Chapter 15
Muted Green
What do you need seventy bucks for?” Amal asks when I pick up the phone.
I looked up the menu of the café the girls want to go to, and needless to say, those are prices I don’t even see on Eid.
“Going out with Alexis and her friends tomorrow.” I flip the sketchbook between my fingers, opening the page where I painted.
The baby in the conch and the hands look more vivid on the page than on the walls.
I watched a couple of videos online about the murals before closing my phone. They were getting in my head.
I desperately want to tell Amal about it, but I’m scared of her reaction.
This blessing I discovered from our great-aunt is precious; it’s sewing up a wound inside me.
It’s proof for the whole world to see. It’s more than stories Mama told us.
It’s alive. Knowing my sister, her first words would dim that light inside me.
“Oh! All right,” Amal says. “You and Alexis are hanging out at school?”
I look up from the notebook, adjusting my seat carefully so I don’t accidentally pull my hair. “Yes?”
“That’s good.” Her voice is a bit too bright.
“Why do you sound like that?”
“I don’t sound like anything. I’m really glad your friendship survived all these years.”
“Well, why wouldn’t it?”
She takes a deep breath. “I know she’s been your only friend for forever. But she’s had many other friends. I was just worried she wouldn’t have time for you at school. I was wrong.”
I stay quiet, trying not to let the words sink deeper into my skin.
“But she’s nice, right?” Amal asks.
“Yeah.”
“Good. The other people you knew during school sucked.”
“Like who?”
“Like Penelope. Remember when she made fun of Mama’s mlookheye? She called it crap.”
I groan. “She was twelve.”
“And?” Amal asks, and I laugh.
“You’re right.”
I hear the smile in Amal’s voice. “Come over after you’re done with your friends. I’m making yabra’a.”
“Don’t you need it for Ramadan? It’s in five months, right?”
“I made a lot, and the freezer has no space for anything else.”
“Okay. I’ll be there. Are you gonna give me the seventy or what?”
“I already sent it to you.”
I hold the phone away from my face to check my notifications. She sent me one hundred dollars. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
We say goodbye, and I lie in bed, thinking of what I’ll wear tomorrow. There’s no use trying to look like the girls, so I just settle on my nicest jeans and an oversize shirt.
But then I look at the sketchbook and my fingers tingle.
I sit up, letting my hair fall over me from all sides, hiding me and the sketchbook. In this space, only the two of us exist.
I wish I knew more about it. What kind of tree gave her blessings for this.
Was it a tree that knew Mama? A dull pain thuds in my chest at the knowledge Mama will never know of the sketchbook.
I wonder if it would have worked the same way for her.
If what she drew would have been all over New York.
Pieces of Syria, pieces of herself for the whole world to see.
There are just thirty pages. Twenty-nine now that I painted on one.
Glimmers of a quiet joy spread all over me. It’s tentative, like it doesn’t know where to go in all these crevices and spaces filled with grief. It’s scared, like it knows it’ll vanish at any second. That it’ll feel unwanted, guilty it’s here when it shouldn’t be.
This sketchbook holds all these emotions within its pages.
Mama may be gone, but she will live in this art. She will survive outside the ghostly confines of this apartment. Her story will bring her to life.
I shudder in a breath and lean under the bed to grab my acrylic pens.
I keep them for special occasions when the image in my head is spilling out before I can rein it in.
And this time, I don’t want to wait the nanosecond it takes to dip my brushes into my little paint boxes that dry up as quickly as I hydrate them.
I flip to the second page, the emptiness of it welcoming.
I squint, making out something on the pages I didn’t see before.
The pages are somewhat grainy, but the textured pattern is all creating one shape.
A circle. Over and over again. Just like the rings of a tree trunk.
I feel the sketchbook humming in my hands, can almost hear the waves of the Mediterranean crashing over the beaches of Arwad and Tartus.
The rustling of the trees, their leaves dancing in the wind.
The sunlight warm on the branches. Snow crystallizing on the twigs.
The laughter of a little girl, running around the tree until she becomes dizzy, falling over a bed of moss.
A little boy climbing higher and higher until he can see the clouds his mother told him that she catches.
The family sitting in the shade with a picnic spread of akawi cheese, barbecued meat skewers, and fresh pomegranate juice splashing from plastic cups.
The same girl, now a teenager, walking around the trees at midnight, whispering something into their trunks.
Now she’s a young woman, no longer having that careless excitement in her expression.
The lines around her eyes mirror the tree’s age circles.
Her eyes look like mine. The same shape, the same color, that beautiful brown hair—
The front door closes, and I feel like I was just pulled from a deep sleep. Baba is back.
My heart is racing, and I push my hair back, finding my bangs are matted to my sweaty forehead.
Memories.
I blink, looking around the room. The sun has already set, the room a darker shade of gray.
No. It’s not. The gray is there, but there are underlying colors slipping through.
More than the others, there are hints of brown spread around the room.
I scramble to flip the light switch on and look at myself in the mirror.
Tears stream down my cheeks. Yellow filters into a deeper shade.
My brown eyes are there, twinkling. The same eyes as my great-aunt. The color of warmth.
“Shukran,” I whisper, thanking the blessing.
I go back to the sketchbook, holding it reverently.
There are so many things I could draw, but nothing makes more sense to this sketchbook than Mama and her life.
I tap my fingers over the acrylic pens. The gray wavers, the colors coming in and out of view.
The shades are getting deeper—red to maroon, blue to navy, green to olive.
There is depth now. It hurts but that’s the price I pay for seeing colors differently now.
I know where each color in the box of pens is when my gray world comes back.
I pick the yellows, oranges, and purples and lay them out in front of me.
I see the picture before it’s drawn. It feels like I’m tracing over something that has always existed on this page.
The colors dance in front of me, and my fingers become smudged with them, spotted with a sunset orange and plum purple.
I let go of the pens, close my eyes, and lie back onto my bed until the brilliant hues behind my eyelids fade away to black, to nothing, to the beginning.
And then I go back to painting.
“Do you think the girl is the baby from yesterday?” Hayley asks over her plate of humongous waffles stacked so neatly on top of one another and drizzled with maple syrup.
The food in this café looks cartoon-made.
Everything is clear-cut, no imperfections.
I glance at the cheapest item I could find.
Plain French-scrambled eggs with brioche toast. It’s delicious, and I could easily eat three plates of this if hunger was something I cared about.
I wish I wanted three plates of this. But there is one thing I do want.
Everywhere I walk today, every other conversation I overhear is about the new mural. It came to life in place of the old mural, but the miracle has spread to farther locations. Some people are saying it was seen in Hoboken as well. The blessing is growing bigger.
Yesterday, I drew a girl, about ten, her entire silhouette and hair a golden yellow from the sun rising behind her. Her hair spread around her body in waves, her eyes closed, mouth pulled in a serene smile.
“Maybe the artist is doing something else each time,” Nicole says, taking a sip from her matcha latte.
“How are they doing it?” Jenny folds her arms. “They’re definitely not doing it alone. Oh my God, do you think it’s, like, a whole army of them? One video said it was aliens, though. Similar to how they leave these signs in fields, but with pictures now. Like trying to communicate to humans.”
“Okay, conspiracy theory.” Hayley rolls her eyes.
“You’re telling me there are no aliens?” Jenny counters.
“I’m telling you I don’t care,” Hayley replies. “I’m only alive on this earth for eighty years or so. I’m not spending it wondering if aliens exist.”
The girls giggle.
“What about you, Ji?” Alexis smiles at me. “Do you think it’s aliens?”
The other three girls turn toward me like they’ve forgotten I’m there. I half expect one to say, Jihad? When did you get here?
“Uh, u-um,” I stutter, thrown off balance. I clear my throat. “I think this universe is huge, and if it’s aliens, they’re really good artists.”
Alexis laughs. “I mean, you do believe in magic, so I’m not surprised.”
“Magic?” Nicole asks, and there’s amusement in her voice.
Heat creeps under my collar. Alexis gives me a quick apologetic look. “We all believe in magic a little, don’t we?” she says, looking around.
Nicole leans forward. “Yes, but what exactly do you believe in, Jihad? Tooth fairies or Santa Claus?” Her tone is playful, but I hear the underlying condescension.
“Actually, I meant the Easter Bunny,” I say, matching her tone, and her perfect eyebrow twitches.
“Okay, hold on, now,” Jenny says. “I believe in the supernatural.”
“What don’t you believe in?” Hayley exclaims.
“Shut up!” Jenny counters.