Tasting the Sky: Part II: Balad–Part III

The nickname for all the villages was balad, place of origin, because here people lived a traditional life, unlike ours in the city.

She was worried that if some soldiers came during the day and noticed we were gone, they might take over the house as a hiding place for their training, trample the garden, or use the water supply and leave its lid open.

But each time we visited Nabi Samuel, my father wanted us to see the magnificent beauty of the land stretching in all directions, just as he had done a long time ago when he was a child.

Birds flew onto dancing treetops below me, and many distant towns flickered on the bright horizon, each with a minaret that pointed to the sky like a pencil pointing to a page.

“People’s minds are too simple to grasp the endless nature of God,” he would add.

Many people had been saying that much of the land in Palestinian cities, towns, and villages would soon be confiscated by the Israeli government.

She had many special eye movements, facial expressions, and finger gestures that asked us to eat, stop eating, sit, leave the room, or go find Father when needed.

When I asked her why she always wore the same style dress, she said that Palestinian women had embroidered their dresses with these flowers for hundreds of years. You could tell which town a woman was from by the colors and style of flowers embroidered on her dress.

Like many grandmas, Great-Grandma Jamila had tattoos that adorned the backs of her hands, her chin, and her forehead.

The mother goat, who was locked in the shed, had not seen her son’s slaughter, but she hit her horns hard against the door.

She stretched her chest tight like a bow, raised her head up, and screamed her grief into the sky for hours.

The moment each woman guest arrived in the yard, and before she reached the door, she ululated, making a loud trilling sound, to announce that she shared our joy.

While carefully working his scissors, Abu Qazem commended Basel for his courage in enduring the pain of this ancient ritual.

“Enduring pain makes you a man,” he said.

That was the first time she had uttered such an expression of affection to me.

Would she still love me if I did not fulfill her wish?

“Side by side with learning,” she said, as she took down the information needed to register me, “we emphasize cleanliness. If your daughter is not clean on any day, she will be punished or returned home.”

She commented that many camp families were unable to keep their children clean because of poverty, lack of water, and shortage of space.

At home, I played school and pretended that I was Lilian. I did not hit anyone in my classroom or scold them. I drew stars in their imaginary notebooks. I praised them and asked everyone to clap after anyone read a letter or a word correctly.

If they smelled of anything but soap, I argued with my mother that I should skip school that day, rather than be sent home in humiliation.

Slipping down the steep road that led to the camp houses, I felt like I was walking to the bottom of the world.

Most of the houses of Jalazone were crowded shacks, some as small as the mudroom of our goat. Many had roofs made of uneven zinc or asbestos sheets held in place by rocks. They were jammed together on both sides of a tiny street that split the camp like a trickle of water.

After only two trips, I no longer wanted to return. I also gave up on finding out whether Nofaleyyah’s mother had six fingers like her daughter, or what the television in the camp elder’s house looked like.

“Let us go,” Boo’s mother urged, nuzzling him with her trunk. Boo cried upon hearing his mother’s words. He roared in anguish.

Feeling her breath reassured me, but only momentarily. I wondered if she had died the second I walked away. I checked her breathing over and over for a long time until she woke up, agitated.

The principal talked about the importance of hard work and obeying the rules. “Manjadda wajad,” she said, meaning that those who persist shall achieve.

Lilian motioned that I should walk up and receive a purple package. When I did, the principal smiled and said something to me—perhaps a compliment, but I could not hear it because everyone was clapping.

“Jamal Abdel Nasser has died,” he shrieked. “Now we are all orphans.”

“He cared about all Arabs,” my father lamented. Abdel Nasser had been trying hard to stop the fighting between the government of Jordan and the Palestinian freedom fighters we called fedayeen when he had a heart attack and died.

People in Ramallah mourned, gathering in large groups and carrying empty coffins to show the sadness of having lost the leader they loved most.

Freedom of the word is the first prelude to democracy. She had heard Nasser say this on the radio, and she repeated it often.

The death of Abdel Nasser was accompanied by increased military activity in our area.

Pressing his cheek against the radio set, grimacing in anger at the static that always intercepted the words, Father cursed, saying that we were living in the middle of a daily war.

“This is the limit,” she said, her voice firm with finality.

“What have I done to deserve this sorrow?” he shouted.

“I neither drink alcohol nor gamble, as you ordered. I don’t even smoke,” he pleaded with God.

White clouds passed above him like angel caravans, perhaps carrying the complaints of others.

Father drove away slowly, and the distance between us and our home widened. We waved to the hill, the horizon, and the house, to the stone person, to the plants, and to the green door with the two windowpanes like eyes.

But I am past this checkpoint—I will never regret that I chose to remember.

But my eternal friend Alef helps me find the splinters of my life . . . and piece them back together.