Chapter 4. The Shatat #8
“Ah,” Rania says, for she is devoid of words that could bridge the gap between her feelings and reality.
Every time she passed by Nuhad’s house she felt as if Nuhad’s spirit still lived there, in the window facing the sea.
In the haunting. “The house…” she starts.
Stops. Rania looks back up at Marina. This lost young woman with Nuhad’s face knows nothing of the ghosts who live in the walls with stories in their mouths.
She knows nothing of the haunted house of Haifa.
Marina’s eyes light up. “The house? My grandmother’s house?”
“Yes,” Rania says. She tilts her head. “You know about it?”
“I know of it,” Marina says. Her voice hedges.
As the scent of maqlubeh fills the apartment, Rania’s daughter calls out, “Food is almost ready!”
“Have you visited yet?”
“No.” Her eyes shutter downward. “I don’t—exactly—know where it is. I was hoping you could show me. Hassan—my host—said you would know.”
Rania shifts in her seat as Khaled places plates around the table. Heat from the stove fills her small flat with an abundance of summertime warmth. She begins to sweat.
“I can show you the outside. But I won’t go in.” Her voice hardens.
“We can go in?” Marina sits up straight.
“You can go in. I won’t step foot inside,” Rania repeats.
The girl’s eagerness concerns her. Rania inspects the girl: her face is wide-eyed and innocent, but there is a line on her forehead that betrays fatigue from her own tenacity.
Rania knows this because she has it, too.
She leans back. “I’ll take you there. It’s up for sale. ”
“So there’s an open house?”
“Yes.” Rania looks out to the open mouth of the balcony, where the setting sun falls. The girl has no idea what the house is, what it has become. She will see. “We can go tomorrow. In the morning. Now, let’s eat.”
She allows Nuhad’s blood to carry her to the table, where the clouds have cleared and the twilit sky paints cool yellow over the white stone of her home. Khaled has her chair pulled out for her. Her home.
Home—a sickening word for what depraved mockery this is—what is a home when it can be ripped, cut from one’s family and violated with the bodies of others as they sleep over rot / decay / death—is it still a home, then, or does it become a prison, a crime, an occupation from the inside—
I remember—I remember—I remember—
I remember—everything.
The soldier was the first—laid down the pattern of degradation—and his children returned only to sell the bones they had sucked the marrow cleanly out of, the flesh that they consumed and the blood that had bathed their father; the others followed in swift and cruel pursuit, as if living atop the bones of my body granted them a right to—to—sell me after stealing. To violate me.
It was the mother and her son, last—
Whispering vitriol under her breath, she shuffled over the bodies strewn below the floor, spitting hate and venom, the festering pestilence of her soul sliding in her wake, she hated it here, she hated it in Haifa, she hated the heat of the sun and the shine of the sea and the little terrorist children who stared at her when she walked outside, she hated it, she hated it,
and I hated her.
She desired the earth and I granted it to her—flesh interred—and Death rose above the rotted wood, and together, We waited until she sat in front of the mirror, spewing her own bitterness at herself, and slowly, the sea rose behind the glass, letting it drip sick drip in a tidal wave that cracked the edges of the glass—her attention was elsewhere, on her own deadened eyes—until the water overwhelmed, crashing and churning, cracking glass until it all released, spitting mirror shards into and around her,
the salt palpable even in the air—
And she fell within.
Her muffled screams distorted beneath the water and her hands reached out from behind the mirror as half of her body—head, neck, shoulders—fell into the deadly reflection and the other half pulled away, desperately seeking to breathe—
Breathe?
Breathe?
Air is a luxury—a privilege—granted to those still with a family, a life, a home—it is not granted to the sickened and those who bring illness—
And so Death rose slowly and soothingly with my hand in Hers, a shadow behind the mirror, and reached for the woman—she suffocates behind these walls—and She slowly sank below, back into her perch,
and her son’s scream echoed across the same choking walls for his mother,
she, reaching out to him, pressing through the walls, a damp outline through the paint, her screams ripping through the barrier,
and he, slamming fists and objects, tearing down the plaster to only find beams and rotted wood—the sudden absence of a person far worse than anything—
I know.
This knowledge is the remembrance, and this is the burden—it presses down, weighing as heavily as all of the salt in the sea—but it is mine, it is my binding because if I forget—if I forget, the fury will leave, the anger that has fueled my purpose.
As long as I remember, I cannot ever—ever—forget.