Chapter 7. Dyspnea #4
“Thank you for your hard work for us over the years. But—after tonight…” His voice trails off. “I think you understand.” His sympathetic smile is etched into his face with an ice pick. His lips are glued into place. “And you’re close to retirement, anyway. It’ll be good for you, too.”
A bubble of hilarity rises in Rania’s throat. Israelis have always had a knack for doing this—for phrasing things as if they are doing you a favor, when in reality it’s for their own benefit. It’s a skill, wallah.
Rania says nothing and instead drops the supplies where she stands. The gloves leave the same powdery dryness on her hands, but they are left—dropped—on the floor as she walks away. Rolling her sleeves down, she says nothing as she exits the house. She feels lighter.
Haifa is tearing through her house like the storm that will soon hit Haifa, her hands flying about like a dozen winged birds.
Clothing is in one pile; toiletries have been half started and then abandoned in search of other things she needs for the trip.
Her heart berates her with every pounding beat: stupid, stupid, stupid.
She never should have let Marina go to Haifa to dig up what was buried.
“Fuck,” she hisses to herself. She’s found the list of Palestine phone numbers stuffed in the back of her desk drawer, but it reminds her that she needs a ride to O’Hare. Shaking with anxiety, she punches Sara’s number into the phone.
“Hello?”
“Sara?” she says immediately. “Can you please come pick me up and take me to the airport?” She checks the clock and does a quick mental calculation. “Tomorrow. First thing? It’s an emergency. I’ll tell you about it on the way—Marina’s in the hospital.”
She bites at her lip, worry catastrophizing the infinitesimal second it takes for Sara to give a curt “Of course. I’ll come pick you up at nine AM?”
“Yes, yes, that’ll be perfect.” Haifa grunts as she pulls her old, worn suitcase from its place beneath her bed. She glances around wildly, thinking if she needs to ask Sara for anything else.
The pieces of paper on the table—the ones that fell from behind the photograph—stare at her.
“Haifa,” Sara says, interrupting her thoughts. “Haifa—breathe. She’ll be fine. Everything will be okay.”
“I know, I know,” Haifa says absentmindedly. She grabs the papers and stuffs them into her backpack. “Can you actually also translate that thing I asked about tomorrow, too? Please?”
“Of course, habibti, but can you do something for me?” she asks, and at this, Haifa finally stops.
Her limbs vibrate with nerves, and in the silence, she wonders if she’s finally pushed Sara too far.
If she will finally stop being her friend because of all that she’s asked for.
Haifa has always been too much and never enough.
“Can you just take a deep breath for me?”
Haifa nods, then remembers that Sara can’t see her. “Okay.”
She inhales deeply and holds it at the very top for a moment before releasing it all in a long exhale.
“Good,” she hears Sara say. Behind her, in the world beyond the phone’s receiver, an elderly man’s voice echoes as it calls for Sara. “Everything will be okay, ah? Listen, I have to get back to work. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Haifa says again. She flips the phone shut.
The thin gray mouth of the suitcase is stretched wide before her, and, kneeling, she pulls the pile of clothes closer, rolling and stuffing things into the corners as her hair falls into the front of her face; her breath is hot and labored, and suddenly she stops, staring at the luggage for a moment.
Haifa will return to Haifa.
The realization pains her like a knife to the stomach—it slices through the barely maintained focus since she spoke to Marina.
Haifa, for the first time in her life, will go to the city of her mother’s memory.
She will see the streets that Nuhad lived and breathed through, the beach that she so wistfully spoke of.
Haifa will return to what she should have been.
She stares through the window from her spot on the floor.
A figure crosses the blink of her eye in shadow, and her pulse quickens as she looks back at the room. There’s nothing there, but when she turns to the window again, Nuhad’s familiar gaze locks directly on to her.
She’s a ghostly shade of white and her mouth is open in a yawning maw, as if she’s yelling. The falling sunset lights her from behind and shades her face. Her eyes, hooded beneath age, are darkened by desperation—the same kind she saw just before Marina left.
“Mama?” Haifa whispers. Her voice catches.
“Don’t go,” Nuhad finally says. She presses her hand up to the window, and in her palm is the same dripping scarlet from before. She slides it down, leaving a single, broad pomegranate streak on the glass. “Already gone.”
Even in death, her mother cannot share the most vulnerable part of her soul with the daughter who should have served as the panacea to the pain.
Slowly, and without her permission, tears begin to fall silently down Haifa’s cheeks. Pain swells up in her throat from the lump of repressed sadness. Her vision blurs as she feels the same aching, bottomless need that has accompanied her for most of her life.