Chapter 12. The Path of the Moon #4
The boxes have all been dragged and settled and the couple now lives here, though can it be called living when life is stolen, one right after another in a long line of thieves who all reap the fruit of the soldier who took the first stab with his soiled, bloody, bleeding hands and claimed the house as his, even as he threw pictures in the trash—and yet kept the frames to slide his own photos into—even as bedrooms were decorated with memories and the bookshelf with mementos, even as homework was left on the kitchen table, with a young boy’s name scribbled in the top-right corner as Tariq? Is that living?
The cold fireplace seethes with an all-encompassing, self-immolating anger that radiates from my very bones.
The couple starts, scared of the sensation they have caused, and they laugh—how silly, yes, how silly—and they tap each other on the shoulders as they continue dragging their belongings through this salted earth.
But behind the anger, in a small little box tucked away for protection, is grief.
so much grief
Death has promised and She delivers—the water rises, drawn from the sea and the wells, and the salt mixes with the ash, and it does so of its own volition, shadow into sea; the water continues to rise and quickly surpasses ankle’s depth into knee-level and it is here, the grief is here, it has spilled and it is all over the floor and sinking weight into my stone.
The couple’s fear emanates as they splash through the water and their instant transformation feeds my own grief—the agony of being one minute too late i need to stop remembering—and they try to figure out how to turn it off, the water must be coming from somewhere, but there is no turning it off, because there are only
unending tears.
Tears and salt and grief from three generations now—this is not life, this is not why my stones were set in place—and after a Nakba, a catastrophe, a cutting from the root that has never ended or stopped; this Nakba, my ending, is a hurricane that will come and sweep everything away, like my grief, like this storm, this grief and remembrance and Death, within.
The water rises to their hips and the man’s arm is muscled trying to wrench my door—Death’s door—but it won’t move, and why should I make it?
Who is he to me, other than a thief—a spitting, evil enabler whose existence lies atop the true pool of seawater, Death’s perch, her pool of blood?
Who gave Death this home first? The woman swims, desperately, desperately, to the kitchen and clutches a knife still sitting on the counter, just above the water, and shoves it into her teeth as she races back, ready to cut their way out.
Panic tears open their faces, the gray from the dulled light of the window etching it deeper into their eye hollows, but what fear is this compared to what I know—nothing, it is baseless, I do not feel vindicated. It is not even a fraction, not even—
The tears refuse to stop and as they fall, salt encrusts and entombs the stone; the fire has been extinguished, but the heat—the fury—still permeates the room as Grief and Anger hold hands, and this bubbles and boils the water, and steam fills the room and coats the glass in condensation.
They yell for it to stop, their yells an audacious plea for mercy from the one whose lives they have supplanted, they scream, they shout for a god that does not exist because it is Me and I am Death and We are God and they keep yelling but—
I. AM. MOURNING.
—how is stopping possible? There is no ceasing when they have thrown the first stone, they have killed the first person, they continue this cycle as the remembrance haunts my soul—eats me alive, rots the wood—how can I stop?
My heart—shattered and broken over and over and over again and I can’t make it stop because the grief is ever-present, like the salt in the sea, like the water that gathers endlessly—drip, drip, drip—in this house.
They are floating now—the luxury of floating, the luxury of keeping one’s head above water rather than being trampled or drowned by fleeing boats—and clasp one another’s hands, but these are low ceilings that have protection from the gods themselves, from storms, from earth-shattering winds, from everything, it seems, except settlers—
It is at their chins now.
The knife cuts against her skin as she stabs it—slowly, so slowly—through the water and against the door; he reaches for it and the blade strikes the palm of his hand. Blood leaks from their wounds and into the salt, but the sea swallows it, red into endless blue.
The grief, the rage, this remembrance is all-consuming; it is too much for one house to carry and still they all connect with one another in a sickening, intimate dance that has lined my mouth with salt and sharpened my edges.
The couple sputters for air but there is none left—only hunger.
Always, this gnawing, aching hunger—this grief.
Nuhad is dead. She is gone. And her descendants are outside of the door, somewhere in the city, wanting to be let into this monstrosity; the blood releases through the crack below the door—
I just wanted my family.