one sees the ghosts that linger here, not even when they stand in the sun.
Slowly, slowly, she allows herself to hobble up the small stone steps to her childhood home.
These memories—of Haifa’s port, of the fresh fish, of her father’s store—are all she has left, and still they, too, are ghosts.
The stout stone dwelling opens up for her as it always has. A sob presses against her throat; the house is now something else entirely, something other, but if she blurs her eyes a bit and just pretends—the dream is better than the reality under occupation—she can still see her childhood home.
It is dark inside, but she knows her way.
She walks up the staircase and the door opens for her, but the storm outside has poured its tears in here.
Water crashes against the sides of the walls and the salt is so saturated that little white grains float on the surface.
It leaks out and splashes against her legs, then falls down the steps.
Nuhad stares at the floor of the entrance.
A little girl stands in the water of the kitchen with a box floating in front of her. Decayed bones—as small as a child’s—are all that is inside. She holds one in her palm and holds it up to Nuhad, looking at her with shiny brown eyes.
“He came back.” Her voice cracks and softens a little. She places it back inside gingerly, taking care not to disturb any other bones. “And you.”
“He came back,” Nuhad echoes. She takes a couple of cautious footsteps toward the girl, the water lapping against her waist. “We came back.”
“Everyone left.”
“Yes.”
“Why did everyone leave?”
“We had to. But we’re back. We’re back.”
“You’re going to leave again.” The girl’s eyes fill with tears.
“No. I’ll stay here with you.” Nuhad kneels, and as she does so, the water lowers with her, to her ankles. From the other room comes a gasp. “I never wanted to leave.”
“And Tariq?”
“We’re both here now. I promise.” Nuhad reaches her arms out. The girl stares for a second before throwing herself into Nuhad’s embrace. She squeezes. “I’m sorry I left you,” Nuhad whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
The girl pulls back and her face is shiny with water. “You’re not going to leave?”
“I never … ever wanted to.” Nuhad grants her a soft smile, eliciting the same in return. “We’re together now.”
“Okay.” The girl shyly raises one hand and holds it up to Nuhad. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
Reaching out, her own hand trembling, Nuhad meets her palm. As they touch, the girl brightens and becomes a shining beacon of light; she glows, and then disappears.
Nuhad looks down to her heart, which illuminates in a small circle and then fades.
She stands and reaches for the wall. As she touches it, the house shudders a last gasp.
The water disappears, as if the stone absorbed every single drop.
Movement catches her eye and as she walks into the living room she finds
Haifa
soars from the ground as she is pushed upward suddenly. Her hands fly out in front of her to find balance as she lands. From the other end of the room, Marina is thrust from the wall and as she hits solid ground, she scrambles, rushing over to Haifa.
“Mama, oh, Mama,” she cries. Her daughter’s tears soak into Haifa’s shirt as she embraces her entirely in her grasp.
“Shh,” Haifa soothes. “We’re okay. We’re okay.”
A woman hovers at the edge of the living room; she is no longer ethereal but stands solid, fully rooted in the stone.
Pink colors her weathered cheeks and there is a hint of a smile playing at her lips.
This is not the ghost that haunted Haifa nor the mother that she knew. This is … someone else entirely.
“Mama?” she asks. Fear shakes her voice.
Though she still looks like the mother who never made Haifa feel like she was enough, Nuhad no longer stares through her, wishing she were more.
No, this woman meets her gaze. The heavy air, covering them both like a wet blanket, suddenly lifts a bit. “Mama?”
Nuhad comes closer, and almost on instinct Haifa moves back, scared of her ghost and the burdens she carries.
Marina shifts beside her, and Haifa winces—she doesn’t want her daughter to see this side of Haifa and Nuhad’s relationship.
She doesn’t want her to see this instinctive reaction to her personal haunting.
“Haifa.” Nuhad stands in front of her and offers a hand. Blinking furiously, as if it will disappear, Haifa assures herself that it’s real. She reaches for it and lets her mother help her up.