Chapter 9. Where Is Nuhad? #3
Basel charged through the crowd, screams unabating at all sides around them, Nuhad not knowing if the next would be theirs.
The blue-gray of dawn was finally lightening the sky a bit and cast clarity on the crowd.
As Nuhad was pulled forward by her father, her small hand nearly crushed in his tight grip, she saw something on the ground, on the stones.
A body.
Nuhad looked up immediately, sudden tears streaking her face, hoping that the sky would wash away the sight. But she’d already seen it, an old woman lying face down, dark marks of dirt or blood streaking the back of her house dress. Trampled, like her mother could have been.
The crowd finally thinned out and the lightening sky cast illumination over the sea, where boats of all kinds and sizes were ported.
“Go! Go! The British army will give refuge to anyone who gets there!”
They were tens of thousands of people whose first breath free of the surge was salted with sea air, and every single person turned toward the British army—the ones who would leave them that day—and ran.
As the house opens to Marina, it blooms in memory tinted by longing.
Shadowy images of bustling activity on the storefront floor cross the corners of her eyes.
There are fishermen buying bait and laughing with one another, but when she turns to look at them, there is only emptiness.
And Marina and the boy—they, too, are ethereal.
She waves her hand and it moves like a lazy cloud of smoke.
Look without looking.
The boy is at the top of the steps, holding the door open for her. Marina nods. She knows this game. Her eyes unfocus and blur, and there it is.
The store is packed with people buying bait and poles; in the corner, the owner tells stories about his greatest catch as a child.
She tries not to stare—that’s how he disappears—but there’s a familiarity in his features.
Nuhad’s mouth. Haifa’s jawline. Marina feels a kinship to him, and as she moves toward the stairs, she reaches out to touch him.
Her hand passes through his arm like air, but she shivers. She’s suddenly cold.
Come, the boy beckons, so Marina climbs up the stairs.
The living room opens in the same way, and as she enters it, it feels honey-sweet and golden-lit and Marina wants to sink into the sofa and let herself be taken by its warmth.
There are small trinkets on a shelf, little camels and pyramids.
Sunlight filters in through the windows and splashes across these souvenirs.
Look.
Marina walks through the kitchen that faces the sea, down the light pink hallway and past her great-grandparents’ bedroom, beyond her tata’s bedroom, but the house’s throat keeps going.
It yawns open at such a distance that Marina’s eyesight ends before it does.
There are doors along the wall, spaced evenly.
“It’s so much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside,” she breathes, hovering at the entrance of this grand hallway. “I don’t remember this.”
There are treasures in here. Memories. Let me show you.
The boy offers his small hand and Marina takes it. Her other hand traces the walls as they float through together. They pass dozens of doors—jagged, like teeth—before he finally stops at one. His chin points toward it, an open invitation.
A floor carpeted entirely in photographs is the first thing Marina sees in this room.
It’s the only thing—the photos are on the ground, tacked to the walls, hovering in the air on invisible strings.
They are black-and-white moments when she focuses, but when Marina looks away, the lives within begin to dance off of the paper and into the air, and she can hear snippets of conversation and music.
“Look,” Marina says. “It’s my tata.” She kneels, pointing to a photograph of her grandmother as a child. She’s smiling in a dress that whips in the wind as the sea roars behind her. Marina can feel the salty wind against her teeth.
All left behind.
Marina gathers the photos in her arms, sliding them neatly into a small pile, but they disintegrate into dust as she walks back over the threshold. The door-tooth snaps shut behind her, locking into place.
“What’s happening?” The hallway feels dark and damp now, and cobwebs hang above them at the edges of the ceiling. Marina’s feet crunch over something. She looks down and there is a white gravel beneath her feet.
Salt. The house’s salt.
Marina pinches a bit of salt in her fingers and feels the overwhelming grief from its touch. Slowly, the walls of the hallway begin to close in. Her legs are shaking, but still, she trusts this boy.
Come.
She follows him as they continue down the shrinking hallway. They walk so far down this bottomless mouth that when Marina looks behind her, crouching, she can no longer see the wall they entered from.
Her bare feet sink into the carpet, squishing softly against the increasingly warm dampness that soaks through. A rumble roils through the floor and beneath Marina, causing her to lose balance, and a hot gust of wind, like breath, washes over her with a sickly-sweet scent.
“Are we safe here?” Her voice trembles as she clutches his hand tighter. “It’s like—like the house is eating us,” she whispers, afraid that the house will hear. If there is a tongue, and throat, and breath—there must be ears, too.
No. It’s sheltering us. Protecting us within the past. You’re safe with me.
The boy stops in front of the last room at the end of the hall. Marina’s eyesight deceives her; a moment ago, all she could see was yet more hallway, but now, they’ve reached the last door. She crawls through.
The beige of the British army’s uniform was like a beacon in the early dawn light. Into soldiers’ hands were thrust babies, by their sides were left elderly family members. All of this was done in hope as the din of people clamoring for refuge rose.
A scream ripped the fabric of the crowd, and it was mere moments between the sound of that shriek and the next sound of bullets being fired.
Nuhad ducked, but her father’s hand came away limply, and she looked up to see blood leaking through a narrow gash on the collar of his nightshirt.
An officer shouted and waved his hands in the air: “Don’t shoot!
We’re British!” Beside him, a soldier was on the ground with the bullet that had just grazed Basel.
Basel moaned and let go of Victoria, keeling over as he pressed his hand against his neck. All of this happened in a matter of seconds. Nuhad’s heart clamored against its cage. Victoria, her face a sickly shade of translucent now, came around and pried Basel’s fingers off.
“Let me see.” They kneeled together as two boulders in the still-moving crowd.
Nuhad covered her eyes with her hands, leaving only a dark slit through which to watch her mother tear open the nightshirt hole and reveal a bleeding gash through his neck.
“It’s just a graze. It’s just a graze,” she said. Blood continued to drip down his arm.
Basel murmured something, but the blood spurted as he spoke, gushing into the red rivers pooling against his body. He shook his head and pointed to the boats.
“Yes. Yes, you can. Come on.” Victoria’s voice was hysteric despite her words being calm and authoritative. Sweat beaded on her brow as she helped hoist him up with Tariq and Nuhad, and all three tried to move Basel toward a ship.
Nuhad finally tripped, the shared weight of her father too much, and her knees scraped the pavement before she pulled herself back up. Basel collapsed against the seawall, and in the light, his face was as white as Victoria’s.
“You’re losing blood. Oh, you’re losing blood, habibi!
” Victoria screamed. Her calm demeanor broke as she tore the sleeve of her nightgown, pressing it against Basel’s throat and looking about wildly.
Her shoulder was also now darkened with Basel’s life.
It was everywhere, dripping from his arm and onto the ground below them—nearby, a child screamed, and Nuhad knew it was for the nightmarish sight of her father.
Victoria’s face hardened. She grabbed Nuhad and Tariq by their wrists and dragged them, carving a space through the crowd, to the British army. “Go!” she yelled, and pushed them both toward the sea. “Swim for a boat!”
“Mama, no,” Nuhad said, and Tariq was shaking his head back and forth, his lips trembling with a silent refusal.
“Go. Now.” Victoria’s lip curled in a final anger that Nuhad had only ever known for homework or curfews.
Then, her face softened, and tears fell across her cheeks.
“I have to get help for your father. You’re children.
They’ll take you.” She patted their heads again and again despite the desperation in her voice.
Nuhad nodded. Her gaze had blackened at the edges and all she could see was the crying face of her mother; all she could hear was the sound of her pleas.
“There are others swimming. You have to go. Now.” And with the final word, Victoria pushed them again toward the water. She turned on her heel and ran to find someone, anyone, who could help Basel.
Nuhad faced the sea and ran. It had always pulled her to its waves, but now, the only pull she felt was to her city.
To her parents, who she was being forced to leave behind.
Her legs were like lead as she ran. The water was still freezing in the early spring morning.
Nuhad’s teeth chattered as the water reached her waist, and as it teased the cold against her sensitive skin.
She pushed through, feeling the resistance of the shallow part, knowing that the sea wanted her to stay on the shore for once, and dove into the water.
There were hundreds of others in the sea, their bodies all bobbing desperately atop the high waves for the boats that were already moving away from shore. Some yelled as they came up for air.
“Stop! Please!”
“Stop!”
“We’re here!”