warming over a flame so he could have a proper bath, the only one he got each month because only cold water came out of the dormitory tap. A simple cotton dishdasha would have been washed and kissed by the sun on the lines for him, and when he finally arrived, by taxi or rickshaw, the three women of his heart would wrap him with kisses and blessings.
Each time, he brought them small gifts and tales from Cairo. On one such visit, he spoke of news from Kuwait, where oil was pushing up new cities and industries, and a new society of entitled Bedouins was paying Palestinians to do everything from building and staffing their hospitals and schools to cooking their meals and wiping their asses. Several of his Palestinian comrades in Cairo had already moved to Kuwait and spoke fondly of the desert. “I was thinking maybe we could all go there,” he suggested, even though he knew his sister Nazmiyeh would never leave Palestine and he wasn’t sure his Yasmine would, either. The beekeeper’s widow, on the other hand, was ready to soar wherever the wind would take her, except to desert soil, where food could not grow from the ground; and Kuwait was merely a desert by the sea.
Nazmiyeh was in her fifth pregnancy when Mamdouh and Yasmine moved to Kuwait. Before they left, Nazmiyeh held her bother’s face, then Yasmine’s. She kissed them with tearing eyes and repeated the words that Mariam had deposited in her being: “We will always be together.”
Nazmiyeh felt the sting of being the only one of her family left in Gaza, but she knew Mariam was always there, and so was her husband, Atiyeh, a man who fought his own family to defend her. They had never accepted Nazmiyeh and, as more of his brothers married, the band of women who hated his wife grew more vicious under the lead of his mother, who never let it pass that her son had married beneath him. They said Nazmiyeh was bewitched like her mother, Um Mamdouh, and would invite evil wherever she was. Her sharp tongue was proof of the devil in her, they said. They thought she shook her ass purposefully when she walked and said they felt sorry for Atiyeh to have to endure such shame. They said her hijab wasn’t tight enough around her head and that she sometimes let her copper curls fall for all to see.
But the isolation they created for Nazmiyeh and Atiyeh only drew them closer. One baby came after another into a life that barely brought enough food, and evenings spent counting coins from each day’s catch of fish. It was a life that blossomed tenderly, with routines, silliness, tears, and demands. When the boys were small, Nazmiyeh would harness them two at a time to her back as she toiled, and as they grew, one by one they would accompany their father on his fishing boat in the Mediterranean Sea, where they learned to see magnificence and wonder, and to bow to Allah in humility and gratitude every day surrounded by water for miles. Nazmiyeh would wait on the shore until they disappeared into the sea’s expanse. Sometimes, she would stay there a while longer, staring into the mysterious blue between sky and water, singing Mariam’s song.
O find me
I’ll be in that blue
Between sky and water
Where all time is now
And we are the forever
Flowing like a river
SIXTEEN
When Teta Nazmiyeh talked about her brother, Mamdouh, or my khalo Mazen, her eyes would change. They became empty rooms that she’d enter and hurry to furnish with their stories. It was not nostalgia, but a chore of memory, a task to keep them near.
Three years after Mamdouh and Yasmine left, they returned for a visit with their firstborn, a one-year-old boy they had named Mhammad, after Yasmine’s father, the old beekeeper of Beit Daras. Nazmiyeh, of course, always pregnant or nursing, and with children dripping from her arms, took in Mhammad and pleaded with her brother to move back to Gaza where the boy could grow up with his cousins and in his own homeland. Even if it wasn’t Beit Daras, it was
Each time, he brought them small gifts and tales from Cairo. On one such visit, he spoke of news from Kuwait, where oil was pushing up new cities and industries, and a new society of entitled Bedouins was paying Palestinians to do everything from building and staffing their hospitals and schools to cooking their meals and wiping their asses. Several of his Palestinian comrades in Cairo had already moved to Kuwait and spoke fondly of the desert. “I was thinking maybe we could all go there,” he suggested, even though he knew his sister Nazmiyeh would never leave Palestine and he wasn’t sure his Yasmine would, either. The beekeeper’s widow, on the other hand, was ready to soar wherever the wind would take her, except to desert soil, where food could not grow from the ground; and Kuwait was merely a desert by the sea.
Nazmiyeh was in her fifth pregnancy when Mamdouh and Yasmine moved to Kuwait. Before they left, Nazmiyeh held her bother’s face, then Yasmine’s. She kissed them with tearing eyes and repeated the words that Mariam had deposited in her being: “We will always be together.”
Nazmiyeh felt the sting of being the only one of her family left in Gaza, but she knew Mariam was always there, and so was her husband, Atiyeh, a man who fought his own family to defend her. They had never accepted Nazmiyeh and, as more of his brothers married, the band of women who hated his wife grew more vicious under the lead of his mother, who never let it pass that her son had married beneath him. They said Nazmiyeh was bewitched like her mother, Um Mamdouh, and would invite evil wherever she was. Her sharp tongue was proof of the devil in her, they said. They thought she shook her ass purposefully when she walked and said they felt sorry for Atiyeh to have to endure such shame. They said her hijab wasn’t tight enough around her head and that she sometimes let her copper curls fall for all to see.
But the isolation they created for Nazmiyeh and Atiyeh only drew them closer. One baby came after another into a life that barely brought enough food, and evenings spent counting coins from each day’s catch of fish. It was a life that blossomed tenderly, with routines, silliness, tears, and demands. When the boys were small, Nazmiyeh would harness them two at a time to her back as she toiled, and as they grew, one by one they would accompany their father on his fishing boat in the Mediterranean Sea, where they learned to see magnificence and wonder, and to bow to Allah in humility and gratitude every day surrounded by water for miles. Nazmiyeh would wait on the shore until they disappeared into the sea’s expanse. Sometimes, she would stay there a while longer, staring into the mysterious blue between sky and water, singing Mariam’s song.
O find me
I’ll be in that blue
Between sky and water
Where all time is now
And we are the forever
Flowing like a river
SIXTEEN
When Teta Nazmiyeh talked about her brother, Mamdouh, or my khalo Mazen, her eyes would change. They became empty rooms that she’d enter and hurry to furnish with their stories. It was not nostalgia, but a chore of memory, a task to keep them near.
Three years after Mamdouh and Yasmine left, they returned for a visit with their firstborn, a one-year-old boy they had named Mhammad, after Yasmine’s father, the old beekeeper of Beit Daras. Nazmiyeh, of course, always pregnant or nursing, and with children dripping from her arms, took in Mhammad and pleaded with her brother to move back to Gaza where the boy could grow up with his cousins and in his own homeland. Even if it wasn’t Beit Daras, it was
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