Chapter 7. Dyspnea #2
“No, Marina, listen to yourself. You’re so weak that it sounds like you’re standing on a mountain and speaking through two tin cans and a piece of string.
You’re not flying right now—that’s the worst thing you could do in your state.
Don’t worry, I’ll be there soon.” Marina can hear the sounds of her mother moving things around—probably already packing.
She clicks her tongue. “And in so little time! You just got there. You haven’t even had a chance to see the sights, or swim at the beach, or see Tata’s old house yet, or—”
“I did see it. Her house.”
Silence suddenly falls, and Haifa doesn’t speak for so long that Marina nearly takes the phone from her ear to see if it’s still connected.
“You saw it?” Her mother’s voice has changed from anxious to an open vulnerability. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“I saw it,” Marina hedges. She thinks of the journal she left lying on Rania’s kitchen table. “I’m sorry for not calling. But there’s some weird stuff about the house. I don’t know.” She sneaks a furtive glance at Khaled, but he’s closing the window curtains, blocking out the streetlamps outside.
“Weird? Sweetie, if you’re not safe, you need to go to Nazareth immediately. Go see Philippe.”
“No. I mean, yes, I’m safe. I’m fine. But the house—well, they all say it’s haunted.
” She whispers the last word. It’s not something she would have admitted before, but now—now, she has felt the house.
She has felt the city. Marina is still breathing, but it’s a strange sound, as if she’s sighing with each inhale.
“Haunted?” Haifa’s voice is tinny through the phone. “Honey, are you okay? Your breathing sounds bad.”
“I’m fine. Everyone says the house is … evil. I don’t know.” Marina pauses. “That’s what Rania said—she passes by it every day, you know, and she’s known the house for years—and then I went in and something … happened.”
“What do you mean something happened? And what does Rania mean? There are ghosts in the house?”
“She says it keeps kicking people out. People keep moving in and then something strange happens, and they have to leave.” Khaled is now staring directly at Marina.
She shifts her gaze uncomfortably, fingers twisting around the bedsheet.
“And then the house—responded to me when I was in there. Or something like that. I felt like it knew me.”
“Responded to you how? And did Rania elaborate? What are these hauntings?” Haifa says with an urgency that scares Marina.
“I don’t know, Mama. But there’s just something …
off.” Marina’s voice suddenly sounds squeezed and small.
Her mind flits to the elderly man on the sidewalk staring at her, attempting to tell her something, and the mass grave that appeared for a fleeting, agonizing second on the beach.
Even if Marina hadn’t seen these herself, there is a shadow that weighs over the city heavily; it can be felt in the skyscrapers, the cafés, in the buildings whose stones carry their age but no longer their families.
“Habibti, are you okay? Tell me what’s wrong.” She can hear her mother stand up straighter from the change in her voice.
Marina sucks in a huge gulp of air and releases it in an audible exhale.
The memory of the pier—of the city beneath the sea—suffocates her.
“There’s something really wrong with the city,” she whispers.
“It’s not just Tata’s house that’s haunted.
The entire city is bad. All of it feels like—a response. ”
“A response to…” Haifa’s voice trails off, but there is a certainty in it, like she already knows where Marina is going with this.
“The occupation,” Marina says, finishing her sentence for her.
Her throat closes with the inability to say the rest: her trip to Haifa wasn’t supposed to be like this.
It was the city of her grandmother’s childhood, the place her mother was named in honor of, and the place where Marina was to become whole.
But reality inhabits the city with a haunting grief that strips the city of any air; shadows and specters hang over Haifa with the remembrance of its past. Marina’s dream has slowly fallen apart with each passing hour she spends in this suffocating city.
“Well, I’ll be there soon. Don’t worry. We’ll get through this together,” Haifa says, and Marina can hear the nail between her mother’s teeth.
“Listen, before you go, give me Rania’s address,” she says, and her pencil scratches faintly in Marina’s ear as she tells her.
“Okay. I changed my mind about Philippe—don’t go yet if you’re not healthy.
Stay with Rania and get some rest. I’ll tell Hassan that you’re not coming back, okay? I’ll see you soon. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
The click sounds, and silence presses against Marina’s ear for a moment until she finally, slowly closes the phone. She waits for something to come to her, but there are no words to describe the overwhelm of conflicting emotions she has.
“Your mom is coming, ah?” Khaled asks.
Marina nods. “Of course.”
“You went to your tata’s house?” Khaled’s voice is quiet as he hovers beside the window.
“Earlier today.” Marina clears her throat. “Before all of this.”
“You actually went inside?” he asks, and Marina nods. “Did you hear anything?”
“Like what?”
“You would know. If you heard it.” He pauses, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t go that way very often. But once, a few months ago, I walked past it.” His gaze drops to his hands and he picks at an excess of skin around his thumb. “I heard—I heard a scream from inside.”
“Oh,” Marina says, but before she can think of what else to say, Khaled continues.
“I don’t know what it was. I was passing by and I swear I heard the most”—he searches for the word—“chilling scream I’ve ever heard.” He looks back up at her. “But there was no one inside. The doors were locked, the windows were shut. The sound still haunts me. I can hear it even now.”
Marina pinches the edge of the thin hospital blanket with her nails, scratching at the cloth. “Do you find the city…?” She trails off. “I mean, it’s not just the house, right? There’s something wrong with Haifa, too.”
Khaled leans against the wall as he considers her question. A deep sigh releases from his nose.
“I don’t know. I’ve lived here my whole life; I have no other sense of normal.
” He swallows. “But I notice things. Sometimes there are—flashes. I see my aunt sometimes near this hospital, the one who had dialysis here. And wallah, it’s her.
I swear. I always run up to her, thinking that one of these times, I’ll catch her and ask her what she needs.
It’s stupid. Maybe I’ll leave her a shawarma sandwich on a bench outside if she really misses it, you know?
Then I blink and she disappears.” His voice is soft.
“And of course, I feel insane. For wanting to catch my aunt, yes, but also—no one else notices these things. When I heard the scream, I stopped in my tracks. Deadly still. I thought someone was injured before realizing it came from the house.” His intense gaze stalls Marina’s breath for a moment.
“But no one else stopped. No one else looked. It was just me.”
The echoes of his words rest in the hospital walls for a moment.
“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Marina finally says, leaning her head back against the wall. “Everything is just … wrong.”
He hesitates, then walks over to reach for her shoulder and squeeze. His eyes are melted at the edges with a kind of soft kindness; there is no desire here, only genuine affection.
“You need to focus on getting better first. We’ll figure out the rest later. Your mom is coming soon—it’ll be okay.” Nodding silently to himself, he sits in the chair and flips through muted television channels.
“Thank you,” she whispers quietly. Silence stretches long, from wall to wall, until Marina speaks again. “Khaled?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I come stay with you guys? I mean, with Rania. After I’m out of here?” Marina intersperses Arabic into the English for privacy.
“I mean, we’ll have to ask her, but I’m sure she’ll say yes.” He rubs the back of his head. “Yeah. Yes. Of course.”
Marina pauses again. His earlier words press at the front of her mind: they killed her. She grimaces as she whispers the words aloud, but she has to know more. “Is your aunt buried in Haifa?”
Khaled looks up. “Yeah, she is.” He pauses. “Why do you ask?”
Marina looks down at her hands. “I don’t know. Was she from here? Like, was she buried in her homeland?”
“Ah. Yes,” Khaled says, smiling a little. “Our bloodline in Haifa runs deep.”
“Aren’t you ever worried, though?” Marina almost snaps with exasperation and anxiety, her true meaning coming out unbidden.
“About what?”
“About the occupation. The soldiers. The separation wall.” They killed her. “How do you do it?”
Khaled laughs a little, bitterness sharpening the edges of his breath. “Life under occupation has never been normal, but it’s the only life I’ve ever known. You have to cope somehow. If you’re not laughing, you’re crying, I guess.”
“Doesn’t that require—bravery, or something? Courage?” She coughs, and suddenly feels very tired.