Chapter 9. Where Is Nuhad? #4
Nuhad reached for Tariq’s hand and realized that the young boy swimming beside her wasn’t her brother. He glanced at her once and continued pushing his way through the oncoming wave.
“Tariq? Tariq!” Nuhad screamed, suspended in the water. She looked toward the closest boat, whose speed was outpacing hers with every second. Salt sprayed into her eyes and she rubbed them furiously as she yelled for her brother again. “Tariq!”
She flailed for a moment, looking about, then cursed under her breath as she headed back to shore. As she came up for air, a familiar figure caught her eye.
Tariq stood, the front of his pale blue pajamas clutched in the grip of a soldier.
Nuhad froze as she realized that the uniform was that of the Haganah. Tariq struggled, fighting against him, squirming to get to the sea. To Nuhad.
“Tariq!” she screamed, and though her voice strained against the confines of her throat, though it reverberated all around her with urgency, it didn’t carry that far.
Nuhad splashed furiously back to shore, desperately trying to keep her head above water despite the foamy film obstructing her gaze.
Her lungs strained, but she didn’t stop yelling his name.
As she choked against the air, saltwater entered her throat and she sputtered, coughing.
Bang.
Gasping air back into her lungs, Nuhad wiped the sting of salt from her eyes as she searched for the source of the shot. Her heart beat impossibly fast.
“Tariq? Tariq!” Her feet hit sand, but her legs were still so slow. The water pushed against her, a tide now keeping her in the grip of the sea.
Why was she so slow?
She panted, pumping her arms and legs against the current, and tumbled freely against the froth. Finally free from the water, she stumbled over herself, running against the resistance of the sand, and dropped to her knees before her brother.
Tariq was on the ground. Blood spread slowly in a halo around his body. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. And suddenly, Nuhad screamed at her brother’s stillness. At the blood around him. There was a bullet hole in his chest.
The final room of the house has somehow led them both outside, far from the house itself.
Marina turns to look behind her, to the door from whence they came, but there’s only the darkened city.
The moon is the only light shining over the parking lot where they stand; in its luminescence, even the gravel gleams like diamonds.
Just beyond the square is the ocean. Her waves breathe gently: in and out.
The boy turns and finds a spot in the parking lot and stands atop it decisively. Resigned. He points to the ground.
It’s mine.
“What is?” Marina asks. She steps around him to see the spot in full clarity, but there’s nothing on this random area besides gravel.
It’s mine.
The boy’s smile has long since disappeared—now, only a deeply etched sadness lifts his eyebrows and pulls down the corners of his mouth. Tears brim over the edges of his long eyelashes like moonbeams. His eyes lock with hers, and she knows where she’s seen him before.
“Yours?”
Marina sees him without seeing him. A flash of his nose, and there she is in his face: Nuhad.
It’s mine. It’s mine. It’s mine.
He drops to his knees, pounding the tar, and fades against the black—as though he’s returning to his grave. Marina’s voice trembles in the still air.
“Tariq.”
Nuhad’s hands were dark as she pressed again, again, again, into Tariq’s chest, willing life to swell back into his lungs. She pressed her ear against his heart, but there was no familiar, reassuring low beat.
She slid her hands beneath her brother’s back and legs and lifted him up, sand falling from both of their bodies like rain, and wobbled beneath his limp weight.
Nuhad stumbled forward, eyes desperately searching for her parents, but she only made it a couple of paces before nearly falling with Tariq.
She needed her parents. She needed her parents.
Placing her brother down gently, she looked around for a landmark to remember where he was for when she returned.
The Badr pharmacy was to her right—she could remember that.
There were no blankets—in fact, huge swaths of refugees now camped at the port, all needing food, blankets, and shelter.
In the nearby alley, Nuhad found a used tarp and she brushed it off, tears brimming at the edges of her eyes.
She covered Tariq gently, leaving his face for last. He still looked like Tariq—skin tanned, lashes long, hair curling over his forehead.
He looked as though he were sleeping. Gently, Nuhad pulled the tarp over his face.
“Mama? Baba?” she cried. She was but one seeking others in an entire city. “Basel? Victoria? Sayadi?!”
Her feet stumbled over cobblestones and sparse belongings. Blood had dried and cracked against her pajamas and the fabric rubbed stiffly against her skin. A red ambulance drove in the street. She walked toward it as if in a dream.
In the distance, a Zionist flag waved over a home.