Pomegranate Red
The something happy is Mama when she went to Damascus.
“Best days,” she said. “I made lifelong friends, and the city was beautifully historical. Oh, I pray you’ll see her one day, my girls.
You can feel the souls of everyone who has ever lived there walking with you.
She’s a blessed city. The bricks that made the Umayyad Mosque and the cracked pavements all over the city.
The arabesque art that decorated the mosques.
And you know, there are certain stalls in Souq Al-Hamidiye that were passed on from father to son for hundreds of years.
You find that this family has always sold rugs.
They’re able to trace their ancestors all the way to the Prophet SAW’s time.
They’ve lived their entire lives in Damascus, in Syria, and know where their grandparents are buried. ”
“What about us?” I asked. “Do we know our ancestors?”
Mama hesitated before smiling. “They’re all back in Syria.”
I understood then that we were the broken branch, snapped off from the mother tree.
When Mama was buried here in New York in a small plot, I worried about whether the soil was too cold for her.
Too uncomfortable so her body still couldn’t find rest after death.
She lived such a difficult life away from her homeland, and her body yearns for that home.
“Anyway,” Mama then said cheerfully. “I stayed with my aunt. She had this wonderful Damascene house. Paradise from the inside. You know our homes are like pomegranates. Unassuming from the outside, but once you open it, you find rubies. A fountain with goldfish and cherry trees growing in the courtyard. The goldfish knew me well. They’d hear me coming out of the kitchen with their food, and they would swim toward me.
They didn’t know much about the world except the sky above them.
I’d wake up in the morning and pluck a cherry right from the window. ”
Even though I was only thirteen, my heart ached for something I’d never known.
She told us we’d go one day. When Syria was back to the glory days, when we had enough money.
One day never came.
The mural shows the inside of a pomegranate where a whole universe exists.
Ruby-red seeds glisten on Mama’s knuckles and arms and in her long raven-black hair.
Her dress is teal, arabesque designs stitched right across it.
She’s midlaugh, goldfish swimming around her ankles and a paintbrush in her fingers, dripping golden liquid that splashes all over.
The background is a hazy skyline of Damascus.
And I know I’m toeing the line with anonymity.
The last murals were generalized with obscure Easter eggs.
But I don’t care. I don’t want to censor my culture and heritage.
And when I get a message from Jamie the next day saying I think this one might be my favorite, my heart smiles so wide, it aches.
Two weeks pass, and my time at this school doesn’t get any better, but it doesn’t get worse either.
It’s a couple of boys, mostly ones I see with Mason, and though I can’t prove it yet, I know Nicole is in on some of it.
Most of the students at school don’t care, and I think of them as passive watchers. Not that I expect anything.
One morning when I walk into class, passing two of Mason’s friends, one of them shouts, “Hey, jihadist, I have a question!”
His friend guffaws.
I clench my jaw, remembering how I didn’t walk away from that table during lunch when I should have.
I turn around to face them. Two blobs gape at me, and I refuse to let my vision give them any features. “Do you seriously want to use your very last brain cell to ask me something when you need it for the rest of the year?”
And without waiting for a reply, I turn on my heel and spot Jamie sitting at his desk in the corner with an empty seat beside him.
He heard everything, his expression ping-ponging from annoyed to amused.
I sit, taking out my notebooks, firmly ignoring all the eyes on the back of my neck.
“What are you looking at?” Jamie asks loudly in the direction of the blobs. They turn away, and Jamie focuses his attention on me. “You okay?”
I press a hand over my queasy stomach. “Yeah.”
I spoke up. I said something. It’s terrifying and it’s everything. But I feel like all my energy has drained away.
Alexis has stopped checking in on me. I gave up on my locker when I found a bunch of old, dirty socks shoved in there Monday morning. I have no idea who put them there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Nicole.
But today is Saturday, and it’s the day Amal is leaving for Qatar. I’ve been dreading it since she told me. I haven’t seen her since I was at her apartment.
It’s a bit jarring to see her now at JFK. Her pregnancy hasn’t started showing yet, but her cheeks are fuller, and she’s looking more like Mama. Marwan is by baggage check-in, depositing their bags, while Baba, Amal, and I stand awkwardly beside one another.
“You’ll visit, right?” Amal asks suddenly.
I jump. She’s looking straight at me; her eyes are watery, but she’s not allowing herself to cry.
I nod, unable to say anything because the lump in my throat hurts.
“Baba, you too,” Amal says.
“InshAllah,” Baba replies absently. He’s physically here, but mentally he’s detached himself from the situation.
It’s been a while since I took a good look at him.
His hair and beard are whiter, and the look in his eyes is more broken than usual.
I think there’s a crookedness in his back like he physically can’t hold himself up.
Amal leaving is destroying parts of him as well.
“Baba, think about coming to live with us, okay?” Amal latches on to his arm. “You’ll be closer to your grandkid. Being in a Muslim country… you won’t have to be scared. Retire in Qatar. It’s better for you. Even Jihad is thinking about studying college there.” She gives me a meaningful look. Lie.
“And leave your mom?” he says hoarsely, shaking his head.
What about me? I think.
“You can’t live your life here forever,” Amal continues.
“You can’t be stuck in the past. It’s hurting you.
Mama…” She swallows hard, shuddering in a breath.
“We can only pray for her. But Jihad and I need you. So please, think about it. You have time until Jihad is done with school. And I want you to see your grandkid.”
Baba nods, his lips turned downward, and I think he’s halfway into the afterlife; the only thing keeping him here is us. And now one of us is leaving.
“All right,” Marwan says, walking over and giving Amal’s passport to her with the boarding pass tucked inside. “Boarding is in two hours.”
“Okay.” Amal gives him a watery smile, and he pats her back. She clears her throat. “I think we should move toward the security thing.”
“We don’t have to go in now.” He takes her bag and drags the carry-on. “We have time to say goodbye.”
“Okay.” She sniffs, and when we walk toward the security check, she grabs hold of my hand, squeezing it tightly to her chest.
The lump in my throat dissolves, and the dam breaks behind my eyes. My tears pour down my cheeks, and I know Amal is crying, too, but we’re not looking at each other.
I want the walk to TSA to take fifty years, but we’re there too soon and she rounds on me.
“Message me every single day,” she says through hiccups, and wipes my tears away with her palms.
“I’m sorry for what I said,” I whisper, my breaths choppy. Guilt sours my tongue. Why didn’t I go over to see her every day the past three weeks? Why did I let some stupid sense of pride rob me of more time with my sister?
She shakes her head quickly before grabbing me into a tight hug. “I love you. Okay? I love you. And we’re always going to be a family. I am here for you forever.”
I bury my face in her shoulder, holding her just as close, inhaling her apple-blossom scent in mouthfuls.
She doesn’t want to let go, so I do it for her, and her eyes are a bright red, her tears rivers. She turns to Baba, grabbing his hand to kiss the back of it, but he raises hers and kisses it.
“Allah yerda aa’laiki,” he says gruffly, and for a split second, I see my dad. The colors that were muted, gray and translucent, are back. He doesn’t say anything else but hugs her. Amal is once again a kid in her father’s arms.
When they let go, Amal pulls me to the side and hugs me before kissing my head. “I think I’m going to call it off. I’ll just live here. It’s fine.”
I let out a blubbery laugh. “I want that so bad.”
“Promise you’ll visit in the summer. I’ll have given birth by then, and the baby will be so cute, and you have to meet your niecephew.”
“Niecephew?”
“We don’t know the gender yet. So niece plus nephew. Promise.”
I glance at Baba, who’s standing beside Marwan, too far to hear our conversation. “I might be on my way to San Francisco then.”
She brushes away her tears. “InshAllah, you will be. But you’ll have time. I know there’s a direct flight from Doha to San Francisco. I looked it up. July you’re with me, okay? Promise. It’s the only way I’ll get through this.”
“I promise.” It lights up something in me. That this isn’t the end but the beginning of something else. Maybe Mama felt the same way when she left Syria. The conflicted feelings, doubting whether it was right to leave or not.
Amal straightens, kissing my cheeks twice, and walks over to squeeze Baba’s hand once. Marwan hugs Baba goodbye and nods at me. He holds Amal’s hand as she walks backward, not taking her eyes off us.
She keeps waving goodbye until she’s out of sight, and a new silence weighs heavily on us. A new loneliness settles in our lives.
Baba doesn’t say anything on the way back, and it’s only when he stops by the gas station that I realize we’re not going home.
He gets out of the car, and I follow him before my limbs freeze.
Someone has spray-painted terrorist all over the front with some crude pictures beside it.
“What the hell is this?” I ask, shocked.