Chapter 13. Return #7
Nuhad gazes at her with soft eyes; there is almost a playfulness in her demeanor. It is as if the Nuhad of the journals has finally returned, that the woman she became and the girl she once was are finally one. As if this is the Nuhad she was always meant to be.
“May I?” she asks.
Haifa doesn’t know what she means, but she nods.
Nuhad squeezes Haifa’s hand. In that connection—ghost to flesh—Nuhad’s skin slowly begins stripping itself away, starting from their shared touch and moving all along Nuhad’s arms, her breasts, her stomach, her legs.
When the skin has finally fallen to ribbons on the floor, Nuhad slowly turns in a circle.
“What—” Haifa starts, her eyes wide with awe.
Gray-cloaked phantoms rise in and around Nuhad, integrating into her bone and flesh, but they are out in the open now—not repressed below decades of buried secrets.
Haifa looks closer. The spirits are memories: her mother running on the beach, kicking a ball to Tariq, crying outside of Haifa’s bedroom door.
The phantoms dip into and out of one another, comprising the very fabric of Nuhad’s being. Nuhad turns back toward Haifa.
“I kept … so much from you. I made you feel like you were never worthy.”
Haifa swallows but the words are caught against her dry throat. It is everything she wanted her mother to say. It is more.
“Why?” She shudders at the familiarity of the word.
It has been her constant companion in desperately wanting her mother’s affection; craving love and reassurance from those around her; wanting to be more without fully understanding why.
Haifa’s free hand clenches into a fist until her knuckles turn white.
“I didn’t want you to live the same pain. But it made my love feel … conditional. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
It is far easier to press against the source of the heartache and suppress it, bury it somewhere deep like Nuhad did.
But Nuhad now stands in front of her, baring herself and all of her vulnerabilities.
Haifa releases her clenched fist, allowing it to relax, and places it over the hand her mother holds.
She can’t keep suppressing. The heartache brings imperfection and pain but it is better to feel it than to carry the burden of its buried ghosts. She, too, has to bare herself.
“You gave me a mountain to climb,” Haifa says quietly. “All the time. I wanted so badly to live up to your city, and your memories, and the life that you sacrificed for me.”
“You’ve always been perfect just the way you are.” Nuhad punctuates the statement with a held gaze. “My beautiful girl. There is no mountain to climb.”
“Do you promise?” Haifa’s eyes brim with sudden tears.
“I promise.”
“Mama.” Haifa throws her hands around her mother and she surrenders into the hug. She weeps into the phantoms and the water dissolves into the memories, granting them saturation and color. Her sobs are dry, but the hole in her heart is full. She loves herself.
She loves—herself.
“I’m sorry,” Nuhad whispers.
The words bring tears to Haifa’s eyes—a single ghost exorcizes Haifa’s haunting. She releases her grasp and, still holding on to her mother, looks down at
Marina
sits on the floor, watching not in horror but rather awe as her grandmother reveals the phantoms she lived with her entire life. Their conversation is hushed, spoken between the whispers of muffled hair and cloth, but Marina understands.
Nuhad has finally revealed herself. Fully. She no longer breaks herself into fragments and secrets.
Marina looks down at her hands, where the skin wraps fully around her body. She is not exposed like her grandmother, but she is here. There is the familiar pull from her father’s side, from her mother’s side, from her own sense of normal in Chicago with her friends—but here she sits in one piece.
She looks back up to find Haifa extending a hand for her, and she takes it. The flesh of her mother’s skin is soft and unblemished, as if the house’s salt not only stemmed her bleeding but also healed the cuts. And it, too, is whole.
“Are you okay, mama?” Haifa asks. Her hand roves over Marina’s face and cups her chin at the bottom before falling to her shoulder.
Marina’s chest warms at her own mother calling her mama. She hasn’t done that since Marina was a child. “I’m okay. You?”
Haifa nods back, and there is a flash of a face—a younger Haifa—that spreads through her expression.
She has always been a child trapped in an adult’s body, wanting and wishing for approval from everyone.
In a single instant, Marina can see the entirety of Haifa: a woman, who was once a girl, who only wanted to live up to the expectations her own mother set for her.
The whole of Haifa stands before her—flawed. And in one piece.
“No more secrets,” Marina says. “No more fragments.”
“No more.” Haifa looks at her with an assuredness that has never been there before. Her expression is lighter but it holds a certain weight, as if she has finally decided: on love, on self, on being.
“And no secrets. Just … ourselves.”
Haifa holds up a pinky and Marina hooks hers inside.
“I promise.”
She pulls her into a hug and Marina buries herself into her mother’s shoulder. The words are loud, even in this muffled state.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Haifa whispers.
“It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
Marina pulls back and looks at both women in front of her. They have both carried the burden of loss and expectation their whole lives but now they meet in the middle, their shared vulnerabilities lifting the weight together.
As the skin slowly re-forms on Nuhad, Marina can see an understanding in both her mother and grandmother that mirrors Marina’s own.
She lets herself feel the weight of completion, and smiles at its presence.
She is unfragmented—despite the different expectations, despite a lifetime of in-between, despite being pulled in different directions.
It was not Palestine that granted her this.
Marina gifted it to herself. Here she is, feeling like her entire, full self despite everything, and finally,
they
have returned. They are all home.
My family.
Nuhad’s arms widen to wrap around both her daughter and granddaughter without salt, without buried secrets; the part of herself that she left in the city now rests peacefully in her heart.
Haifa closes her eyes, feeling the release that comes from internal love—she accepts herself.
And Marina smiles in the embrace of her mother and grandmother, finally whole.
Marina inhales with unobstructed lungs and as she pulls away, she looks up, startled by a booming sound from the entrance.
Khaled stands at the door, which swings on a loose hinge.
His chest heaves strenuously, and every part of him drips water from the storm.
When he left the parking lot, news reporters and neighbors had already begun to gather around the mass grave in the day’s first light.
In the wake of the storm’s destruction lay the truth.
They will gather together and fight to give them a proper burial and the dignity that they deserve.
Rania stands behind him, looking fearful and nostalgic all at once. She has been awake since Haifa left.
“Are you okay? Are you all right?” Khaled rushes over, the water flinging from his skin. His eyes search Marina and Haifa for injuries.
“Yes,” Haifa says. A completeness has settled in her soul. “Yes, actually. I think we’re all okay.” She laughs—a full-throated release, not an anxious giggle—and takes Marina’s hand in hers. “I think we’re actually really okay.”
Marina nods, pressing her lips together. If she allows them to tremble, tears will fall. Here, in this house, she’s finally found the answer she’s been seeking.
Rania shakes from the doorway, her knees weak with the reality of standing in Nuhad’s home for the first time since the genocide. Somehow, despite everything she has witnessed, the home is still warm. A lightness exists.
A figure catches her eye.
“Nuhad?” Rania whispers. Her arm quivers as she reaches for her childhood friend. “Nuhad.” She breathes—
And steps inside of the home. It has been fifty-four years.
“Rania.” Nuhad’s voice breaks as she walks to meet her friend.
Hesitating at first, and then all at once, Rania grasps Nuhad into an embrace, squeezing her eyes tightly. When they open again, she sees a boy.
Tariq.
His ghostly body is no longer flickering but rather fully realized. He walks up to Nuhad and tugs on the bottom of her shirt in such a familiar way that it brings tears to Rania’s eyes. She pulls away.
Nuhad smiles down at him and takes his hand. A large rip breaks the silence as the house splits the wall open, tearing the floral wallpaper in two, and beckons them inside. Tariq waves shyly.
“It’s yours now,” Tariq says quietly. “It’s yours to protect.”
“It’s always been yours,” Nuhad says. “Our home.”
Together, they turn and walk through the wall. Their bodies melt inside of the gaping blue beyond. It’s as if they walk into the welcoming mouth of the sea. Everywhere, beyond the walls, is calm, breathing water.
“What—?” Haifa starts, but her sentence dies as the wall closes behind them, swallowing up the sea.
Something settles within the house. The stones feel lifeless; the wallpaper is simply an object. Whatever spirits lingered here are now gone—or they’ve returned to where they belong.
“It’s done,” Rania says, and her voice carries a quiet awe. For the first time in decades, the house feels calm.
“The house is back,” Marina says. It’s the home of her grandmother’s childhood; there are no hauntings or spirits left inside.
“Are you both okay?” Rania asks.
Haifa nods. “I think so.”
“What happened?” Rania takes another step despite her trembling knees.
“I don’t know.” Marina shakes her head. “But it was—”
“Something,” Haifa finishes for her. “Something special.”