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To Tata.

May your dreams no longer be a fantasy, and may all Palestinians be able to live as freely as the sea breathes.

CHAPTER 1

Excised Limbs

Occupation begets suffocation and is in itself a theft of the air; it becomes impossible to breathe in this sudden grip that chokes life away. It is emptiness. This theft stifles in every corner it lurks: the mundanities, the paperwork, the checkpoints. Not only is it an occupation of the land, it becomes an occupation of the lungs too.

For a house that has held families within its walls for generations, and especially for the small stone house overlooking the Mediterranean Sea whose family was stolen, it is entirely the same feeling of emptiness.

Why is the house in Haifa haunted?

CHICAGO SUBURBS, 2002

Black letters blur at their edges against the pixelated white glow of the computer screen. Marina’s eyes unfocus and refocus. She watches the letters come into form and slip away, her head lolling back against the desk chair with her feet propped up against the wall. The white paint has been smudged gray in the shape of two ovals. Marina has been staring at the same screen for almost five minutes.

“Sweetie?” Marina’s mother’s voice comes from behind the door. She knocks, a half tap, before swinging it open anyway.

Marina sighs, her eyes snapping back to reality as she sits upright. The polyester carpet is rough against her toes as she twirls her chair to face her mother.

“That damn lawn.” Haifa flops onto her backside, arms splayed out, on Marina’s bedspread. Her forehead is wet with the sheen of sweat. She lies there for one moment before sitting back up. “Why is it so dark in here?”

She moves over to the window at the far corner, where Marina’s heavy black curtain covers the late afternoon.

“No, no, leave it—” Marina flinches from the sudden light. The sun is an orange ball whose rays shine in half form as it dips below the roof of the house across the street.

“Let there be light.” Haifa giggles at her own joke and turns. Her canines overlap the front two teeth slightly; it adds to the unfocused image Marina associates with her mother. It’s not just her nervous smile—it’s the way her hair is always frizzy from the Chicago humidity, coils defying one another as they separate out. It’s the way tiny black mascara clumps always weigh heavily in dark smudges below her eyes. Haifa is always missing a button, or her shirt is on backward, or she’s squinting because she can’t find her glasses. She’s blurry. Unfocused.

“Any luck?”

Marina squints from the sun and holds a hand up to her eyes as she follows her mother until she sits on the bed again. “About as much luck as you have with the garden.”

“Ah. So, none at all then.” Haifa grins as she spreads her hands behind her, leaning back on the worn bedspread. It’s an old comforter, brown and pink—an artifact of Marina’s early teenage years. “Hmm … I could check at the school. Maybe someone there would have some connections? Where are you looking?”

“Trust me, ya Mama.” She flips her eyes up exaggeratedly. “I’m looking everywhere.”

“I believe you, sweetie, I do—I just can’t believe that a young, successful woman in computer science wouldn’t be able to find a job right out of college.” Haifa shakes her head. “I mean … how is that possible? Everyone I know who studied computer science now works at some nice, big tech company. We must be doing something wrong.”

The disappointment in her mother’s voice stings—its light emphasis on we—but Marina brushes it off as she stands, clasping her hands and stretching, hearing the small pops in her back. She closes her eyes and zeroes in on the feeling of release.

“God, it’s so hot in here.” Haifa fans herself and giggles again in Marina’s silence.

“I need water.” The door creaks as Marina opens it, a slight hint for her mother to follow.

“Well.” Haifa stands and pats down the bedspread, smoothing out the wrinkles that aren’t there. “If you don’t find anything … maybe you could look into graduate school.”

Marina bites the inside of her cheek to keep from rolling her eyes. Haifa gets ahead of herself before Marina has a chance to keep up. “I haven’t resorted to that yet. I’ll find something.”

“Would you want to do more computer science?” Haifa puts her hands up in surrender. “Or it could be for something fun—it doesn’t have to be computer science!” Haifa rambles as they walk down the narrow hallway to the kitchen. “There are lots of respectable fields you could go into. You could teach computer science—that’s a noble profession.”

The prompt of graduate school echoes in Marina’s head as if it could hold the answers. All of her friends have everything already figured out: Jessie is applying to medical schools, Rosa is already working at a housing organization and helping people, Leila is taking a couple of gap years with the Peace Corps. Everyone has always had a plan—except for Marina. She’s only ever followed the path Haifa laid out for her. But maybe graduate school could finally answer the questions of who Marina really is and what she wants to do with her life.

“… Oh! What about an Arabic course? You could learn, and then share with me. How fun would that be? We could practice together!” Haifa claps her hands, satisfied.

“Fun,” Marina repeats. The yellow of the kitchen greets her; it’s a spot of brightness against the house’s dark wood. The curtains are dulled sunshine and matched by the slightly sticky wallpaper with yellow daisies flowered across. Even the dishes, lying out to dry, are plastic yellow against the white countertop.

“I’m serious.” Haifa leans against the kitchen counter and props her chin in her hands. “Why not? You’re going to Nazareth soon—maybe you could pick up a short course while you’re there.”

At this, Marina’s jaw locks with the effort of attempting to ask Haifa for something in a way that won’t hurt her feelings. The summer humidity is palpable in the air, even with the air-conditioning unit whining, and it mixes with the unspoken feelings.

“I’ll go look up programs right now. I’m sure if you asked, they would let you in, even though it’s last minute. Arabs on Arab timing!” Haifa giggles again, but it’s a forced sound and it hits against Marina’s wall of silence.

“I’ve been thinking … Mama,” Marina starts. She picks up a yellow cup and rolls it between her hands. “Could I actually stay in Haifa? Instead of Nazareth?” She winces slightly as the words become materialized. “I know they’re close to each other. So it doesn’t even really matter, right?” she adds quickly, already cutting off her mother’s protestation.

Haifa is silent as Marina fills up her cup and holds her breath. When she was younger, she’d asked incessantly about their culture and heritage. Their history. What was Palestine to a young, mixed girl living in America? What was it to be Palestinian? Who was she? was the question underlining all of her attempts to understand. Haifa would do her best to respond, but when it came to discussing Haifa the city, Haifa her namesake, her face would become a blank, smooth surface against which questions slid off and died. She eventually learned to stop asking Haifa about Haifa. It was a locked box from the past. But it led to a feeling of loss. Of being lost.

“Why Haifa specifically?” she finally asks. Her voice is even, but Marina can hear the nerves beneath.

Marina sips slowly.

“I want to see Tata’s city.”

When Haifa told her that she would be going to Palestine to retrieve her grandmother Nuhad’s things from their family in Nazareth—a task, Haifa said, that she could not bring herself to do after her mother’s death—Marina was terrified and overjoyed all at once. Though it was a simple task, it felt like Marina was finally being rewarded after a lifetime of asking after their heritage. But she didn’t want to stay in Nazareth with family—she wanted to go to Nuhad’s city of birth and childhood.

“Yes, habibti, but we have family in Nazareth. Not Haifa,” her mother says slowly. Painstakingly.

“Yes, but—”

“Khalo Philippe lives in Nazareth. End of story. I’m not sending you to a city neither of us have ever been to,” Haifa says as her face smooths and hardens.

The only sound is that of Marina setting the yellow cup down against the countertop. Her eyes are downcast as she attempts to wrangle all of the emotions stirring within.

“If I’m already there, I can find Tata’s old house. I can see where she grew up.”

“And why would you want to relive pain like that? It’s in the past. Tata is dead.” Haifa’s voice immediately falters, and Marina feels guilt sink in her stomach like a rock.

“I’ll already be there. I—” Marina says quietly, but she swallows the rest of her words.

“What do you want from me, habibti?” Haifa’s hands are spread wide, a false promise of welcome. “I can’t send my only daughter to a city I don’t know.”

“A city you don’t know? Did we not listen to the same stories from Tata?” Marina’s voice is steady. Haifa closes her eyes. “Why would it be so wrong for me to explore our lineage? Why is it every time I bring up Haifa, you shut down? Why am I walled off from the city I should have been raised in?”

Haifa opens her eyes—filled with unspoken pain—and inhales, but the words don’t come out. She shakes her head helplessly, but Marina can’t stand the futility of it and she storms away. Her feet make little noise against the carpet but her bedroom door slams against the wood. It is hot. Humid.

Marina throws herself into her chair and switches to the music tab. She turns the volume all the way up, immersing herself in the bass and running from the guilt she feels. She can picture her mother still in the kitchen with her mouth still attempting to fill itself with reasons that will never come out.

Marina is like a tree whose diseased limbs have been excised; she is rooted solidly in earth, but it is not her earth. She stands alone, a single tree displaced from her family. There are no limbs to reach above to for answers. There is no one to ask. Her mother refuses, her uncles know little, and her cousins are either too distanced to casually ring up and ask, or they also have been cut off from the family history.

Tata Nuhad held the answers. She was the only one who knew who their family was, but she had performed the amputation herself. Nuhad had cut off that part of herself, the pain. Marina knows this—it’s not entirely Haifa’s fault. Nuhad cut it all. But it wasn’t just her history to excise. It was a shared history.

She shakes out her black hair from the clip that holds it back and turns down the music. It’s her unspoken sign that the anger has turned into something else—sadness, muted frustration, or in this case, guilt for her words—and soon she can feel the ground shifting as Haifa walks toward her room.

“Habibti?” Her mother knocks. Waits.

“Yeah?” Marina is expecting this—the attempt to make everything okay without an apology.

Haifa opens the door gingerly. “Do you want to go to the lake? It should be a nice sunset … It’ll be cooler there, too.”

Why is the house in Haifa haunted?

Marina gropes blindly in the dark, seeking the light of history to reveal the truth of the present. Held between two cultures and three countries, she needs something to tether her to solid ground. The limits of ancestral history she’s been told end at the simple fact of being Palestinian. She knows the city they come from—her mother’s name.

Marina needs the memories, but she doesn’t know that they are freely sitting in the house in Haifa in the ghosts’ mouths, waiting to release and be released. She wants to paint the past and piece the canvas back together, filling in the spots about their family, their city, their occupations.

Marina doesn’t know why the house in Haifa is haunted—she doesn’t even know that there is a haunting in Haifa at all.

The car ride is short; the lake is only twenty minutes from their home, and as she exits the car, Marina’s legs feel heavy in the humidity. The bag of oranges bites red ridges into her fingers, slapping against her thighs with each step she takes toward the water. The lake demands fruit, Haifa says. And so, fruit they bring—as an offering to the water, or maybe a single bite of sweetness can cut the dry, earthy taste that settles in one’s mouth as they dive in, again and again and again. Maybe the lake demands fruit because it’s lonely, and eventually, just once, a seed could grow in its sand. Marina feels an itch on her arm and instinctively slaps at it. The mosquitoes tend to congregate around the settled, calm waters of Lake Michigan.

“Here! This looks nice.” Haifa stops at a picnic bench that sits on a grassy patch. Sand mixes in with the green, but if Marina blurs her eyes, they come together as conjoined in her double vision. It’s like pretending that she and Haifa are okay. Tall trees surround them in a towering canopy of rustling leaves and dark shade.

Marina hops onto the table and places her feet on the bench, wiping away the sand from where she sits. The sun is making its dip toward the horizon, painting its own orange over the water, and maybe this is why the lake demands fruit—the sun is always out of reach. Sweaty fabric clings to Marina’s body as her temperature rises to match the humidity, and her thoughts stray toward irritation.

“Want to go dip our toes?” Haifa sits beside her on the bench and reaches down to unbuckle her sandals. Her eyes are turned away, but Marina senses the false hope that lights them from within each time she asks this question. Each time they come to the lake.

She shakes her head, feeling her mother’s disappointment. And why shouldn’t Haifa feel as disappointed as Marina does after their argument?

“Maybe next time.”

Haifa has asked the same hope-laced question for as long as Marina has had the same answer for her. The water is a suffocating, endless stream of panic. Like all young children, Marina would often try to hold her breath for as long as possible at the community pool. But it never held—as soon as she dipped below the water, her lungs clawed with need as if they were prisoners. Once, she nearly drowned. Until the very last moment, when the lifeguard saw her head below water, arms listlessly drifting up to float, she didn’t know if it was the last thing she would ever experience.

She can’t help it; she’s never been able to simply swim back up, or grab another swallow of air before plunging back in. It pulls her down, smothering her into its depths, as soon as the water touches her skin.

It was for her own safety that Marina cut herself from the water. Its pull is so immense, so enticing, that she knows it’s safer to be far from its grasp. For her, the only thing she knows with complete certainty is that she will drown. This is especially true in Lake Michigan, where the water can be murky and opaque, with riptides so powerful that they can sweep anything away. Her greatest fear is not the water itself, but the memory of her thoughts just before she drowned—the crushing, breathtaking anxiety of her life, of her dreams, knowing everything she could have been and everything she wanted to be—finally grasping who she was, truly—and knowing that the possibility of that future could no longer exist. She can’t experience that again.

The last time Marina attempted to swim, she thought it was safe. It was a friend’s pool. But even as she dipped into the shallow end, the filtered, clear water gripped at her with cold fingers, each tendril grasping at her skin and waiting for her to submerge before overtaking her. She climbed her way back to the concrete instead, her toes gracing the cold drainage grate.

Jump! Do it.

Perhaps it was the dreamlike lull of that slow summer afternoon or the comfort of the plastic life jacket strap eating into her stomach, but Marina decided to jump. And the water—the frigid, calm water of a chlorinated pool—burned her. Its flames entered her mouth, diving down her throat and lodging in the air sacs of her lungs as she flapped her arms, choked, and sputtered, tasting the tears in her throat from the struggle.

Marina!

Her friend pulled her out, but it felt like the water clung to her, pulling her back, desperate to keep her in its sodden clutches. It was the life jacket. At the side, beneath her left arm, there was a tear.

I swear, I checked them this morning. They were fine.

The water desires Marina, and she knows it. Her breath becomes shallow when she starts to think about the pull, about how the water wants nothing more than to keep her in its depths.

Haifa sighs. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

She walks toward the lake, taking wide strides to keep her pant hems folded where they are. The sound of water gently lapping against the shore is like a metronome. Haifa’s head hangs low; her silhouette, with hair lightly flowing in the breeze, makes a pretty picture against the sunset. Marina bites the inside of her cheek. Her mother knows she’s scared, but she believes it’s from the near drownings. The true fear lies deep in Marina. Haifa doesn’t understand the pull—or the sense of loss.

Marina leans back, fingers sliding against the wood of the bench, comfortable with keeping her distance from the water. She closes her eyes against the sun, allowing herself to feel the waning warmth. A roughness slides against her hand, and she shakes it off, thinking it’s merely old wood. But it slides again, and Marina looks back. A snake is slithering along the top of the table. Its scales are black and diamond shaped, glinting in the sun, and though it’s short in length, there are wide bends in its body as it moves over the table. She yelps, throwing herself from the picnic bench, taking two too-big steps away and nearly falling over her own legs. A sharp pain slices against her foot, and she sucks in air through her teeth. She lifts her foot and sees blood. Her heart pounds in her ears. Eyes shifting focus, she sees the shards of a beer bottle that has been smashed against the sand.

A sudden wave of emotion engulfs her, and tears spring to her eyes unexpectedly. It’s not just the pain from the glass, or her earlier argument with Haifa, or the fact that she is at the place that has nearly drowned her a dozen times. It is everything, all of it, and it swallows her like the tides she fears. Salt slides down the back of her throat.

“Mama? Mama!” Marina limps over to a flat rock, her eyes skirting the grass for nearby snakes, and sits down slowly. Her foot is bleeding and now there are grains of sand and pieces of grass rubbing against the open wound. She winces. Another mosquito buzzes by her ear and she swats at it, screaming, “Oh my GOD!”

Haifa turns to see Marina and runs back to the shore as quickly as the water will allow her. Her calves drip water and her shoes spray sand as they clap against each other in her hands. Small grains fly over Marina.

“I need water,” Marina says, her voice edged with irritation. “The wound is all dirty.” From you, she thinks bitterly, even though she knows it’s not really Haifa’s fault.

Haifa takes a bottle from her purse on the bench and runs back, and Marina pours it with a shaking hand over her red foot. The blood washes out, but more still leaks from her wound, coiling inside of the wrinkles of her skin.

“What happened? Oh, sweetie, are you okay? What happened? Oh, I—”

“I cut myself on a beer bottle. Watch out.” Marina points to the glass and grits her teeth as she gently rubs away the grains of sand. “Check your purse. There was a snake on the table.”

But Haifa is already digging through her purse, a concentrated look on her face. “I know I had one … yes!” She pulls out a salt packet from a restaurant triumphantly, tearing it open with her teeth.

“Here.” She poises over Marina’s foot with the packet, but Marina jerks away.

“Are you kidding me?! You’re literally going to rub salt in my wound?”

“It’s an old trick, trust me. It will stop it from bleeding.” Haifa’s voice has taken on an uncharacteristic tone of assuredness. Marina reluctantly stretches her foot out.

Haifa rubs the salt against the cut, the crimson melting into her fingers, and Marina bites the inside of her cheek again. It stings, like lemon juice to a hangnail.

“Enough! Bas, Mama.” Marina jerks her foot away and Haifa raises her hands.

“There. See? The bleeding is already slowing.”

Marina twists her foot around, and she’s right. The bleeding has been stemmed almost entirely.

“Water, please. Let me wash this.”

“I know it hurts, honey, but it works. Rinse with the rest of the bottle and let me get you a towel.” Haifa stands and goes over to the car.

“How did you know how to do that?” Marina calls after her. She rubs her hands against each other, ridding herself of the sand and grit. It falls to the side like a dirt snowfall.

“Tata taught me.”

Haifa tosses the towel she’s found over to Marina, who wraps it around her foot as a makeshift bandage. “Well, how did she know?”

Haifa shrugs and offers her arm to her daughter. “She knew a lot of home remedies like that.”

“Why don’t you ever teach me any?”

“I just did.” She leads Marina down back toward the park bench, where the snake has disappeared.

Marina stretches out her foot and silently observes it. No, she wants to say. You haven’t taught me anything about us. Not in a long time.

“Sweetie, what do you want me to tell you?” Haifa gives a half laugh, half sigh in a puff of air through her lips. “It’s not like I know much. You want me to tell you what I know? We come from Haifa. Tata had a house there. She named me after her city. She had two parents and one older sister. There—that’s it. That’s the entire familial history I know.”

“I wonder what the house looked like.”

“Stone.” Her voice softens. “She always told me it was white stone.”

Marina leans her head against her mother’s shoulder. She looks out into the distance, where the sun is turning a fiery scarlet over the water.

“Don’t forget to take the oranges,” she says. She points to the picnic table, where the red bag of fruit lies.

“Don’t worry, I won’t.” Haifa smiles and smooths Marina’s hair gently.

The pair silently watch the sun slowly fade together. Finally, Marina speaks again.

“Is it still there? The house?”

“Who knows? After Israel took everything, I don’t know. Maybe. It may not even be a home still.”

Why is the house in Haifa haunted?

For the remainder of her life, in the latter of the two periods that were dictated as before 1948 and after, Nuhad Sayadi was severed from the place she’d always called home. Nakba in Arabic means “catastrophe.” She always thought a more appropriate term would have been qatia’a: “cut.” When her family was forced to leave, she was severed from the city and her home. Nuhad and her family were never allowed back, a soldier having taken residence inside, military law imposed, and her family fresh refugees from their city.

Even as death finally, gently embraced her, Nuhad never learned the fate of her home in Haifa or the hauntings that had descended. It was painful to return to those memories. To Nuhad, it was her fault that her family had to leave in the way that they did. They abandoned their home. Her fault. This series of events played like a film in her mind on certain nights. It was her fault.

When the soldiers came with their guns and their loudspeakers blaring the wails and screams of their victims, Nuhad had thrown herself into the sea. She was just a girl. The water called to her, buffeted by the demands of her mother, and both begged her to swim toward the boats. Toward refuge. No one could blame her for what happened. Except for Nuhad.

In hindsight, she told herself that she should have stayed. She should have let herself suffocate despite all of the air in the city having been sucked away. She should have stayed with her parents, even if it meant certain death. She should have—

And so, the weight of losing her home planted itself on Nuhad’s shoulders for the rest of her life.

Her family was displaced to Nazareth first, where her older sister lived, and then scattered to Jerusalem in bits and pieces. As an adult, Nuhad emigrated to the United States, needing somewhere, anywhere, to serve as a peaceful refuge after a lifetime of moving around Palestine, unable to breathe.

It was her fault. Others tried to help, saying a young girl couldn’t have known what she had done—she only meant to swim toward the boats and seek refuge for them—but their sympathies paled to reality. Nuhad lost her home. She lost everything that makes a life.

Though she thought of it often, Nuhad never spoke of her past. It was painful enough in her mind, the grief filling dusty corners of memories. To salvage the home she had lost, she attempted to create a living manifestation of the place that she’d once called home within her daughter. She named her Haifa.

But the house in Nazareth, and later the house in Chicago, wasn’t a home. As much as she tried to replicate the warmth of a place in her memory, nothing could compare. Everything in life fell against her expectations. Because it was her fault. She went into the sea.

Despite the physical distance, Nuhad and her childhood house in Haifa were inexplicably connected. She knew, in her heart, that it would remain empty for her. A small part of her hoped, wished, knew—it was chewing on residents and spitting them out, blackening them with the rage that blistered within the stones and floorboards after their displacement. And in turn, the house felt the same inextricable connection to Nuhad, its youngest daughter, and her wishes. The house in Haifa swallowed more people, greedy for its family, hoping that someday, in the wake of the pile of bodies it left behind, it would finally be enough for Nuhad and her family to return. But they never did.

Nuhad knew why the house in Haifa was haunted, for she left a piece of herself in its walls.

It’s a new day.

This has been Haifa’s mantra in the moment that her eyes open and the sleep clears from her head; it is a soothing prayer she holds in the hope of a new day as her eyes stare at the white ridges of her popcorn ceiling.

It’s a new day—even after a fight with Marina. Even after she is reminded, once again, of her own inability to measure up. And how can a mother admit her own failure to her child? Haifa is supposed to be the beacon, the stalwart light in which her only daughter can always seek comfort and stability. She’s supposed to be better to her than Nuhad was to Haifa.

It’s a new day.

Haifa climbs out of bed and quickly pulls on a T-shirt and jeans; she rakes her fingers through her hair without looking in the mirror and grabs a muffin from the tray sitting out on the kitchen counter. Marina is still sleeping, which is good. Haifa needs to pick up the last of Nuhad’s things from hospice.

The car ride is quick—Nuhad’s final home was only a short drive away, for Haifa’s own anxieties. As she walks in, the familiar scent of the building floods her nostrils. It’s been two months.

“Haifa?” the woman behind the reception exclaims when Haifa signs in. Her face is new. “Like the city?”

“Yeah.” Haifa gives her a polite smile.

“I’ve always wanted to visit Israel! Have you ever been?”

Haifa stares at her.

“No.”

“Oh, I’d love to go,” she says, but her voice trails off at the end as Haifa turns from the desk. It’s supposed to be a new day.

She walks into the dining hall and spots Sara. She’s in her white scrubs, the ones with faded blue flowers linked together in long chains.

“Sara,” Haifa says, and she is folded into a hug.

“Haifa.” Sara pulls back and looks at her sympathetically. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.” Haifa shrugs and gives her a half-hearted smile. “I’m just here to pick up my mom’s stuff.”

“Of course.” Sara’s face is the picture of compassion, composed of thin, pink lips pulled slightly downward at their edges in a concerned pout; fragile spiderwebbed lines beneath her kind, dark eyes; attentive eyebrows stitched together in the middle. Sara was the only reason Haifa felt comfortable leaving her mother here—she treated her like her own.

Sara leads her to a plain white door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and unlocks it with one of the keys attached to her neon-green wrist strap. It opens into a storage closet and she points to two boxes labeled NUHAD.

“Thank you for keeping them here for so long. I know I’m really, really late to pick everything up.”

“Mish mashkal,” Sara reassures her in her southern Lebanese dialect. “Nuhad was family.”

Even though they’d only just met a year ago, and became friends within the last few months, Haifa feels understood by Sara. She’s like the older sister she’s never had.

Haifa picks up one of the boxes, then hesitates. The contents of her mother’s belongings are heavy in her arms.

“Shu fi?” Sara asks, leaning against the doorframe.

Haifa’s lip gloss is sticky against her teeth as she bites her lip. Relationships all have a give-and-take, and she hasn’t given enough to Sara to warrant her asking for support.

“Are you okay, Haifa?” Sara’s eyes search hers.

“I can’t take you away from work,” Haifa says, trailing off.

Sara brushes a hand in her face. “Wala yhimmik. I’ll take my break now. Come on—let’s go sit in the garden.”

She picks up the second box and Haifa follows her to the small square of green in the middle of the hospice. It’s a spot of color in this place of endings. Sara sits on the stone bench and pats for Haifa to join her.

Haifa sighs, sinking beside her friend. “Marina wants to go to Haifa.”

“Okay.” Sara snaps back a hair tie as she pulls her hair—black tufts of roots beneath breakable dyed blond—into a ponytail.

“Would you—” Haifa pauses and bites her lip. “I mean, would you let your kids go…? I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m asking.”

“Habibti, she’s already going to Nazareth. What’s a journey to another city just forty minutes away?” She shrugs, then meets her gaze. “Why? Is there a reason you don’t want her going?”

“No, it’s just—” Haifa lowers her voice as a man in a wheelchair passes them. “I don’t know anything about the city. I’ve never even been.” She pauses. “And … there’s something wrong. I don’t know what, but there’s a reason why my mother never went back.”

“Taba’an, the occupation.”

“Yes, of course, but … even when we visited Palestine, she refused to go back to Haifa specifically. I don’t know why.” Haifa lets out a held breath in the form of an airy laugh. “And it doesn’t help that she always compared me to that stupid city.”

“What do you mean?” Sara cocks her head.

“Never mind. I don’t know.”

“Why not let her go? It could be a good chance for her to explore.”

“We don’t have family there, and Marina has never”—she draws out the word to emphasize it—“traveled on her own.” One hand wraps around her stomach while the other comes up to her temple.

“Haifa,” Sara admonishes. “You know as soon as she lands that she’s going to go anyway. You might as well let her go with your permission—and with your knowledge of where she’ll be.”

Haifa shakes her head, the beginnings of a smile on her lips. “Okay, that’s true.”

Sara places one hand of long red nails, chipped at the tips, on Haifa’s arm. “Let her go. Let her discover for herself.”

“Fine, okay,” Haifa says with an exasperated laugh. “But where do I even send her? How do I know she’ll be safe?”

“Habibtchi, our countries are never safe.” Sara winks and bites her lower lip in jest. “She’ll be fine. She’s staying with family, sah? I’m sure they have friends there. Or they know a bed-and-breakfast there. You don’t have to send her for the whole time, but maybe when she lands she can spend a few days there before going to see your family.”

Haifa nods silently for fear of the sudden lump in her throat melting. Marina will be digging through the past—the past that Haifa has always been too terrified to seek.

Sara gives her hands one more squeeze, and together they each carry one box back to Haifa’s car. As Haifa pulls out of the parking lot, she sees Sara watching her from the entryway. The emotions build inside, threatening.

Why is the house in Haifa haunted?

Haifa followed after her mother, picking up shreds of histories and recollections on the rare occasions when Nuhad would speak about them. Now, Haifa only has scraps torn from the edges, a painting whose canvas has been ripped out—pieces. She knows that her mother was forced to flee, that her city has transformed into something else, and that a house existed once. She knows scattered family members across the diaspora.

Hauntings, to Haifa, were the ghosts that lived on in her mother’s eyes. They were in the way she would press her lips together, refusing to elaborate as her eyes became milky with unshed tears. They were in the way that her mother refused to step into another ocean. The haunting of Haifa was the distance between Nuhad and Haifa, a mother refusing to pass on the trauma she held, and a daughter wanting only to connect.

Haifa’s haunting is in her desire for the love that her mother withheld; her ghosts are the scant, distanced, harsh words Nuhad gave her, these specters that guided her life, instilling in Haifa the uncertainty of what she needed to do to secure her mother’s affection. She didn’t know about the ghosts, not as a child. But the hauntings were clear deep in the wells of Nuhad’s eyes, even before she died.

Haifa doesn’t know why the house in Haifa is haunted, but she does know the echoes of ghosts past.

Haifa’s tears wait patiently behind her eyes until she is on the long, empty road home. There, they fall like sudden monsoon rains. She never cries when she expects to. Haifa’s entire hand isn’t enough to wipe the wetness from her cheeks.

“Fuck,” she whispers to herself. She grabs her water bottle and drinks in huge gulps, trying to wash the feelings away. The tears are still coming in gasps and hiccups, unwarranted by the expectation of her grown daughter’s absence on a trip she should be taking. Haifa knows this. But still they fall. It is as if someone, or something, has come back to life.

At the last second, she swerves, taking the exit that doesn’t lead toward home. It veers into the more rural Illinois farmland, and at the first sign of an empty field, she pulls over. It is silent in the car except for her own breath.

She gulps the water again, this time a little too greedily. Water dribbles out of the side of her mouth and onto the front of her shirt.

Marina’s first trip to Palestine will now tie with the number of times Haifa has visited, and she will be visiting the city of her own inadequacy. Her daughter needs it, she knows, and though her attempts at being a supportive mother have sometimes fallen flat, she knows that Sara is right. It’s more than Haifa’s own mother did. Nuhad was stubborn, even after her mind slipped. They argued up until her death, her mother’s eyes far away and her voice barely above a whisper. In the last few days before she passed, Nuhad had only one demand:

Bring me saltwater.

Why? Why saltwater, Mama?

I need to cleanse myself.

Haifa had taken a packet of salt from her mother’s half-eaten lunch and stirred it into her glass. There were only so many requests she could fulfill. She handed it to her mother, thinking she would dip her fingers in it, maybe. How was she to know the desire behind dementia? But Nuhad took the glass of saltwater and drank it, sputtering and coughing when Haifa grabbed the glass back.

What are you doing?!

Saltwater. To cleanse.

Saltwater. Haifa doesn’t know why she had asked for saltwater or what sins she needed to atone for that would require such a cleansing. Even being an emotionally unavailable mother was no great fault that only saltwater could heal; Haifa would have been happy with a simple acknowledgment. She allowed Nuhad to berate her for it.

Why can’t you give me this one thing?

One thing, added up over a lifetime, became a mountain of things that Haifa was always just short of, that she could never climb because it was always meant to be too high. Nuhad had created this list of ideals for Haifa to aspire to—be pretty, be smart, be nice, have children, have a good marriage (no, not like that)—to make her better and to build her up, but in reality, it just made Haifa slow down and second-guess herself and wish she were better, wish she could climb the mountain of expectations and there, finally, at the top of that impossible mountain, Jabal Mar Elias, she would find her mother’s love and approval.

In one swift motion, Haifa unbuckles herself and exits the car, the door swinging behind her. She stands at the edge of the dirt field. The wheat stalks here are long and tall, murmuring golden in the still air, and she feels safe within their cover.

She screams.

It’s a high-pitched explosion that comes from deep within her being and vibrates all the way through her throat, her cheeks, and her head—she screams until she loses breath, panting, and keels over, hands on her thighs. Haifa wonders when she will have done this ritual for the last time. It began when she was a teenager one night, when the emotions overwhelmed her so much that she stopped the car and howled into the empty silence of an abandoned mall parking lot. There was no response.

Marina is Haifa’s best friend—they have a far better relationship than Haifa and Nuhad did. But Marina wants to go into the past that Haifa was barred from, and Haifa’s inability to give her that has formed a tense standstill, blistering their relationship with a million small burns. Each time Haifa tries to hold on, to go back to how it was when Marina was younger, she pulls back even farther. The temporary bandages are fragile; they hold only until Marina becomes restless again. She’s searching. She’s always been searching.

And how could she give her daughter what she needs when she herself was cut off from everything by her own mother and given impossibly high expectations in their place? Haifa was the dream, her name holding all of the unfulfilled desires that she’d never been able to recapture as a single person. How could she possibly be the living manifestation of Nuhad’s past: her city, her friends, her family? Haifa became the dream of return, but Haifa was never able to return. She wasn’t the real city with the real memories—she was hardly even a good daughter. Half of the words out of Nuhad’s mouth were meant to reprimand her. Haifa was never enough, but how could she be? Dreams were only real in memory and sleep; in life, they became a wisp of illusion that you were left chasing. Haifa should have been the one to drink saltwater and cleanse herself of this burden—this impossible dream.

She inhales and screams again, finally feeling the pressure in her head subside.

In the ensuing silence, Haifa realizes her shoulders are up by her ears and forces herself to relax. She refuses to be like her mother. As much as it scares her to let Marina go—to see the city that she could never live up to—the hurt from being cut off from everything by Nuhad was greater, and she can’t pass that down to Marina. She has to be better. And maybe, if Marina goes to Haifa, she’ll discover who they all were meant to be. Haifa’s made her peace with leaving the past buried and fulfilling the dream in name only. Marina is the sleeper now.

Haifa almost turns back to the car, but a figure stops her. She’s an old woman hunched in the middle of the golden stalks—her being is so ethereally light that Haifa would have thought she was a piece of wheat if it were not for her stillness in the midst of the gentle breeze. The old woman looks up.

It’s Nuhad.

Haifa’s heart pounds as she takes a half step toward this ghost. Her eyes are hauntingly deep wells that stare somewhere beyond Haifa.

“Don’t go,” the ghost whispers. She raises her hands and they’re scarlet, as if she’s just dipped them in fresh pomegranate juice. The ghost smears the blood against her chest, streaking two red lines, and holds up crimson palms to Haifa. “Already gone.”

CHAPTER 2

Why Is the House in Haifa Haunted?

Why—

Why is the house in Haifa haunted?

I’m the only one who knows. The haunting—

Is caused by sickness: a deeply rooted, festering ill. It is a malady that has rotted the wood and salted the windowsills and harbors the rain when it falls. It boils the bathtub with scalding water meant to stifle; drips saltwater from ceiling to floor in a never-ending cycle of remembrance; kills—kills—those who live over the dead. It’s a suffocation, a sickness, caused by being torn;

being cut.

salt in the wound, salt in the flesh.

It is a sickness not cured by time nor newness; it is a sickness caused by 1948. No, in fact time has only caused the sickness to spread, to grow, to haunt.

To drown.

CHAPTER 3

Home

Haifa, 1948

Despite having only ever known a life of occupation, Nuhad lived as light and airy as any other teenage girl. At sixteen years old, she held fast to the rituals that bound her to this existence. Her hair was often in two long, obsidian braids that she wove together each morning, murmuring responses to imaginary conversations in the mirror before running outside, whipping those braids around her back as she gossiped about the boys in her neighborhood with her best friend. She stole her mother’s lipstick, carefully applying it before smearing it off in half embarrassment as soon as she stepped out, the presence of both British soldiers and neighborhood aunties making her nervous to carry on with red lips. Her long legs would pump forcefully against the sand as she ran along the beach toward the waves, wishing for nothing else than to float away on the sea foam. How else was a girl to live?

Nuhad lived in a small stone dwelling that overlooked the coast of the Mediterranean and sat above her family’s store. It was one of several stores connected all in a row on the street and above which sat other flats. A warm, welcoming place that always had a candlelight glow in the window, her home served as a gathering place. Family, friends, and customers often poured in and out at all hours of the day, bringing snippets of conversation and laughter that wove through both levels of her home. Even Rania, Nuhad’s best friend, visited so often that she’d carved her own little nook in Nuhad’s bedroom, where an extra shirt, her mother’s mascara, and an extra few of her hair clips sat in Nuhad’s dresser.

Though Nuhad tried her best to be a teenage girl, the wooden staircase would creak each time she traversed downstairs, revealing her plans. Nets were wound about the floor of the store, and she often found her feet caught in them just as she happened to be in a rush. But Nuhad was beloved, and her charming smile helped her slip out of conversations with customers and slip into the city’s alleyways, cutting through to the beach, or Rania’s house, or wherever it is that teenage girls go to daydream.

It was easy to steal away in the mornings—the entire city came to the Sayadi family store for fishing supplies. Regulars would arrive in the early hours of dawn to outrace the heat, their pockets jingling with coins for line and bait. The Sayadis lived as the birds did: with the dawn. But as the sun reached its highest point in the sky, Nuhad’s mother and father would lock the door and creak upstairs to sleep away the heat. As twilight fell in shades of persimmon and violet, amber and rose, the fishermen’s raucous voices announced their return, their fish having been caught and cleaned, and stories alighted off of their tongues about the biggest catches. Every Christmas, Easter, and Eid, their customers would bring the Sayadi family fresh fish. Nuhad’s father, Basel, would take them to be grilled, and her whole family would sit by the sea: eating, laughing, and licking their fingertips one by one.

That afternoon, during the midday siesta, Nuhad slipped away again. Her feet were impossibly light against the stone steps in the back of the house. The alleyway was tall and narrow, the buildings so close together that the sun hardly ever touched the small gap between.

The pathway was a map engraved in stone in her mind; after sixteen years, Nuhad could walk toward the beach blindfolded. It was the only time she understood what her father meant when he spoke of their history.

“This home,” Basel would start, “is a symbol of our heritage. Not just the home, but the entire city. The sea.” Nuhad would always share a secret smile with her mother, knowing the passage of his stories and how they always came after a couple of glasses of araq. Even now, she smiled.

“Dar Sayadi has always had its roots in the city of Haifa,” Basel would continue, not needing to wait for any encouragement. “Some branched into southern Lebanon. Some went to Akka. But there has always been one anchor to our lineage: fishing.”

When she was younger, it didn’t take Nuhad long to piece it together. “Is that how we got our last name?”

“No one knows.” Basel’s eyes were always bright as he spoke of their family history. “Did we become fishermen because of our last name, or did we get the name Sayadi because we all already were fishermen? Maybe the two have always been intertwined—you cannot have one without the other. It reminds me of a time from my childhood, fishing with my baba.”

There Basel would remain, his tales of tricking fish and how the different seasons brought them different spoils going long into the rest of the night. Nuhad—though she’d only fished a few times—knew what to do by heart.

The sea opened up wide before her, its deep blue waters crystal clear with the sun high in the sky. Nuhad spotted Rania and waved. She crossed the empty street easily—most were having their midday naps.

“Hi, Rania, keefik?” She kissed her friend on the cheek and plopped beside her on the bench. An orange tree shaded them from the summer’s harsh rays.

Rania smiled at her. In the shade, her hair was dark auburn, matching her playful eyes. As soon as she stepped into the sun, however, her curls would flash red and freckles would appear across her nose.

“Relaxing.” Rania leaned back on spread hands and shook her face up toward the orange leaves. “Soaking up the sun, ya’ani.”

“Ah, a’anjad?” Nuhad laughed and leaned back with her. “The boardwalk of Haifa is the hottest new spa!”

“Until everyone wakes up and chaos ensues again.”

“Chaos? Never,” Nuhad said, letting the sarcasm drip from her voice. Rania swatted her arm.

“Relax! By the order of the hottest new spa, I command you to relax,” Rania said. “Or else I’ll grab the soldiers for you.”

Nuhad looked where Rania’s eyes were drawn, squinting to assess. A pair of soldiers walked atop the seawall. The younger man had a freshly shaved face and brown, wet-looking hair that was combed back. He looked up, catching her eye for a brief second before she looked away quickly, turning her attention to Rania. “Yallah. Take me to jail.”

“I’d go to jail if it meant one of them was my captor,” Rania said, lowering her voice and waggling her eyebrows. Her cheeks flushed slightly.

“A’aib, Rania!” Nuhad gasped in a mocking tone. She reached for a word in the recesses of her memory—one that her father always used. “They’re our occupiers.”

“But mashallah, Nuhad, one of them is blond!” Rania said, stretching out the word. She scooted closer to where her thigh touched Nuhad’s. “The tall one looks like one that always walks by my house.”

“Blond?” Nuhad wrinkled her nose. Grabbing at the edge of her braid, she caught a scent of her own perfume. It was that of the sea, the salt carried on the winds. “Blond?!”

Rania stuck her tongue out and Nuhad laughed, making a face back at her. The braid spun in her fingers.

The sound of chairs being dragged made Nuhad turn. A waiter stood on the patio of a café, bringing two tables together. She stood and stretched, watching as others trickled onto the streets and life slowly returned with the cooling afternoon. Siesta was over. A breeze of wind picked up and carried the scent of Turkish coffee on its sails.

As more people walked out of their homes, yawning and chatting, a vendor caught Nuhad’s eye. She nudged Rania. “Look, art!”

They both grinned and Nuhad grabbed her friend by the wrist and they half skipped, half jogged toward it. A flowy white sheet covered the stall from the sun, and as they walked underneath it, paintings of all shades reflected against the white in a rainbow glow.

“Ahlan wa sahlan,” the vendor welcomed them. He was a short, stocky man with a full beard and a bald head that shone with sweat. He was stacking the rest of the paintings around the stall but spread his hands wide. “Please, please. Take a look around. What do you like?”

“How sweet!” Rania squealed. She pointed to a small postcard painting of a gray cat on a doorstep licking one paw.

“Ah, for a lovely girl such as yourself, this cat is perfect. You have cats that come around your home?” he asked. Rania nodded. “Of course you do! How could they stay away from such a beauty? For you, I’ll give you a good price.”

His voice faded in Nuhad’s ears.

“Yaiy,” she murmured under her breath. Her attention was drawn to a painting of the ocean. It was the blue-green sea against the orange-red setting sun, where a small silhouette of a fishing boat stood against the light. A young fisherman sat on his boat; the thin line of his pole cast far out into the water.

“Wow,” Rania chimed in, coming to stand at her elbow. Her breath tickled her skin. “It’s so beautiful.”

“It’s so…” Nuhad’s voice trailed off, but her mind finished: Haifa.

Nuhad dropped the coins into the vendor’s palm and tucked the painting under her arm. Her fingers traced the edges of the canvas as she and Rania walked away.

“Let’s go hang it up,” Nuhad said. “I want to put it in the living room, where everyone can see it—they’ll be amazed. My very own art piece.”

“Can we go back through the beach again?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

The two girls held hands as they raced toward the sea. It was a much longer way around, but neither cared as they unbuckled their sandals and felt the sand between their toes. The wind sprinkled frothy bits of water in their faces and Nuhad tasted brine against her lips. She gasped, not for want of air, but for the overabundance that filled her lungs and heart.

“I love doing that,” Rania said, panting, as they walked up the steps to Nuhad’s home. Nuhad nodded. They both beat their feet against the stones for a moment, shaking sand from them. “Can you imagine that some people don’t live near the sea?”

“That’s not a life I want to imagine.” Nuhad made a face at herself in the transparent reflection of the shop’s window.

“Assalamu a’alaikom,” Rania yelled as they walked inside the store. A smattering of wa’alaikom assalam answered her, but the ground floor was mostly empty. Only a couple of elderly fishermen hung around, chatting with one another and examining the poles that hung on the wall.

“Keefkom?” Basel gave them each a hug and a kisses on both cheeks, setting his newspaper down. His typically well-waxed mustache was drooping on one side—he must have been sleeping on that side. He leaned against the counter as he glanced at the canvas underneath Nuhad’s arms. “What do you have there?”

“It’s a surprise,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Ready?”

Basel sighed and shook his head in jest at Rania, who giggled. Nuhad flourished the painting, holding it up and then pulling it back down to see her father’s reaction.

“Yaiy. This is beautiful,” he said softly. Nuhad met his eyes. “This is perfect for dar Sayadi. The home that the sea protects. Rania, do you know this story?”

Nuhad sat on a stool, getting comfortable as Rania shook her head politely (but of course, she’d been told the story many times).

“There’s a myth across Haifa: the sea protects the Sayadi family,” he continued. “If ever a thunderstorm sweeps through Haifa and batters the roofs and blows down the doors, our home has always been spared. Even Nuhad! Here’s something you don’t know, Rania. As a child, we put her in the water and she just knew how to swim. We didn’t teach her.”

“You just knew how to swim instinctively?” Rania murmured, turning to Nuhad. She nodded.

“It’s in our blood. We’ve been granted a gift,” Basel said. His thoughts were far beyond where he stood, his eyes reflecting foaming waves and sails. “Our ancestors have given and taken so much from the sea in a communal, cyclical relationship, that the sea now shields us from any harm. You know, some even believe that it’s the old Canaanite gods who watch over us, protecting the last of their stones.”

“Who’s the Canaanite god of the sea?”

Basel paused. “I actually don’t know. Some customers will say this and then say that God himself could not strike down our home, so I guess it’s interchangeable. But don’t tell your mother that. She’ll demand you repent for blaspheming inside of her home.” He winked.

“Now we’ll definitely say that!” Nuhad said, leaping up the creaky wooden steps. Basel whacked her lightly with the newspaper and they laughed as they disappeared into the house.

The door at the top opened to the living room lit by the shine of the sun and sea. Golden light poured in against the old, comfortable couch; the vases from her mother’s family; the intricate Persian rug that covered the floor; the box of mint that grew on the windowsill; the trinkets from Damascus and Beirut her mother had collected on a shelf.

“Here.” Nuhad picked an empty spot on the wall and raised the painting against it. “Isn’t it perfect?” Sunlight shone against the setting sun of the canvas.

“I love it!” Rania clapped her hands together.

“Me too.” Nuhad smiled.

This was the house in Haifa when it was once a home. It held light and laughter, and it felt the windswept joy of sea salt within its stone walls.

Now, it’s the sickness,

the one that slithers through the wet stones and rotted wood; the sickness that festers far beneath the roots, into the blackened depths of the drowning sea; the sickening things of 1948—the settlers—sick—leaving me with nothing but emptiness.

The malady began when the first soldier came,

the sharp scent of gunpowder fresh on his fatigues and death biting deep into his flesh—not one who was to die, no, one who had formed death with his own hands; assumed God and let the blood stain his hands, soak into his very being—and he uprooted my own family; he uprooted, uprooted. He sliced. Everyone—cut.

I didn’t know—didn’t know, couldn’t understand the uprooting, couldn’t protect them—why? and so I waited,

waited,

while the soldier took root, forced into my stone—drove himself into what was my family’s—

drops of seawater dripping into the stones and wearing them away, onto the wood and rotting them from within, each drip signifying more time, each innocuous and painless on its own but together adding up to erosion and sickness. Time molded itself into a child, then two, then three—alive—with no knowledge of the blood their father had spilled—the soldier transformed into a mere man, a civilian but I could still smell the stench of death on him—and slowly they grew like a sickness, lying on the beds and couches where my family had once lain—until finally, mercilessly and unjustly, age grew on the soldier in carvings on his face and forgetfulness in his mind and the children were no longer children but adults.

I waited for my family. Rot—I waited.

And the sickness spread with each passing droplet, the confusion slowly, obscenely, deepening into a fury and an illness with each passing day,

as the soldier of death gouged shallow roots, putrefying with rotted wood from the inside out,

leaving me to feel as if I had drowned decades ago—1948—as I waited for my family under the weight of churning tides; and in the dry soil of uprooting and watered by salt, a seed was planted in their stead—

She was Death.

Death rose with the Sea, and together, She and I knew what we must do—interlocking as one, We drew water from the ocean, pulling from the sand, and We came through the floorboards and soaked the tub where the soldier—now an old man—lay, napping in the bath—but even the floods would not wash away the scent of his bloodstained flesh—and we did it together, Her and I, and slow, slow, slowly, like droplets of seawater dripping onto stones, the saltwater / seawater / tearwater creeped up: his chest, his throat, his eyes that were sleeping—

sleeping—

until they opened, red-rimmed and bloodshot with need of oxygen; his lips parted in one final, desperate, gasped attempt for air—

But it was too late.

my first blood—

Death filled in the dry soil of uprooting, soothing the shallow, salty roots in the stones; together, We keep the saltwater coursing through the stones, soothing me from the inside, dripping against time, lying in wait for that which was cut to return. Regrow that which was uprooted—

that which is still here, beneath the floor, buried in darkness,

drip / sick / drip / sick

CHAPTER 4

The Shatat

Haifa lets the twisted cord uncurl from her fingertips as she leans against the kitchen counter. Sweat—whether from excitement or anxiety—is starting to collect in her underarms.

“Ah, ah. Shukran. Ya’ateek al a’afiyeh.”

She settles the phone back into its cradle and allows the ensuing silence to echo what she has done. Marina is going to Haifa. She’s spending the first four nights in the city that’s loomed over Haifa her entire life. The paper is in front of her, with detailed directions dictated from the bed-and-breakfast host and other instructions from her cousin Philippe.

Buses leave from Tel Aviv to Haifa every hour. She can buy a ticket once she’s there.

Haifa reads and rereads every line; maybe if she focuses on the information, she won’t feel the overwhelming nerves. Marina is not just going to Palestine for the first time, but to Haifa. She’s going to see the city her grandmother grew up in—the city of her childhood—not only to retrieve Nuhad’s things, but to now see Haifa’s namesake. The dream.

Keys jingle in the back door, sticking in the rusty lock, and Haifa looks up just as Marina walks in. Her shoulders are bare, and the ends of her hair are matted slightly against her neck in sweat despite the night air. She slicks the strands away from her skin and holds them up with one hand and fans herself with the other.

“God, it’s so humid.” Marina reaches for a bottle of water from the pack that sits on the floor.

“Guess what?” Haifa blurts out, unable to keep the news to herself. She doesn’t wait for Marina’s response. “You’re going to Haifa.” Her hands shake slightly with jitters as she tries to recall the excitement she felt earlier. “You’re going to Haifa!”

Marina stares at her, and for a brief moment, Haifa feels as if she’s ruined this announcement. Marina leaves tomorrow—she should have decided this sooner. She should have set the stage to tell her. She should have—

“Really?” Marina’s eyes are unreadable as dozens of emotions flit across them all at once. She lowers the unopened bottle slowly.

“The first four nights, habibti.” Haifa pushes the paper over the counter. “You’ll land in Tel Aviv and take the bus up to Haifa instead of Nazareth. Philippe gave me a good bed-and-breakfast. It’s all set up.”

“Really?” Marina’s eyebrows pinch together—she really wasn’t expecting this.

“Yes, really.” Haifa moves around the counter and wraps her in a tight hug. The release of embracing her daughter, of feeling like she’s done something right, something better as a mother than Nuhad did, causes tears to form, unbidden, in the wells of her eyes. She loosens her grasp and searches Marina’s face. “Oh, honey, aren’t you excited?”

“Yeah, really excited.” A smile softens Marina’s face. “Really, really excited.”

“Good.” Haifa sniffs, then laughs a little. “As long as you don’t end up loving the city more than me.”

“What?” Marina chuckles too, but it’s an unsure sound.

“Because I’m Haifa … and the city…” Haifa laughs, but it dies slowly on her lips midair as she meets Marina’s confused gaze. Not confused—concerned.

“Mama, what—”

“Never mind! Never mind.” Haifa forces another laugh out as she waves her hand around. “Go on. Why don’t you go pack an extra bathing suit or something? Make sure you have everything you need for Haifa.”

Marina cocks her head slightly. Disbelievingly. “Okay.”

“I’m right behind you! I’ll pack you some snacks for the flight tomorrow,” she says, forcing a lift in her voice. She’s trying to be better, but Haifa has never been good at anticipating loss—she’s always made tragic, impulsive decisions instead of waiting for the inevitable.

“All right. Okay.” Marina picks up the bottle again. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Sure. Of course, habibti.” Haifa watches as she retreats down the hallway and to her room, then slides down to the floor and pulls her knees in.

What was Haifa expecting? For Marina to act as Nuhad had? Stupid. Haifa was worth more than she had been led to believe. She leans her head back against the cabinet and looks up.

She’s tried so hard. She’s always been a better mother to Marina than Nuhad was to Haifa; at least she has emotions. At least she’s told Marina that she’s proud of her. And somehow, none of it feels good enough.

A small sound escapes the back of Haifa’s throat as she picks herself back up. She’ll pack a goody bag filled with snacks and treats for the flight. Marina leaves in—she checks the clock—nineteen hours. Nineteen hours to Haifa.

Haifa opens the cupboards, searching for savory and sweet snacks that will last the flight. Crinkly plastic rustles from bags landing on top of one another as she reaches up, tossing things onto the island. Her stomach sucks itself back as she climbs onto the kitchen counter on her knees in search of the higher cupboards; she is face-to-face with dusty corners filled with cereals and granola bars.

Once she has thrown everything onto the island, she leaps back down, her knees stinging with the impact. She looks up. The kitchen light makes a reflection in the dark night through the window, and over her shoulder she sees her.

Nuhad.

She is wispy and fragile, shimmering as if she appears through water rather than a window. The pits of her eyes are deep, caustic pools of black, and a crimson smear covers her mouth. She traces it as she speaks, her gaze unblinking on Haifa.

“Don’t go,” she says, and the voice sounds like it’s directly behind Haifa. “Already gone.”

A red palm rises behind Haifa, and Nuhad’s eyes beg her—they effuse desperation—as she reaches for Haifa’s shoulder. Ice seeps through her veins. Haifa shudders as the hand makes contact, grabbing her flesh. She whirls around—

But Nuhad is gone. She is already gone.

The full orchestra behind Majida El Roumi’s voice is stifled by the car’s tiny speakers. Haifa only plays Arabic music when she wants to feel emotional. Marina exits the car, watching people and all of their comings and goings, rushed hugs and quiet tears in the car afterward.

“You have everything?” Haifa pauses, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Socks? Keys? Cash? Um … what am I missing? And you know, if you need your dad, he’s a short plane ride away. Call him if you need, but the cell phone that I got you should be able to call me—if it doesn’t, get a new SIM card there. You have all of the addresses near you? For groceries or SIM cards, or—God forbid—hospitals or pharmacies? The man at the bed-and-breakfast is Philippe’s second cousin’s—second cousin is his mother’s cousin, right? I can’t remember, but either way, he’s his cousin’s brother-in-law, so you’ll be okay.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Haifa looks overhead for a moment—maybe in contemplation, maybe in guidance—before thrusting a small piece of paper into Marina’s hands. She squints at a handful of directions written in her mother’s loopy handwriting. It’s a street number and name with relational directions: two doors down from Im Suheil’s house, around the corner from the bank, across the street from the small church. The city is Haifa.

“Is this—?”

“Yes. Yes. And—and I don’t know if it’s still there. But if you want to find it, this is what I know. I pieced it together from what Tata always said. When she did talk about it.” Haifa’s words rush out, piling atop one another in her haste. Marina can practically touch her poor mother’s discomfort—everything is too much. Haifa’s chin trembles with nerves and her giggles are nowhere to be found. “They could have bulldozed the street. I don’t know—really, I don’t know if it’s still there. She told me it’s at a certain intersection by the sea, though. I wrote that down too.”

It’s the most her mother has ever given her, and though Marina should be angered by that, she isn’t.

“Thank you, Mama,” Marina whispers into her mother’s shoulder as they embrace. “I’ll call you when I land.”

“Yallah. Bye, habibti. Go now before I start crying,” Haifa says, but the tears are already welling in her clear brown eyes.

“Bye, Mom.” Marina kisses her cheek and gives her a quick smile before grabbing her suitcase and wheeling inside.

The terminal is filled with flushed passengers attempting to navigate the large Chicago airport: families with upset children, businesspeople on trips, young adults with large backpacks, and Marina. Her feet feel light as she walks away from Chicago and toward her grandmother’s city.

As she reaches her gate, she slows. There is additional security here—no other gates in sight are caged by clear plastic walls and officers. Anxiety bubbles in her stomach as she walks over, setting her backpack on the floor. She wishes her mother were with her now.

“Hello, shalom.” The guard is clean-shaven and tall, but his lips are so dried out that even the shiny, clear layer of lip balm cannot hide the white flecks of skin on them. Marina hands over her passport wordlessly. She knows that he already knows, can see it in her dark brows and the cut of her cheeks, in the small, knitted key chain with the colors of the Palestinian flag hanging from her backpack.

“Marina?”

“Yes.” Obviously.

“What is the purpose of your visit?”

“To tour Haifa.”

“And where is your family from?”

“I was born here.”

“Yes, but where are your mother and father from?”

“They were also born here.”

He looks at her, head tilted in exasperation. A bubble of hilarity rises in Marina’s throat at his expression, but only one corner of her mouth turns up slightly.

“Where were your grandparents from?”

Marina feels like telling him he already knows. The line is now building behind her.

“Which grandparents?”

“Father’s side.”

“Italy.”

“Okay, then where were your grandparents on your mother’s side from?”

“Haifa and Nablus.”

“So, you are Arab?”

“Yes, half.”

The questioning continues for another fifteen minutes, and Marina feels as if she is playing the part of court jester, juggling idiotic questions while trying to keep the officer from sending her to further interrogation. The line behind her has grown now, and several Orthodox Jews with yarmulkes and long, uncut sides of their hair are grumbling. Marina interrupts him.

“Am I done now? Can I go.” She says it like a statement rather than a question, gesturing at the people behind her.

The guard stares at her for a moment too long, and a small part of her rebels against the instinct to squirm under his scrutiny. Finally, he sighs and slaps a long yellow sticker on the back of her passport.

“Thanks,” she mumbles, but then she kicks herself for it. Her thumb grazes the sticker, rubbing back and forth against the barcode, as she sits down to wait. The plastic walls separate this space from the rest of the rushing airport.

“What number did you get?” a young man asks. He leans over, his body halfway across the armrest of the seat separating them.

Marina shifts away instinctively until she meets his eyes and realizes he’s speaking to her. “Sorry, what?” She kicks herself again for apologizing to this man she doesn’t even know.

“The number. Everyone gets one.” The man has blond hair that’s buzzed close to his head, and under the fluorescent lights, it makes him look almost bald. His suit unwrinkles as he sits up.

Marina narrows her eyes, wondering why he would ask for the number of her barcode sticker. She looks to the gate, where the line of Jewish passengers is moving quickly.

“What does it start with? Just the first number.” His eyebrows lift and fall, as if they’re in on the joke together.

“Uh.” Marina hesitates, but she glances down anyway and reads it aloud. “Three.”

“A three! The way they were interrogating you up there, I would have thought a five.” As he speaks, so do his hands. He gauges the confusion on Marina’s face. “It’s a security system. Israeli Jews are a one—the lowest threat. It goes up to six. Obviously, terrorists are a six.”

“Okay.” Marina can feel that her mouth has dipped into a downturn. “Sure.”

The sounds of whatever the man says next are muffled, like speech underwater. He wants to commiserate with her over the system, hoping that she’d have been higher on the scale. She picks up her bag and moves to another aisle in the lull once he’s finished speaking. After a period, they board. Her feet trip over themselves as she moves to stand in line.

When the lights dim, Marina reaches in her pocket for the packet of sleeping pills hidden there. She squeezes her eyes shut, wanting to will herself to wake up in Palestine.

Below the thrum of the airplane engine, she hears her mother’s voice.

You’re going to Haifa!

Woven into the sounds of her excitement was nervousness. Anxiety. A bid for closeness. Marina only hears these things now, with her mother’s voice on a loop in her head. She felt her whole face light up, saw it reflected in Haifa’s instantly brimming tears.

And here Marina is—sitting on the flight less than twenty-four hours later. She brushes the paper with directions in her pocket and shifts in her seat, the armrest beside her nudged out of her reach by her neighbor’s elbow. Tensing, she squeezes her eyes shut even more tightly.

You’re going to Haifa!

She could see the fear and longing in her mother’s eyes. It was the same mix of emotions that Marina felt. But how else would Marina discover who their family was? Who she was? All she had known for so long was the in-between—the mixedness. And Haifa’s friendship was a constant that she could rely on, but sometimes—lately—she didn’t want to have to rely on it. It wasn’t the answer to who she was.

Marina wants what everyone wants: to be seen and known by others. Fully. Not in halves, or pieces, or disjointed sections. Even Haifa only knows what Marina allows: the accomplishments, the dreams and hopes, the friendships with other trailblazing women. The highlight reel. And in turn, Marina knows, Haifa has only ever told her the highlight reel of their family history. But Nuhad’s real life—and Palestine in general—has always been the one thing out of reach, the one missing puzzle piece that could possibly grant her that sense of wholeness she craves.

She didn’t know her grandmother deeply; she knew her in the pieces Nuhad so carefully curated for her benefit. But she was soft, and kind, and endlessly patient, even when Marina first learned how to read Arabic and would sit beside her in the hospice, reading children’s books to her. There was always a hard candy or a wrapped chocolate in her purse for Marina, and Nuhad would dictate recipes to her aloud, reciting from memory the steps for kafta or kubbeh that Marina has already forgotten. Haifa grew tense whenever they visited her, her blurred outline becoming even more frazzled, and Marina understood quickly that her grandmother’s hard edges had softened in old age and for her granddaughter. It’s why Marina has to be the one to go now.

But they’re pieces. Marina, and her mother and grandmother, have only ever shown one another fragments of themselves. That’s all she knows.

Never the whole.

The lights turn on suddenly and Marina rubs her eyes at the captain’s announcement of their landing. Even before the wheels touch the ground, she can feel the heat. She waits until everyone else has gotten off to exit.

At the end of the long walk to customs, there are three officers. Marina chooses the man who looks the most tired. He is young and has dark gray bags under his eyes. They make him look older, even though she would guess he’s around her age. Through the glass, she can see an empty coffee cup that has sweated a ring around his paperwork. It’s 8 AM in Tel Aviv.

“Hello, shalom.”

Marina passes her passport to him beneath the glass divider’s semicircle opening.

“What is the purpose of your visit?”

“Tourism.”

It’s the same.

“Where is your father from?”

“Chicago.”

“What’s this middle name here? Where does this come from?” He points to her passport. It’s the most Arab name there: Nuhad.

“It’s Arabic.” She shrugs.

It’s always the same.

“So, you are Arab?”

“Yes.” She sighs.

“Are you visiting any friends or family?”

“No.” Does it matter?

“Where are you staying, then?”

He looks at the yellow sticker on the back of her passport and sighs, stamping. Marina recalls the conversation with the man from the gate and realizes that this man takes her threat level at the word of a yellow sticker on the back of her passport. To him, she is a three at best. A six at worst.

The blistering gaze of the unobstructed morning sun mixes with the heavy saltwater humidity—the weather feels stifling from the moment Marina steps outside. She tugs at the collar of her shirt and fans herself, but already droplets are dripping down her low back and between her breasts.

“Taxi? Taxi, miss?”

There are several taxi drivers yelling at her from the long row of yellow and white cars, but Marina follows the hanging signs—the English directions, not the Hebrew or Arabic ones—pointing to the bus station. She walks along the dull concrete and silver walls, winding around the airport until she reaches the station. From Tel Aviv, Haifa is only an hour and a half by bus, and from there, her bed-and-breakfast is just a short walk. Haifa gave her the entire itinerary.

The pockmarked green benches at the bus station are filled with new arrivals. She checks the screen. Her bus isn’t coming for another thirty-four minutes, so she walks around the edge of the station until she finds a shady spot beneath another building. She leans against the wall and slumps down to the ground. In the shade, she can see everything.

The airport is a shiny, stainless-steel glare against an empty backdrop. People and cars inch over the crowded highway to get to it. From the bus station, a mother in a long skirt walks toward the building Marina sits against. Her keys jingle and she turns the corner to the door on the other side, pushing her stroller over the smooth cobblestones. Marina looks up at the building she’s against. It’s made of stone—ancient, white stone that comes away chalky and gritty in her fingertips. Water splashes several feet away, and she turns to see another woman pouring down dirty water from the balcony. She flaps out towels and bedsheets to dry over the edge. Marina’s eyes catch something else.

She stands, walks a couple of feet, and reaches one hand up. There are holes in the side of the old building. Her fingers dig into the small craters, nails scratching against gravel, until the realization hits her. These are bullet holes.

Marina keeps her hand there, frozen for one second against the grooves in the old stone, and then she jerks down. Vomit splatters against the pavement.

The heat reflects off of the white stone and glares at Rania. She shields her eyes from the light and squints at the haunted house of Haifa, her breath held. A real estate agent is hanging a new FOR SALE sign in the window. A couple of others pause to watch with her—the entire city knows the house is cursed. But only Rania knows its history.

It cannot nurture life anymore. Ghosts of the past encircle its stones and crevices, filling the cavernous spaces whose echoes ring hollow in this emptiness. Her friend’s home, which was once filled with light and life, is now filled with hauntings and the shadowy memories of what once was.

Rania remembers everything as well as the ghosts themselves—some days, she can’t be sure she isn’t also a haunting presence, torn from within by the reminders of the past. Sometimes it’s easier to live there, in her memories. Before 1948.

The rain helps. On days when the heavens split open over her city, Rania will stand across the street from the haunted house and stare, watching the water droplets fall down the stairs all the way to the sea. She will see her childhood reflected in their watery paths. But today, the sun bleaches the stone an even paler shade of white.

Grief envelops Rania each time she passes the house. It sits on her shoulders, and at this point, she cannot recall what it feels like to be unburdened. Walking the same route every morning, from Haifa’s inner ghetto of Wadi Nisnas, she winds her way to the sea and city center, where she passes her friend’s home. She could avoid it, of course. She could take the longer route and give the house and its ghosts a wide margin. But she doesn’t.

Breath pushes and struggles behind her tightened lips as she walks past it. Each morning and evening, as the sun rises and falls, there are approximately twenty seconds when Rania unconsciously holds her breath as she passes by the small stone house. The intimate act of breathing, of taking in breath from the ghosts that seep in the stones, feels like a theft of its own.

It is far easier for Rania to pass by her friend’s childhood home than to see her own. Anger flares brightly and hotly against the tongue; grief sits heavily in one’s chest, reflecting on the loss in all its magnitude. Anger is easier to feel.

And of course, she remembers everything about her friend’s house—the smallest details. A cup of seashells on a bookshelf. Yesterday’s newspaper freshly stacked on the pile of old, unfinished ones. The way it used to be a home.

Rania knows these things are gone now. She can be sure of that. But it doesn’t stop her from remembering, from attempting to catch the thin wisps of memories that settle through the air of Haifa like specters. Her father had always told her that time heals all wounds, but time did no such thing for the port city. Time worsened the occupation. The entire city is haunted—not just that house. Everywhere Rania looks, there are ghosts. Their shadows fall across the memories of families, gardens, and shops that all once lived and breathed, and intertwine especially around the ghost of Rania’s friend. She looks out of the window of the house, for it was hers. Nuhad lived there.

In 1948, Rania and Nuhad were no longer the childhood friends they’d always been. Nuhad’s family was forced to leave after the brutal genocide. Rania’s family was one of the few that stayed. Even after the family they sheltered locked them out of their own home, Rania’s family stayed. On the day that Nuhad’s family left, a permanent red imbued the streets. The stones became heavy with displacement. The city grew haunted. The house began to sour.

And ever since Nuhad’s family’s displacement, the haunting of her home grew, passing through several hands, each one building atop the crimes of the former: a Polish family, settlers from the UK, a young Austrian, base operations for a tourism company, more upon more upon more, and most recently, a mother and son.

The gossip slips seamlessly: the house is haunted.

Cracks cleave the stones. The street cats give the house a wide berth, feeling what Rania knows. Children on the same street are given harsh instructions to never go near the house, not even if a ball rolls onto its steps. One child disappeared once, years ago, inside of the house. He stole through an unlocked door and was never seen again. One man, Rania heard, moved in and immediately left without a word the next morning. On some nights, neighbors say they hear screams from within.

If one were to ask the long list of former residents, they would all say that the house is empty because it’s haunted. The people—settlers—who have tried to live there say it like it’s a simple fact. That some houses are just like that. Their haunting lies on the surface, the meaning of the word differing greatly from Rania’s. She knows exactly why it is empty, why it is haunted. Her definition is bone-deep, chilled to the core with the memory of what blood was spilled on the streets and whose screams tore through the air.

And perhaps this is why Rania doesn’t reroute her journey each morning. The ghosts remember: living and dead.

Despite Rania holding her breath as she passes it each day, the house is not where the air is choked from her lungs. In the city center—the area that was once filled with Palestinian fishermen and bustling markets and is now filled with American Jews from Brooklyn—that is where Rania must truly survive off of a limited supply of oxygen. It’s suffocating to breathe in the roads, the pine trees covering mass graves, the homes made of age-old stone and yet flying Israeli flags and holding settlers. Even all these years later, it leaves her lungs empty.

Evil is a word reserved for the truly supernaturally bad; evil is used to describe behavior that humans cannot fathom. The settlers say that the haunted house in Haifa is evil. Rania knows that stealing homes and land, lives and histories, and then erasing them as if they’ve never existed—that is evil. The house is determined not to let any stay after what happened to Nuhad and her family. None have remembered the horrors nor absorbed the blood from those murdered quite so well as the house in Haifa. Remembering is not an evil that should be thrust on the grieving.

The inevitable new residents will stay in the house for a month, maybe two. Then they will follow the trail of blood left by all the others, fed to an ever-consuming cycle as sacrifices for a home mired in its own emptiness. The last residents—the woman and her son—were only the most recent bodies. The woman was missing for days. Police put up signs and held search parties, despite her last known location being the house. In the end, they couldn’t even find a body. Rania heard from a neighbor that her adult son still felt her presence, though, and said that she spoke to him through the walls. Of course, Rania had thought. The voices he heard were Nuhad’s ancestors demanding their home and family back. Walls don’t speak—people do.

The man eventually left, with neighbors claiming he had himself committed to a psychiatric facility. It became a cold case. Unsolved. But to Rania, these are just words that shadow the truth. The ghosts inside the house took her, and sent her son home.

Rania pauses, breathing again, and seeks the shade of an overhang diagonal from the house to watch. The real estate agent is carrying a small box from his car, but his muscles strain to keep it held. Perhaps it contains papers and documentation, or maybe it’s just heavy with the weight of cheap Palestinian blood. It’s what all of the house deeds in their fabricated cities are built atop anyway. She wipes her brow.

She hears the realtor’s steps in the store. The familiar sound of the creaky stairs transports her for a millisecond back to the old Haifa, back to Nuhad’s house, back to running on the beach and giggling over chocolates snuck out of the cupboard. The man walks out, and a bit of bile comes up. Rania swallows it down. He’s red in the face, sweaty and heaving from moving things up a flight of stairs each time. She grunts in approval—if her lungs must feel suffocated in this city, so can his.

Rania squints, but she’s too far to see the inside of the store. Residents in the past have often ignored it, but some claimed it for their own, leasing their own businesses inside. Clothing stores, tourism bases—all built over the true nature of the house’s history in fishing and seafaring. All built over the bodies of the house. Words bubble, hot and blistering, against Rania’s tongue, but she walks away.

The house will take care of them for her.

She walks west, toward the sea, to her job as maid for an Israeli family. As she nears, hotels and resorts increase, taking up beachfront property over unmarked mass graves. The house that Rania cleans is new as well, overlooking the water. The new ones are easy to spot. They’re made of wood—evocative of the homes in Germany and Poland that they left in order to become settlers. The old ones, the stolen ones, are made of stone.

Rania enters the numbers on the keypad and waits for the gate to swing open slowly. Beyond the gilded gate, a tropical garden with grass and an open garage with two high-end sports cars—one canary yellow, the other fire-engine red—greet her. She steps on hexagonal stones through grass and beds of dried-up tulips to the back entrance.

The rear of the house opens to her maid’s closet, a small room filled with her cleaning supplies and a single, unusable toilet. It smells like bleach. Rania puts together her bucket and walks to the foyer in search of the owners.

A blast of air-conditioning hits her body, and, between shivers, makes her want to roll her eyes. Houses made of wood trap heat. It’s enough that settlers are cruel, but they’re willfully stupid too.

“Oh, hi Rania,” Benjamin says. He’s standing in the foyer, an entirely white, marbled space with a small fountain in the middle. Modern paintings line the walls in uniform blocks of color and a spiraling staircase splits into two mirror images at the back of the room.

“Hello, sir,” she says.

Benjamin snaps his briefcase shut, rubbing a hand over his balding head. He walks over to her in the way that he always does: a brisk, flighty trot that makes it seem like he’s too important and too late.

“Can you please get the kids’ bathrooms today? They’re disgusting.”

“Sure.” The house is large enough that there is something new to clean every day. She still hasn’t seen all of the rooms.

“They’re such pigs, I swear.” They both turn their heads at the sound of footsteps ticking down the stairs. Noa—Benjamin’s wife—descends, dressed in a long, flowy dress.

He grabs her face and kisses her on the cheek. “Bye, honey.”

Between bits of Arabic, English, and Hebrew, they are able to communicate with each other. Rania is glad that no party is entirely fluent in a common language—she wouldn’t want to speak to them more than she already does.

Rania gives Noa a polite smile and heads up one of the spiral staircases, but Noa asks, “How’s your family, Rania?”

She stops and turns. “They’re well, miss, thank you.”

“Nice. Great.” She nods, a half smile on her face. “And how are the kids?”

Rania nods, mirroring Noa. “They’re good.”

“How old are they again?”

Rania is confused, but she doesn’t let it show on her face. “They’re all adults. Grown. With their own kids now, hamdillah.”

Noa flips her eyes. “Ugh, so wonderful. You’re a grandmother now.”

“For many years.” Rania smiles.

“So, when did your kids finally leave home?” Noa’s voice no longer needles and instead stands firm, finally having reached the question she wanted to ask after having to wade through pleasantries. She crosses her arms over her chest. “I just ask because … well, Jacob is about to turn eighteen. He’s going to go to college, obviously, but he needs a bit more of a push than that. I’m afraid he’s going to want to stay at home for too long—you know what I mean?”

“Oh.” Rania blinks. “My children all left when they got married.”

Noa’s full, painted lips droop at the corners and her long lashes nearly touch her eyebrows as she looks up in exasperation. “No, that won’t work—it’s too long.” She lowers her voice conspiratorially. “And who knows when Jacob will even find someone!”

The expression on her face says what Rania doesn’t dare to. There could be something missing in translation, but Noa’s hopeful smile asks that Rania laugh and relate to her—but she can’t. Noa speaks of her son as if she didn’t bring him into the world.

Noa’s smile fades with Rania’s shocked silence. “Oh, don’t be so serious, Rania. I’m just kidding. Every mother teases their child!” She waves her hand. “It’s good for them, anyway. You have to strengthen them before they go out into the world.”

“Mmm. Of course.” Rania nods and turns up toward the stairs, knowing that Noa thinks her dense for her response. But even if she were to speak freely, there aren’t words.

The hallway leading to the children’s bedrooms is like the foyer: all white and filled with expensive artwork. Several marble statues are lined up in front of each room.

Jacob’s bedroom is carpeted in magazines, some of which Rania pretends not to notice. A guitar lies on the bed, always prepped but never played. She can tell from the dust that sits on the frets. Upon entering the attached bathroom, Rania covers her nose. Stray hairs and built-up grime cover the entire countertop, and the sink is filled with still, cloudy water through which floats bits of white toothpaste. Rania cleaned it only last week.

Despite the years of chemical scent accompanying Rania nearly every day, her nose still burns every minute of every hour that she cleans with bleach. Her grandson Khaled had once bought her small, plastic pincers for her nose, but they caused her to inhale through her mouth instead—oxygenating her lungs with the sting of chemicals. No, Rania bears it every day. She simply grits her teeth and breathes it in.

Rania finishes with the bathrooms just in time for her lunch break, and she exits the house with the scents of vinegar and bleach still clinging to her like perfume. She heads to a local shawarma place, passing the house on the way. Her breath holds. The sign is still up.

In the window, something like the face of a young girl appears. It is achingly familiar, down to the two dark braids falling over her small shoulders. Rania blinks, and as quickly as it came, the face disappears.

She smiles to herself suddenly with the hope that it will remain unsold.

As the bus pulls away and exhaust covers her in a dense blanket, Marina stands in Haifa for the first time.

It is her return.

Despite the exhaustion of the jet lag, Haifa’s anxiety still hovering over her, and Marina’s own heart breaking into dozens of tiny pieces, she can’t help but feel joyful. There is a lightness in her soul, even as she stands in a city her grandmother wouldn’t recognize. Cyclists whir down the tar-hot streets and seagulls peck at food scraps on the sidewalk. Tall skyscrapers tower in nearby clusters, and they somehow miraculously stand, paper-thin, beside old stone houses whose age shows through their pitted skin. And yet, people walk past, oblivious to the contrived absurdity of this colony implanted over a city.

She breathes in and an unexpected lump restricts her inhale; a dry sob forces its way out. Dust settles into her eyes and she tries not to blink, for if she does, tears will come. This is her grandmother’s city. It is her city—a place where she could be herself. Fully. Wholly.

Marina clutches the paper with directions in one sweaty palm, trying not to look at it too often and give herself away as a tourist, despite her suitcase clacking at regular intervals on the sidewalk behind her.

There is an unexpected darkness to the city that clings to her like a shadow; as Marina picks up her pace, heart fluttering with each step, she has a sense that she is being followed. Her eyes dart behind her but there are only a handful of people in sharp suits and another set of tourists wandering slowly. But still, this heavy darkness nips at her heels and there is a sense of pleading, as if it were begging her to sink herself into it.

The gleam of a diamond store flashes in the sun from across the street, and in its reflection Marina watches herself walk into a puddle. Red liquid gleams against the glare of the window as it splashes up around her leg, staining her clothes and seeping into her skin. It is oppressively warm—the same temperature as her body—and streaks down her legs in a thick, heavy bloodstain. Marina gasps and looks down.

The puddle is just water.

Panting now, Marina walks faster, keeping her eyes trained on the directions in her hand. I didn’t sleep well on the flight, she tells herself, even as she avoids looking into any other reflective surfaces.

Hassan’s place is in a small apartment building, on the third floor. The stairwell is somewhat cool from the stone, but the sun still warms the inside like an oven as Marina heaves her luggage up the steps, her breath slowly returning to normal in the bare-bulb lighting. Her mother’s written instructions rub up against her stomach. Turn right, then walk past three doors. Hassan’s is the fourth. She knocks.

“Marina?” An elderly man appears before her in a blue polo and jeans. His back is hunched slightly, putting him at Marina’s height.

She nods, and he smiles so comfortably that she finally feels her shoulders relax.

“Ahlan wa sahlan,” he says, welcoming her as he opens the door and motions for her to come inside. “You are Philippe’s cousin, ah?”

Marina murmurs “ah” and takes in her surroundings as he leads her to her bedroom. The living room floor is covered in a Persian rug and the wall is decorated with a tatreez map of Palestine and other embroidered decorations. A small concrete balcony opens up to the neighborhood. The scent of Turkish coffee encircles the room like a familiar, warm hug, but nothing boils on the stove. The bed-and-breakfast is less of a proper accommodation and more of a small flat with two extra bedrooms that the elderly host rents out to travelers.

“Here is your bedroom,” he says, placing a key in her palm. “No one else is staying here right now except for you. Breakfast is served every morning from seven AM to ten AM.”

“Shukran,” she says quietly. He closes the door for her and shuffles back down the hall, leaving her in her own silence.

The room is crafted from the deep blue of the ocean. The ceiling is a light baby blue, and the wave-patterned bedsheets and the chair in the corner are both midnight blue. The knickknacks on the bookshelf have a clear aquatic theme: there are fishing poles, cornflower-blue dolphins, and cresting-wave figurines. A small surfboard glitters with cobalt-blue text: RIDE THE WAVES.

She sits on the bed with a strange sense of sadness weighing on her. For her entire life, Marina has always associated the city of Haifa with her grandmother’s home. It’s an altogether different kind of grief to visit for the first time and stay in a stranger’s home. Even now, she still exists on the fringe. In pieces. She shakes her head—it doesn’t matter. In her grandmother’s house is where she will finally find herself.

Though her body’s internal clock is pulling her to the soft, warm sheets, Marina knows she has to make it through the day. The sun shines through the loose white curtains, illuminating her white socks standing over the indigo rug. She takes a quick shower and rakes her fingers through her hair as she pulls on a fresh T-shirt and some capris. A small keffiyeh headband lies on the dresser, and as an afterthought, she slides it over her head. The clock now says 10:37 AM—which is 2:37 AM in Chicago. She’ll call Haifa tonight. The only sound she makes as she walks to the kitchen is the slight stick of the pads of her feet against the tile floor.

“There’s still some breakfast,” Hassan says, pointing at the tray of pastries with his chin. He sets his newspaper down but his eyes remain on it. She sits across from him and grabs a croissant.

“Thank you.”

“How was the flight?” His gray mustache twitches with his mouth and he smooths his scalp, his hand remembering a time he still had hair.

“Taba’an long. I could hardly sleep.”

“You just need a good night’s rest.” He nods at her, and his eyes travel to the window. “Where did you come from?”

“Chicago.”

“Ah, Chicago.” He pauses, letting the silence fill between them. “They say a big storm will hit us in a few days—a cyclone, off the coast of the Mediterranean.”

“I guess I came at a good time.” She follows his eyes, where there is a small pocket of blue sky between the tight joints of the old buildings packed together. Somewhere beyond, the sea breathes.

Hassan grunts and returns to his newspaper. Marina looks back down at the table, grateful that his English is better than her Arabic.

“Do you ever read your tea leaves?” The sight of the black bits swirling in a small pool of coffee at the bottom of Hassan’s cup reminds Marina of when her grandmother would sometimes read tea leaves for her. He chuckles.

“No, but I have many family members who would be happy to do it. They’ll bring out a huge book and read your horoscope for the year, too. I don’t believe in that stuff.” He waves his hand and Marina laughs. “What do you have planned for your trip?”

“I’m not sure. I want to see if I can find my tata’s old house first.”

Hassan’s mustache lifts a little at one side, but there is a longing sadness in his expression. “Of course.” His voice is soft. “This is something we all do. Our unfortunate inheritance. Just be careful walking around—keep your head down, especially around Israeli soldiers.”

“I know.” There’s a twisted irony in how Marina must avoid the soldiers—the sentries of safety and civility—in order to maintain her own protection. Safety is only safe for settlers.

“Do you have your grandmother’s old address?”

Marina digs for the piece of paper that she’s kept tucked in her waistband since departing and unfurls it on the table between them. “My mom wasn’t sure if it still existed.”

Hassan peers at it, deciphering the handwriting, but his fingers quickly still. His shoulders creep up beside his ears. “This was your grandmother’s house?”

“Yes.”

“What was her name?” He cuts off her statement, his apparent fear bypassing Marina in service of his own questions.

“Nuhad.” Marina searches her memory for her last name. “Nuhad Sayadi.”

“You’re from dar Sayadi?” Hassan’s eyebrows are knotted together, his hand clenched around the piece of paper now. The relaxed seat that Marina found him in is gone, replaced by an anxious lean over the table. Even the air has absorbed his tension.

“Yes,” Marina says, but it lilts at the end like a question. She’s not unsure of her heritage—her uncertainty lies in the sudden reality of it all. The unknown will become known, and her family’s past will finally be bared to the light.

“You cannot go to that house.” Hassan grips her wrist tightly and demands her gaze meet his eyes. “You cannot go to that house.”

“What? Why?” Marina pulls her wrist, but he tightens his grasp for a brief moment before realizing and releasing his tenant. “Why can’t I go?”

Hassan sighs, releasing the air that has been building around them in a pressure bubble. He shakes his head, as if clearing the noise from his mind. He sits back again. “It’s your grandmother’s home. But … it’s not the same. You have to be very careful. Don’t go inside. Ever.”

“Of course it’s not the same. It’s been stolen. Things are bound to be different.” Marina searches his face, but the fear does not break. Hassan’s anxiety did not stem from its theft—there is something else wrong with the house. Marina’s first thought is that it’s scheduled to be bulldozed. Or part of it is already a pile of rubble.

“Not just stolen.” Hassan rubs his forehead with his hand. His face is suddenly haggard. “People—people disappear in there. It’s not safe.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a family once.” He presses his lips together.

“Please.” Now it is Marina who leans across the table, her anxiety imbuing the air with fragile tension. Her voice pleads and her heart rate quickens.

Hassan stares at the table for a moment before looking up to meet her gaze.

“There was a family once. Maybe fifteen years ago—from America. They had this little girl.” A puff of a laugh escapes his lips; it’s not filled with joy, but rather disbelieving assertion. “The girl said that … there was a young child. In the house. And the girl would stare at her through the hallway mirror outside of her bedroom door. Every single night.”

Though the logical part of Marina’s brain retaliates immediately—haunted houses aren’t real—her flesh prickles. As she repeats this affirmation to herself, the same fear that lit Hassan’s eyes only moments ago begins to spread—slowly—through Marina. She doesn’t believe in hauntings—that’s meant for people like Haifa, who try their best to show a brave face but still fall victim to superstitions and the supernatural. No, Marina believes in reality. Hassan continues.

“Her parents took her to see someone, I heard. They were worried about her health. But then”—his voice is suddenly hushed—“one night, the child climbed out of the mirror and stood over the girl’s bed. She was dripping wet. Just before her parents were going to commit her to an institution, their daughter drowned. In the bathtub. In only a few inches of water.”

Marina’s words have been stolen from her throat, though they fly through her mind, hitting blank walls of ignorance. Did Nuhad know? How did it—?

“They say she drowned. But there were marks on her neck. Like fingers. As if she’d been choked to death.” Hassan drops his gaze. “It’s what people said, anyway.”

“And you think the house did it?” Marina’s voice comes out in an unintended whisper. Her grandmother’s house.

“Ever since I was a child, that house has been…” He trails off, searching for the word. “Wrong.”

“How do you know this story?”

“People talk.” He hesitates. “And it’s not the only story.”

“Do people still live in it? Is it still open?” Marina’s voice, to her surprise, is tinged with a hint of hope despite her trembling hands.

Hassan looks up sharply. He must hear the same tone of longing.

“Do not go into that house.”

“But if it’s open—”

He holds up a hand.

“Listen—I cannot force you. But you should understand more. Go see my neighbor Im Omar first. Her name is Rania, but in Arabic we call her Im Omar, mother of Omar. She knew dar Sayadi well. She will know more about the house than I do.” Hassan uncrumples the piece of paper and flips it over, writing Rania’s address on the back. “It’s not far from here. Maybe ten minutes,” he says, and tells her the directions.

“Mashi.” Marina stuffs the piece of paper back into her waistband. She rubs her hands against each other to brush away the croissant crumbs and pushes her chair back from the table. Her legs shake imperceptibly as she stands.

“Marina—” Hassan starts. “Whatever Im Omar tells you … listen to her. She knows. She knows the house. She will tell you why you cannot go.”

Marina nods, unsure what to make of Hassan’s sudden change. As she exits the flat, Hassan’s leaden stare weighs heavy on her back.

The heat from outside hits her in the face like an open oven. It’s not a long walk, and Hassan has given her easy directions to follow, but she still sweats as she sticks to the shade. Where are the trees her grandmother would speak of? Where is the sea breeze? There are only settlers on concrete and ugly green grass.

A sudden breeze bites through the heat. Marina looks up, eyes half squinting in the wind, but it dissipates. Her eyes instead fall on an elderly man leaning on his cane across the street. He stares directly at Marina, his dark gaze intense. It is as if he’s trying to communicate something. His face is wan, pale from exhaustion, and his other hand clutches his side, where a small pomegranate spot darkens the white of his shirt. Marina’s breath hitches in her throat. A car stops in front of the man, obscuring Marina’s view, and when it passes, he is gone.

Her reverie is broken as a spot of wetness drops on her shoulder. Marina looks up, searching for the woman hanging wet laundry or pouring dirty water down onto the street, but instead she hears raucous laughter from just behind her. There is a group of young Orthodox Jewish boys who are standing together, pushing one another and laughing. One of them points at her and yells something in Hebrew, and the rest laugh harder.

It takes Marina several seconds to piece together that she has just been spat on. It’s not the first place one’s mind goes. The adrenaline and excitement from before transform into a red flame of repressed anger; her face warms and her hands tremble as she digs through her purse for a tissue. She opens her mouth to say something, but words fail her as a police officer walks past. There is an automatic rifle slung over her shoulders. Nearly tripping over her own feet, Marina rushes away, putting as much distance between her and the boys as possible. The roaring sound in her ears drowns out their laughter behind her.

She glances at herself in the window of a shop as she rushes past and she can see her face, red and flushed, even in its translucent reflection. Her gait pauses as she sees the keffiyeh headband in her hair, now half fallen. Her hand goes up to touch it. The keffiyeh pattern. That’s why they spat on her.

Her stomach rumbles with the outright disgust she feels. Marina stumbles into a side alley. She reaches for the side stone wall as she retches, and bits of croissant get thrown out of her stomach. Marina waits for a moment, feeling her stomach tremble, but she’s done. Tears stream down the sides of her cheeks and snot has dribbled down her nose and onto her top lip. Hesitating, she uses her shirt to wipe her mouth and nose. As Marina stumbles back into the street, she searches for a restaurant whose restroom she can use. Her throat sears with the pain of acid.

There—a small corner bakery. The bell rings as she enters, and she cringes at herself as she rushes to the bathroom. The bakery is empty except for her. She washes out her mouth in the sink and scrubs the spot on her shoulder several times, toilet paper pilling, until the skin is rubbed red and raw. She pockets the keffiyeh headband, hesitates, then slides it back on, staring at herself in the mirror as she does so.

“Sabah il-kheir,” the man behind the counter says. Marina nods and politely stops to look at the freshly baked pastries in the glass.

“Are you okay?” he asks in Arabic. His eyes search her, staring, she knows, at the flushed mix of emotions plain on her face.

“A’andak…” Marina searches for the word in Arabic but cannot find it. “… gum?”

“Sure.” The man nods and slides a packet from his pocket over the counter. Mint dully masks the taste in her mouth.

“Do you—” Marina starts the beginning of a polite question about the chocolate croissants, but she can’t do it. Her voice thickens with the onslaught of tears and the sight of this Palestinian man standing before her, in a city that should be his, having done this every day of his life.

“You know what makes a bad day a good one?” He picks up his tongs with a slight smile. Marina shakes her head. “A chocolate croissant,” he says, and despite her tender stomach and fragile willpower, Marina laughs.

“I’ll take one.” She spits the piece of gum into its wrapper.

Marina has only just finished the croissant, licking the melted chocolate off of her fingertips, when she reaches Wadi Nisnas. Valley of the mongoose. It is immediately Palestinian, like a small oasis in the midst of the stolen city. Vendors stand beside their open truck beds blanketed with fresh fruits and vegetables, yelling like the street is an open-market hisbeh, and above them are women hanging laundry on wires strung across their balconies. A young girl colors with chalk in the shade and rubs her hands as she stands to hop inside of the boxes she’s drawn. Pastel pinks and greens color the stone above a store, opening windows into views from Palestine. A couple of tourists mill about here and there, snapping pictures: Come to Wadi Nisnas, see the real-life natives, get a taste of Palestine!

Marina easily navigates the narrow streets built for people. Corrugated sheets of metal cover the roofs of some storefronts whose stone is as old as the cobblestones of the street. She peers down the side alleyways and finds stacked bags of trash. Marina remembers reading about this—Palestinians have trash quotas. Garbage apartheid. It is another way for Israelis to point at Palestinians and say, see, we have civilized their land. These barbarians are disgusting.

The blue street signs point Marina down Rania’s street, which is a small alleyway with a few doors. Marina walks up and down the narrow street several times before she finds the house number. She rings the buzzer, and the sudden sound startles a few napping street cats. They jump and scatter a few feet away.

“Na’am?” It’s a man’s voice that comes through, staticky.

“I’m here to see Rania. Eh—Im Omar.” Marina stumbles through her Arabic, but the message must get across, for the door buzzes open. She wipes her forehead.

Her feet are double the size of each scant step and Marina grips the railing until she reaches the top. The heat travels with her, growing with the incline, but a blast of cool fan air comes from the already-opened door.

“Hello?” The same voice from the buzzer is now attached to the young man behind the door. His hair is curly and shaggy, falling over his forehead and into his deep brown eyes. His skin is kissed by the sun.

“Fi Rania? Eh … Im Omar?”

“La, she is at work. Shughul.” He pauses, looks at her. “What do you need her for?”

She flushes at the fact that he needs to speak English for her. “She was friends with my tata—min dar Sayadi.”

“Ah … bint Sayadi?”

Marina nods and stands a bit taller—she is a Sayadi in blood if not name. He nods, smiling, and opens the door, escorting her to the couch in the living room.

“Ahlan wa sahlan,” he welcomes her. He walks over to the fan and directs the air to blow directly at her. Marina smiles in thanks but pats at her face, conscious of how red and sweaty she must look.

“Water—mayy?” he asks. Marina nods politely, knowing he will get her water regardless of her response. She follows his back, the white T-shirt and dark jeans, and decides he must be five or so years older. At the table in the corner, there is a young boy writing on a sheet of paper. He looks up at her once, and upon meeting her gaze, snaps his eyes back down.

“Thank you—eh, shukran,” she says when he hands her the glass. Ice clinks as she sips.

Rania’s home is warm, like a lit fireplace in the winter. There are photographs of her family atop the mantel and all along the wall, and everything looks worn and familiar in a homey sort of way. Even the couch embraces her into its soft grooves as she leans back. It is the opposite of the feeling she had when she first landed. It is a home, truly.

The silence is overwhelming and strange. Haifa’s fingers itch to reach for the phone and call Marina’s number, but she can’t. The living room clock—the one she set for Palestine time—says 3 PM, which is right around the time Marina would have crashed from jet lag.

Air rushes through her lips and she lingers in the exhale for as long as possible. Her fingers decide on the remote if not the phone, and she flips through channels, her gaze far beyond the saturated digital screen. Summers have always been difficult for her as a teacher; in the past, Marina was the cure to the endless free time. She gives up. Everything is silent again.

A photo of Nuhad in black-and-white smiles at her from atop the entertainment center. Haifa stares back for several moments before standing and walking toward it, her fingers brushing the dust away. Her mother looks thirtyish. Black gives accent to everything in the photo, including her painted lips. Nuhad’s hands are poised with white gloves and her hair is coiffed perfectly underneath itself. This was an entirely different person than the mother Haifa knew. With the television light against her face, Haifa’s reflection looks back, flickering against Nuhad in a shared ghost of their own making.

“Mama,” she murmurs. A filament of a memory, like a forgotten path, curls around her mind and she sets the photo down.

Haifa goes to the garage and opens the door, letting the everlasting rays of summer sun into the gray. She brings Nuhad’s boxes from the car into the house, and on a whim, decides to go into the attic as well. She heads back into the garage and grabs the ladder, placing it beneath the hatch in the ceiling. Her legs are eager to find the memory and she climbs too quickly, running into floating cobwebs. She spits and sputters, waving them away furiously and causing the ladder to shake precariously. Her heart leaps, and she stills herself for a moment before reaching up for the string. The small door to the attic swings down.

“Fuck.” It’s dark inside, even with the sun outside, and Haifa pictures the flashlight in the kitchen drawer. It’s too late now—her hands clamber for the stairs and she pulls her legs up behind, quickly escaping the daunting height and crawling up through to the attic.

She blinks once, twice, three times. Her eyes adjust and the darkness forms shapes and shadows. Instruments of every kind line the wall: a couple of old clarinets, a classical guitar she couldn’t bring herself to donate or sell, a box filled with recorders. All remnants from her classes over the years. A mix of emotions emanates from them; as Haifa stands crouched in this dark space, both pride and shame wash over her.

“Where are you?” Speaking aloud will help her find what she’s searching for—a box of photos. But there are dozens of unopened boxes and stacks of magazines that she picks her way over. Another paper catches her eye first.

“Hey,” she whispers now, softly. It’s a framed piece of art that Haifa made as a teenager. The frame is black plastic from the Dollar Tree. Inside bloom three watercolor flowers, each a different shade of rose. Haifa had been experimenting with watercolors and followed a book tutorial for these. The green water lilies surround them and serve as a carpet for their survival.

She’d given it to Nuhad for Mother’s Day, she remembers. Haifa had been so proud that her watercolor trial had turned out so beautifully. Nuhad must have placed it back into the attic, never hung up or shared. Haifa’s fingers tremble against a taped piece of paper in the back, and she already knows what it is.

Dear Mama,

Happy Mother’s Day!!! To the best mom ever XOXO

Love, Haifa

Haifa stares at the paper for a moment before tearing it off, crushing it beneath her fist, and throwing it into an unseen corner of the attic. A loud rushing roars in her ears.

“Serves me right for trying, I guess,” she mumbles, and turns to leave. Her toe stubs against a heavy box. “Fuck!”

Haifa stumbles toward the light, a heat burning inside. She clambers down the ladder, anger and frustration granting her speed, and rushes into the house. Trying to find old photos was a fruitless mission anyway. Her eyes blink back the flood of light.

The picture of Nuhad on the mantel smiles serenely at her. Haifa stares back.

“Of course,” she mutters. Nuhad reserved her sentimentality for other people, other homes, other cities—she never cared about the little things from Haifa. Whether she begged for love or some form, any form of connection, Nuhad brushed her aside. She only cared for Haifa’s material successes. Watercolor paintings or teaching music at the elementary school nearby didn’t count—not even after Haifa had to dust herself off, medical degree abandoned, and scrounge for a job after her divorce. Her tenacity was worthless if it wasn’t accompanied by a title or salary that Nuhad could revel in.

Haifa goes to sit on the carpeted living room floor and opens one of Nuhad’s boxes from the hospice. Grainy, spotted black-and-white photos from Nuhad’s childhood mix with old, blurry pictures of Marina and Haifa. A photo falls out of the side and Haifa catches it. It’s of Nuhad and her older sister, and in her sister’s arms is a baby dressed in a baptism robe. A couple of folded school assignments from Marina reveal exceptionally good grades, and a few art pieces leave coarse glitter at the bottom of the box.

“Hmm.” At the bottom is a painting that Nuhad kept over her bed no matter where she slept. It shows a woman’s bare back as she looks out to sea, her golden curls fluttering with the air. The ocean glitters in the distance.

Atop the painting is a photo of Haifa on her wedding day. Nuhad’s mouth had turned down at the edges when Haifa declared her intention to divorce shortly after Marina’s birth. In the photo, Haifa’s hair is piled on top of her head and her smile is soft as she looks up at her ex-husband.

Haifa slumps back against the edge of the couch, the photo in hand. The television is muted, but its pictures slide by on her face in reflections of reds and blues and yellows. Haifa feels nothing for her ex-husband anymore; it was a whirlwind romance, and they divorced as quickly as they’d fallen in love. But there’s Nuhad, off to the side, a controlled yet joyful smile on her face.

The familiar fragrance of bleach and vinegar follows Rania as she walks through the streets of Haifa. The sights and scents of Wadi Nisnas—spice shops with towers of za’atar, street cats sleeping on the sidewalks, voices laughing and chatting from behind walled gardens—welcome Rania to her neighborhood. Wadi Nisnas is where most of the remaining Palestinians after 1948 were sequestered to. It’s their own personal ghetto. Walking through it, Rania finally feels relief—like she can breathe again. It’s crowded and worn-down, but it reminds her of the neighborhood she grew up in. Her childhood home is at the other end of the port; it’s part of an Israeli neighborhood now.

A smattering of clouds blocks the sun in dull grayish yellow as a reminder of the storm to come next week. She shields her eyes and looks up toward the obscured light. It is blue everywhere else.

The FOR SALE sign is still emblazoned in her mind as if it were written in blood rather than big red letters as she reaches home. Her own stone domicile sits above a dukkan selling fresh fruits and vegetables, and Abu Marwan waves at her on her way inside.

“Ya hala, Im Omar,” he greets her.

She nods back, smiling, but the red letters flash in her mind over his face. Over the store. Over her home. The stones flash with the crimson, and it is as if they speak to her directly:

Us, next?

The rumble of worry spreads to her chest and she pauses to catch her breath before climbing upstairs. Rania has lived in her home for seven years. What promises can be made to a Palestinian in Palestine when the only guarantee is that home is a concept in name only? What promises can be made that she will die here? What promises can be made that she herself can return to her own childhood home?

There are none.

The sound of her footsteps echoes in the narrow stairwell. Her breath is cut short, and she stands again at the top, panting, before she turns to open her door.

Loud voices rumble and thump, laugh and tease, from behind the door. As she unlocks it, she is greeted by the aroma of maqlubeh and the sounds of her children and grandchildren. Her youngest grandson is most often the one to come visit, but it’s common that everyone gathers for large meals. Rania’s home is usually filled with the family that lives only a block or two away.

“Ahlan wa sahlan,” her youngest grandson jokes, as everyone has been waiting for the owner of the apartment to arrive.

“Ahlan feek.” Rania winks at him and he giggles. She plants a kiss on top of his head, then turns to her daughter. “What did you do? You made maqlubeh?”

“Don’t even start with me, Mama,” she chides. “Yes, we made it without you. No, you can’t help. Yes, you can sit down and wait to be served.” Her daughter waves a wooden spoon at her and winks from behind the kitchen counter, biting her lip in jest. Rania turns away from her—

Nuhad is there.

Rania’s face breaks into a cheek-splitting grin—one that shows all of her teeth and crinkles her eyes—as she rushes toward the young girl with a speed and excitement she has not known for many years. Nuhad stands.

“Miss Rania? Eh—Im Omar?”

Rania blinks, and her smile falters a bit. It’s not Nuhad, but—

“Are you Nuhad’s daughter?”

The girl’s eyes light up and she takes a step forward. “I’m her granddaughter.”

Of course. Of course, Nuhad would have been too old for a daughter this young. Rania looks to the kitchen, where her own grandson Khaled is walking toward them.

“Sit, Teta.” Khaled takes her by the elbow and guides her to the sofa. He nods toward the girl. “She’s from dar Sayadi. I remember you talking a lot about your friend from there.” He kisses her on the cheek in greeting. “How was work?”

Rania tears her eyes away from the girl and stares at Khaled. She sinks into the couch as his words register. “The same as always. When will work ever be noteworthy enough for a conversation?” She reaches for the bottle of moisturizer on the side table.

“What, the children didn’t take their horseback riding lessons today?” Khaled pinches his nose and his voice turns nasally. Rania laughs as she rubs the cream into her bleached hands.

“No, sire, they only played the harp today.” Rania raises her eyebrows and fluffs her hair with each hand. Khaled chuckles and returns to the kitchen to help his mother.

In the echoes of their laughter, the girl looks between them, her eyes bereft of understanding. She looks lost; in this emptiness there is something reminiscent of Nuhad. Nuhad after 1948.

Fear has not cut her edges, though—her face is still soft and innocent. Black hair, a shade lighter than Nuhad’s was, is tucked behind her ears, but in her face—it is like Nuhad is here. Here—again.

Rania realizes she’s staring and instead turns her attention to the moisturizer, which she squeezes into her palms. She massages the worn calluses of her hands. “What’s your name, ya binti?”

“Marina.” Nuhad’s eyes stare back.

The girl doesn’t understand Arabic very well, Rania realizes, so she switches to English. “Where is your grandmother?”

Marina’s gaze falls to the floor. Red rushes up to her cheeks. “She … passed away. A few months ago.”

“Allah yirhamha.” Rania speaks the words automatically, but the reality hits like a strike to her heart. How can Nuhad be dead when she yet sits in front of her like this? “What happened?”

Marina plays with her hair at the ends, and it is so achingly reminiscent of Nuhad that Rania has to look away.

“She had cancer.”

“Ah,” Rania says, for she is devoid of words that could bridge the gap between her feelings and reality. Every time she passed by Nuhad’s house she felt as if Nuhad’s spirit still lived there, in the window facing the sea. In the haunting. “The house…” she starts. Stops. Rania looks back up at Marina. This lost young woman with Nuhad’s face knows nothing of the ghosts who live in the walls with stories in their mouths. She knows nothing of the haunted house of Haifa.

Marina’s eyes light up. “The house? My grandmother’s house?”

“Yes,” Rania says. She tilts her head. “You know about it?”

“I know of it,” Marina says. Her voice hedges.

As the scent of maqlubeh fills the apartment, Rania’s daughter calls out, “Food is almost ready!”

“Have you visited yet?”

“No.” Her eyes shutter downward. “I don’t—exactly—know where it is. I was hoping you could show me. Hassan—my host—said you would know.”

Rania shifts in her seat as Khaled places plates around the table. Heat from the stove fills her small flat with an abundance of summertime warmth. She begins to sweat.

“I can show you the outside. But I won’t go in.” Her voice hardens.

“We can go in?” Marina sits up straight.

“You can go in. I won’t step foot inside,” Rania repeats. The girl’s eagerness concerns her. Rania inspects the girl: her face is wide-eyed and innocent, but there is a line on her forehead that betrays fatigue from her own tenacity. Rania knows this because she has it, too. She leans back. “I’ll take you there. It’s up for sale.”

“So there’s an open house?”

“Yes.” Rania looks out to the open mouth of the balcony, where the setting sun falls. The girl has no idea what the house is, what it has become. She will see. “We can go tomorrow. In the morning. Now, let’s eat.”

She allows Nuhad’s blood to carry her to the table, where the clouds have cleared and the twilit sky paints cool yellow over the white stone of her home. Khaled has her chair pulled out for her. Her home.

Home—a sickening word for what depraved mockery this is—what is a home when it can be ripped, cut from one’s family and violated with the bodies of others as they sleep over rot / decay / death—is it still a home, then, or does it become a prison, a crime, an occupation from the inside—

I remember—I remember—I remember—

I remember—everything.

The soldier was the first—laid down the pattern of degradation—and his children returned only to sell the bones they had sucked the marrow cleanly out of, the flesh that they consumed and the blood that had bathed their father; the others followed in swift and cruel pursuit, as if living atop the bones of my body granted them a right to—to—sell me after stealing. To violate me.

It was the mother and her son, last—

Whispering vitriol under her breath, she shuffled over the bodies strewn below the floor, spitting hate and venom, the festering pestilence of her soul sliding in her wake, she hated it here, she hated it in Haifa, she hated the heat of the sun and the shine of the sea and the little terrorist children who stared at her when she walked outside, she hated it, she hated it,

and I hated her.

She desired the earth and I granted it to her—flesh interred—and Death rose above the rotted wood, and together, We waited until she sat in front of the mirror, spewing her own bitterness at herself, and slowly, the sea rose behind the glass, letting it drip sick drip in a tidal wave that cracked the edges of the glass—her attention was elsewhere, on her own deadened eyes—until the water overwhelmed, crashing and churning, cracking glass until it all released, spitting mirror shards into and around her,

the salt palpable even in the air—

And she fell within.

Her muffled screams distorted beneath the water and her hands reached out from behind the mirror as half of her body—head, neck, shoulders—fell into the deadly reflection and the other half pulled away, desperately seeking to breathe—

Breathe?

Breathe?

Air is a luxury—a privilege—granted to those still with a family, a life, a home—it is not granted to the sickened and those who bring illness—

And so Death rose slowly and soothingly with my hand in Hers, a shadow behind the mirror, and reached for the woman—she suffocates behind these walls—and She slowly sank below, back into her perch,

and her son’s scream echoed across the same choking walls for his mother,

she, reaching out to him, pressing through the walls, a damp outline through the paint, her screams ripping through the barrier,

and he, slamming fists and objects, tearing down the plaster to only find beams and rotted wood—the sudden absence of a person far worse than anything—

I know.

This knowledge is the remembrance, and this is the burden—it presses down, weighing as heavily as all of the salt in the sea—but it is mine, it is my binding because if I forget—if I forget, the fury will leave, the anger that has fueled my purpose.

As long as I remember, I cannot ever—ever—forget.

CHAPTER 5

Living Stones

Marina stands in the cool morning shade of the overhang, watching her grandmother’s home across the street. Hassan’s story of the little girl rings in her ears. Marina searches for her face, blue from shadows in the shapes of fingers round her neck as she peeks out from behind the curtains, but her imagination clatters and falls flat against the reality of how simple it looks. It’s just a house. Rania and Hassan were both wrong. White stone, a storefront beneath, a FOR SALE sign in the window. There are two abandoned and empty flowerpots sitting on the balcony above.

Something is missing in this simple picture. It strikes Marina as a deep loss; it’s not a matter of a missing wind chime or welcome mat. It gnaws at the edges of her stomach inside and begs her to reverse time. She almost expects to blink and see her grandmother sitting on the steps, but she doesn’t. Marina is the sole Sayadi standing here. The loneliness of it hangs on her shoulders, and in this loneliness is another, different kind of sadness. Marina has hung hope on her grandmother’s house as a key to the past and a way to discover who she is, and yet, standing here, all she feels is loss—of herself. Of her grandmother. Sadness emanates from the emptiness of the stairs. A sudden lump forms in her throat. Marina swallows around it roughly.

Beside her, Rania sits on a bench and stares unflinchingly ahead. A mosaic of people passes before them, and in the blur reflected in Rania’s sunglasses Marina can see a woman in a suit, a teenage boy fixing a button on his shirt, a gray cat streaking across the street. These ones drift by, but there are some sitting and staring, like them, their murmurs low. The house is open. All will wait to see what happens within, and this waiting weighs the air. It’s heavy to breathe.

“Now,” Rania finally says, nodding to a couple walking toward the house. The man is pointing at the sign, his other hand wrapped in his wife’s. “You see how they’re dressed? How they carry themselves? Americans. The only ones who ever even consider buying this house. Go in right after them.”

Marina nods, attempting to focus. “Okay.”

A bystander yells out to the couple in Hebrew, but they do not stop. Marina can’t understand what he says, but she can feel it to be a warning.

“Be quick, be quiet, be discreet,” Rania continues. “Do not delay, as much as it calls to you.” Her eyes are hard. “If you need any help, yell. And then run.” She fixes her gaze on Marina. “Fhimti?”

“I understand,” Marina says, swallowing again. Her foot falls off the curb without her permission and she crosses the street breathlessly, but her knees, weak with nerves, stall her at the last second. She turns back to look at Rania as she stands at the edge of the street.

Deeri balik, Rania mouths. Be careful.

Emboldened by the slight nod she gives her, Marina turns to face her unassuming ancestral home. A breeze blows past, scattering old leaves that sweep and fall in front of her, their hard edges scraping the pavement. Water drips from their veins and rot carves jagged holes in their flesh. Marina takes a deep, shaking breath and steps over the pile, refusing to look at it as she walks into the storefront entrance. She watches until the couple has entered the house’s door at the top of the steps, then climbs them herself.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Her knees still shake as she counts the steps, wanting to commit everything to memory. It may be her only chance to see her grandmother’s house.

Walls: concrete. Worn away at the edges, and in one corner it’s eroded so fully that the metal piping underneath juts out. Marina reaches out to touch the walls—

I feel her,

—and the house shudders beneath her touch.

It’s just an old house resettling, Marina reassures herself, but as she repeats this in her mind, her stomach drops.

Haunted houses aren’t real.

She opens the door to the realtor ushering the couple down one hallway. He catches her eye and waves her in, telling her, “I’ll be with you in a moment! Feel free to look around.” He says it in English, and they all disappear down the narrow hallway. It’s been painted a light pink. It looks like the inside of a throat.

Marina slides past the entrance and finds herself in the kitchen. A deep anger begins forming, low and slow, in her chest. She wipes her fingers against the kitchen countertop, which is marble and new, as is the round kitchen table made of pressed, pulpy wood.

The window above the kitchen sink suddenly opens and through it blows a fresh gust of air. It is overwhelming and lacking all at once, as if Marina were standing atop a mountain, swallowing the wind and still feeling hungry for oxygen. It is a light-headed exhilaration for only a few seconds before she recalls Rania’s words. This house is sick.

Legs trembling, she turns to find the living area. There are two sofas and a little bookshelf beside the window. Marina walks over to the window, which faces the sea. Of course it faces the sea. A droplet of water, seemingly from nowhere, is gathered on the sill.

Beside the window is a painting. Marina is drawn to it as if it were the only light left in the world. In it, the water glitters softly beneath a setting sun. A small fishing boat bobs along the waves beneath its glow. She can feel that it comes from her grandmother—a memento passed on through time.

It reminds her of the painting Nuhad kept by her bedside in hospice. But where the golden-haired woman mournfully looked out to sea, this painting holds entirely the opposite feeling. It is a peaceful kind of joy—perhaps one that the woman on the shore longed for. They are two sides to the same painting; the canvases call to one another as if from opposing banks of the same timeline, the same ocean.

Marina leans closer. The layers are cracked and mottled now, and the white of the canvas is slightly yellowed. The age speaks for itself. The painting is older than the occupation. Older than this entity. It’s a time capsule from an era when Nuhad still lived here as a girl. Inexplicably, Marina feels she knows this. She reaches for the painting, mesmerized.

Below the canvas the colors begin to ripple and move, taking form and shape. The walls begin to disappear around her and open into a dream. Like a whisper, or a butterfly’s wing, a soft tendril of a memory caresses Marina as she makes contact:

The setting sun dappled every inch of the coast in a rich, orange hue. Sparkles of light glittered from the sea’s reflection and cast diamonds across leaves and stones. A cool breeze blew through. Nuhad shifted silver and bronze coins from one palm to another, seeing how fast she could go without dropping any.

“Makes me want an orange,” Rania said, looking out at the horizon.

Marina jerks her hand back, gasping. She clutches at her heart, which is pounding loudly against her chest. She saw the sunshine against the water as if she were there, heard young Rania’s voice as if she stood in front of her.

A soothing shhhh sounds from behind her, as if window blinds have been closed gently. The tile beneath her foot jerks up suddenly, and Marina trips, falling into the memory of the painting:

Nuhad followed her friend’s gaze and laughed, suddenly and loudly, for it was the last thing she expected her to say. “The sun reminds you of oranges?!”

Rania grinned sheepishly and shrugged her shoulders. “Look at it. Does it not look like a giant glowing orange in the sky? There’s no earthly orange that could compare to the fruit of the sky! Zaki, wallah!”

Both girls snickered. Nuhad lightly shoved Rania in the shoulder for her absurdity and she fell back, her face so comical that Nuhad’s little laughs turned into huge, belly-splitting guffaws, and in turn so did Rania’s. The two girls clutched at their stomachs, their abs starting to ache from joy. Nuhad grabbed Rania by the hand and steadied herself. A couple passed by, hand in hand, and suppressed barely kept smiles at the pair of girls.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “Ya rab. You’re ridiculous.”

“The two clowns, please!” the man at the stall cried. His eyes twinkled at them as they looked up. “The two jesters, please! Come, yallah. What can I get you girls?”

His stall was their favorite—they’d determined this after months of taste-testing fish dishes from all over Haifa. It stood right up against the sea, the scent and taste of salt infusing into the fresh, grilled fish. The fishermen who frequented the Sayadi store ate at this one, too, which is how Nuhad knew it was objectively the best one. There was a dessert shop just next door, and when they had saved up enough change between them, Nuhad and Rania would split a piece of knafeh or mtabbaq. Ramadan was the best time to buy from the dessert shop, because at all hours, the pans would be warm and sticky with sugary atir from churning out orders for huge meals each evening. Not only that, but it was the only time that Nuhad could eat her favorite dessert of qatayif, small soft breads stuffed with sweet cheese and nuts.

“Two catches of the day!” Nuhad played the part of alleged jester and put on an affected air, sticking one foot out and bowing. She waved her hand with a flourish.

The man laughed and shook his tongs at them. “Two catches coming right up!”

Nuhad and Rania leaned against the stone wall of the building as they waited for their fish. The heat warmed the stone and their backs, and an aromatic concerto circled out of the stall’s kitchen: sumac, lemon, coriander, onions. It was heaven.

“Sometimes I’m so happy,” Rania said suddenly. Nuhad looked over, and her cheeks were flushed, as if she hadn’t meant to say it. Nuhad grabbed her hand and smiled, not saying anything in return. She squeezed and let go.

“Two catches of the day!” The man’s bellow rang out with the ding of the countertop bell. He smiled at them as they grabbed the order, his front silver tooth glinting in the waning sun. “Sahtain!”

“A’a albak,” Rania responded for them both.

Nuhad was already beyond her, sandals smacking against the pavement as she crossed the street to get to the small ledge that sat between the road and the sand. The paper plates were hot against her fingertips. She placed them on top of the small stone wall and hoisted herself up beside them. Small grains of sand flew across her legs as she swished her hands against one another. Rania followed, grunting as she swung her legs around to face the sea with her friend.

“Bon appétit,” Nuhad said, turning the plate so that a fish faced each of them. She kissed her fingertips together like she’d seen a chef do once on television.

“Ah, we’re French now?” Rania giggled and tore off a piece of fish. With steam still rising from the meat, she popped it in her mouth. “Hot!”

“A’an jad?” Nuhad laughed. “Of course it’s still hot!”

“Worth it, though.” Rania sucked on her fingers before picking up another piece. Nuhad followed suit, chewing with her mouth partly open to cool the fish down, the flavor of freshly grilled fish dancing across her tongue. Lemon flirted with coriander that met with the salty sea air, and at once Nuhad understood Rania’s instant happiness from earlier.

Straying her gaze to the edge of the beach, Nuhad watched a British soldier rolling up the hems of his beige pants. He straightened and walked barefoot into the damp sand, where a wave was quickly retreating, leaving only foam behind. Tall boots hung in his hands.

“The only thing that would make this moment better,” Nuhad started, then swallowed and went on, “is if the soldiers would leave. Don’t they want to return home at some point?”

Rania followed her friend’s eyes to the young man, now ankle-deep in the sea. “Yeah,” she said quietly.

Despite the soft glow of the sunset, the sky slowly deepened with a desperation; darkness shrouded them. Slowly, as if from a filter, salt softly fell over the city. It did not land on the girls but instead accumulated on the ground in small, mournful piles.

A sudden heaviness weighs over this memory.

“How’s the family you took in?” Nuhad asked, clearing her throat. She tore off another piece of fish, holding it up to examine it for small bones.

Rania shook her head, as if ridding herself of a thought. “They’re fine, I guess.” She shrugged. “They’re nice, but kind of quiet.”

“Where are they from again?” Nuhad only knew the basics: Rania’s family agreed to take in a Jewish family that had survived the Holocaust. They were one of many.

“Austria. It’s really awful what they did there to them,” Rania said. “The woman helps my mom around the house, which is nice. Even though there are more people to clean up after, I feel like I have fewer chores.”

“I would love to have fewer chores.”

“And she has a baby, too. So she works a lot. But he doesn’t really cry.”

“That’s kind of strange for a baby, right?”

Rania shrugged again. “My mom said when you’ve experienced that kind of trauma, it makes sense for a baby not to cry.”

“Mm.”

Nuhad looked out to the soldier again. Normally, they were in pairs, but he was alone. From here, Nuhad could see no grooves or lines in his face; he appeared young. She would miss her home if she had traveled so far for so long. The darkness spread over the sky, encroaching at the edges and with a sad sort of malice. Nuhad finished her piece of fish in silence.

“Come on,” she said, rubbing her hands on her pants. She shook her head just as Rania had done so earlier. “Let’s go to my place. Maybe my dad bought some sodas.”

She wiggled her eyebrows and Rania smiled.

“Yes!”

Their sandals clapped against the street as they hopped down from the stone wall. Twilight and moonlight reunited over the company of people strolling and chatting, smoking, and sitting at tables playing tawla or eating bizir.

Nuhad’s home was a short walk from the port, and in just a few minutes, they’d hardly had to walk uphill before they were opening the empty storefront and picking their way around the nets and buckets of bait. Darkness blanketed the store, but it was a warm comfort. The creaky staircase announced their presence as they made their way inside of the living room.

A circle of dying saffron was stamped onto the wall; the dying sun was hardly lit from the sky over sea. In the growing darkness, Nuhad’s mother, Victoria, had lit a few candles and a warmth filled the space. Her home was the single spot of light.

“Hi, ya habaybi,” she said quietly. Candlelight glow illuminated her cheeks in rose. “How was the fish?”

“Delicious as always.” The sofa bowed beneath Nuhad’s weight as she flopped onto it, her presence a permanent fixture of every part of the home.

“I’m going to make some tea. Bidkom shay?”

Both girls said yes, and soon the house smelled like warm tea, sugar, and cinnamon sticks. Nuhad could feel her eyes slowly closing. In the comfort of her home, it was easy to feel at peace.

A man’s voice pierces through the image and shatters the candlelight glow. Immediately, reality sets in as the floor materializes beneath Marina’s feet once more and she looks up to the still painting on the wall.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Marina stumbles backward, one foot tripping over the other, but the realtor catches her by the elbow and steadies her.

“Whoa, there.”

She finally catches his eye as they stand face-to-face. He sticks out his hand, a big smile cutting through cheeks where a baby blond beard is growing.

“My name is David. How are you doing today?”

Paralysis strikes Marina at the sight of his outstretched hand—she doesn’t even know what just happened to her, let alone how to answer his question. How am I doing? she thinks, a surprising seething seeping from her thoughts. In a single day, she has landed in her ancestral lands, occupied for over fifty years; she has met her grandmother’s childhood best friend, set foot in the home that should have been her family’s, and been warned away from the very place she now stands in.

And the house—or the painting—has spoken to her. Through it, she felt her grandmother. It’s as if something wants her to come farther inside, feel her memories, feel her. Marina can sense her own soul reattaching to her body as she shakes his hand. Reality returns slowly.

“Hi.” She drops it. “Uh—”

“Beautiful view, by the way. I can see why you fell head over heels for it.” He nods to the window and winks. “So, what are you looking for today?”

“Excuse me? Hello?” A thin voice travels from the entrance. Rania’s voice.

“Yes, hello! In here!” The real estate agent turns and gives Marina a short “Excuse me.”

“Can you show me around the outside, please?” Rania’s voice filters through the lungs of the house. Marina sends a silent thanks to Rania for buying her a few more minutes alone.

Her heart beats loudly in her ears as she looks around, panicked, with sudden clarity. She’s here to—what? Find memories? Lock the house from the inside and refuse to give it back?

Damn it, she thinks. How can one be expected to forcefully shove all of the mementos and memories and found history into a few minutes of borrowed time? Anger floods her in a crushing red wave: she shouldn’t have to squeeze in a few moments alone. This was her grandmother’s house.

A harsh, staccato knocking comes from beneath her feet. Marina jumps away, but all of the tiles begin to make the same noise, as if dozens of people are knocking against the floor below her feet.

All at once, it ceases—

come closer

—and a small, thin path of water comes up from beneath the floor and settles against the tile. Marina stares. The water materialized before her eyes. Her breathing comes quickly now and her mind wants so desperately to hold on to her logic—haunted houses aren’t real—but she has just seen the inside of a memory and watched water form from nothing. Every part of her is begging to turn around and leave, and in her mind still echo the warnings from Rania and Hassan, but an incessant curiosity pulls at her, a part that wants to understand.

It could be a burst pipe, Marina rationalizes, and she crouches and touches the water gingerly with the tip of her pinky finger and jerks it back immediately. It’s real. Tiny droplets spray as she flicks her hand from side to side.

Marina sits back on her heels, her teeth involuntarily chattering against one another despite the welcoming warmth from the house. If haunted houses are real—if—then Nuhad’s own childhood home has intentionally shown her a memory from her grandmother. Now, it wants her to follow the watery path. A hypnotic sense of calm comes over her.

Crawling on all fours, Marina follows the trail with one finger down the hallway, terrified to touch it again and feel its realness. She stops in the middle of the house’s pink throat as a voice of reason, somewhere in the back of her mind, demands that she stop and turn around. What are you doing? What are you doing?

Marina pauses, the edge of her fingers just barely a few inches from the path. Her mother would do something like this. Haifa would crawl on the floor and see where the water led, claiming that she didn’t believe in it, she just wanted to see, but still doing it all the same. Marina leans back on her heels, affirming to herself the logic of what she resolutely knows. She backs up on her knees, sliding back twice, but before she can move farther, the tile rises up to push her forward,

come closer,

and into one of the bedrooms. Marina gasps and flails her hands, attempting to ground herself, as her heart overtakes the logical part of her brain. There is something here. Her eyes tear away from the mesmerizingly tranquil clear path to find two small beds on opposite sides of the room. The furniture is staged.

The trail of water stops and pools in a small puddle above a tile. Marina’s heart is settling into the truth: the house is trying to show her something. She presses her foot against it, testing. Perhaps it will fall and crumble, plummeting her to her death. But it doesn’t budge.

She looks back for a second, ensuring the house is still empty, before hiking up her jeans and leaning closer. Her heart pounds in her ears, a drum that yells at her to leave, leave, leave. But it’s her grandmother’s house. Nuhad grew up here.

Marina’s fingers search the tile, smoothing over the surface, asking it to reveal its purpose—it looks similar to the rest. Nothing is out of the ordinary.

Rapping her knuckles against the tile, careful to maintain some level of surreptitiousness, she hears it. It’s hollow. She traces the surface, the grout, for the answer that the house wants her to find. She pauses.

There.

It’s a small, unnoticeable catch on one of the corners. It’s just big enough for a child’s fingers to fit through, but Marina squeezes her nail beneath the catch and pushes it up just enough; once she has a handle, she catches it in the other hand. The tile lifts.

There’s a small, dusty hollow beneath.

There’s no floor like there should be. Marina looks farther in, but it isn’t deep. There are knots of cobwebs in the corners, and water-damaged stone, thick with salt and minerals. Something else is inside, and she leans closer, squinting.

In the heart of the hollow lies a journal.

Marina reaches for it, her heart in her throat. It’s as if she already knows what this is. She brushes the dust away; the cover reveals itself to be a plain, dark blue. The binding cracks with disuse as she opens it. Yellowed at the edges yet still white in the center, the pages are perfectly pressed from time, and a tight, neat Arabic script fills most of the contents. Marina slowly works her way through the first sentence before surrendering to her rudimentary reading skills. She flips to the front of the journal, where a name is written on the first page, one that she recognizes easily: Nuhad.

Nuhad. Nuhad’s journal.

Marina doesn’t have time to process the awe and horror she feels before the sound of a door opening comes from the front of the house, from the living room. The warmth that had kissed Marina’s skin—the gentle thrum from the house that she didn’t even realize was there—snaps back abruptly, leaving a bone-chilling cold that raises goose bumps on her flesh.

“Thanks! Hope to see you soon!” The realtor’s voice echoes through the hall.

His footsteps draw nearer to the bedroom and Marina quickly stands, shoving the tile back in place and stuffing the journal into her waistband.

“And how are we doing in here?” He claps his hands together as he stands at the threshold. “The bedrooms are nice, right? Spacious closets compared to other homes in Haifa. Can I show you?”

He walks past her and toward the closet, but Marina is already moving into the empty space he’s created and walking back down the hall, the journal’s edges rubbing up against her stomach. “Nope, thank you, all good!” she throws over her shoulder.

It was her. It was her.

I fed her, and in her eyes, Nuhad’s eyes, the memory became a spot of brightness in the unknown, not the dark, not the nightmare, not the living horror, not the remembrance the—

the remembrance.

Remembrance is torment; reliving is torture but it is mine. The memories play again and again with each dripping drop of water, but it is only yawning emptiness that replies—and then her. All of the deaths, all of the fury and remembrance, led to her. My purpose. She came—pain retreated—but then was forced away. Again,

every day,

the feeling of having the world ripped from your limbs, as if to tear an olive tree from its roots;

every day,

having a family live in the same walls and laugh the same laughs and fight the same fights, generation after generation, to feel a part of the family and be cared for in the same way. To protect them from harm,

every day,

to protect them from harm.

But I didn’t

I didn’t.

And settlers flooded in, an all-consuming, churning wave of people with no roots, wanting to play a fantasy, a dream—nightmare—pretending they had always been there, that their parody was armor to protect from the reality of living atop the rivers of blood over which the bones of this false city so brittlely stand; this city with pine trees atop mass graves instead of the people beneath almond trees; with gray stones and rubble instead of the full Grand Mosque and her clock tower, whose septuplet siblings stand across Palestine; with a parking lot instead of the bakery with the wood oven and ma’amoul; with government offices that attempt to stamp out more Palestinian families, more indigenous plants and people, more, more, more, every day, instead of the church of Saint Elias. Instead of the city of Haifa—the true city of Haifa—with her families and

homes.

She’s gone. He took her; all of the pain, all of the death and the remembrance—led to her. He, who stands in my living room, looking out to sea—

i want him gone, i want her back i need to stop remembering.

Silently, Death rises from the pool of still saltwater below the earth, her ice-cold grip reaching toward him, wanting him gone like I want him gone; Together We pray to the gods—grant us vengeance, grant us her again—and Together We pull the water into the wall, allowing the rotted, still seawater to soak through the plaster—

he comes closer.

He inspects and puts one finger on the wall; I recoil from his touch but need him gone and so We soak the wall wetter, colder. He mumbles something and presses against it—Yes! Yes, press! Come to us—but he retreats and leaves. The door closes. Death falls back into her perch in the seawater,

and i am alone again.

It is sickening, to have her / my family / everything torn away,

and to remember—relive,

every day

CHAPTER 6

The City Beneath the Sea

Rania leans back and flicks open the cigarette pack on the coffee table, her fingers searching for release. She lights one and it is a dark red glow against her mouth. As she inhales, her shoulders finally fall, relaxed, for the first time since she returned from the house.

“I can’t believe it,” Marina repeats. Her eyes are trained on the aged journal, and her hand hovers above as if afraid to lose it but also too scared to touch it.

“I’m glad you found it.” She takes another long drag and smoke retreats, curling around the pair like long, slate fingers holding them together. A small part of her knew that the house would reveal something to the girl, that there was a secret dormant in its foundation. But strangely, she feels no vindication from this journal. Gray and heavy, a familiar shadow instead hovers at the edges of her heart.

“The house showed me,” Marina whispers. “It led me to it.”

Rania nods silently.

“You knew. You knew that her house has been—that there’s always been something—”

“I only know the things that I’ve seen.” Rania sucks on her cigarette again, letting the drag calm her from the inside. “The house responded to the occupation. Like we all did.”

“But how can—”

“The dead may be buried,” Rania says, “but when a city is built atop them, their blood never washes away.”

Marina is the one who nods now, and something like a light of understanding flickers behind her eyes. She gingerly pushes the journal toward Rania.

“Will you translate it for me?”

“Of course.” Rania reaches for it, her hand trembling slightly. Papery, old air wafts out of the pages as she cracks it open. Her eyes scan the simple diary entries. “It’s mostly everyday things—boys, our friendship, her family. Like this: ‘Today was a good day, because I snuck three chocolates and Mama didn’t notice.’”

The corners of Marina’s mouth turn up slightly. “How sweet. Maybe I’ll finally learn about her. And my family.” There’s a hint of sad pity to her voice and it irritates Rania. There are worse things in life than to be ignorant of the painful history one comes from.

“That real estate agent was a piece of work,” Rania says, changing the subject. “He kept trying to sell me on the stones, saying that they were classic relics of an old home and they give it character. I should have hit him over the head! As if I didn’t know the house better than he did.”

And every house.

“I’m glad you came to distract him.” Light piano notes float through the open window—Rania’s downstairs neighbor’s son is practicing.

“That couple came out and I figured you were in there by yourself.” Rania flips through the journal again, her eyes scanning but not reading. “I wouldn’t go in, and of course he knew I was Palestinian, but I thought it would still give you some extra time.”

“Thank you,” Marina says quietly, looking out toward the music.

A line catches Rania’s eyes, and her heart skips a beat: Today Rania and I went to see Auntie Fay’a so that she could help us with our university essays. Rania closes her eyes, suppressing the pain of a lost future to the recesses of her mind.

“Habibti, are you sure you want to see this journal? There are so many memories. Not all of them are good.”

The girl’s face falls. “Of—of course. I want to learn about my family.”

This, too, frustrates Rania. “Ya’ani—it’s not so black-and-white. Nuhad probably told you everything she needed. Some things are best kept unknown.”

“Oh.” Marina looks like she wants to say something else, but her jaw clenches.

“Marina, do you think you don’t know who you are because you don’t know your family’s history?”

“No, I just—it would be easier to know. It would help. Like, what ground do I stand on? What are the pieces that put me together and make me whole?” She pauses. “All my life, I’ve only ever known the pieces separately—the parts of Tata’s life, the parts of my mom’s. And I can feel myself fragmenting, too. But I don’t want to be Marina, friend and daughter of Haifa, or Marina, software developer extraordinaire, or Marina, the lost mixed child whose entire life—friends, hobbies, personality—is a patchwork combination of feeling out of place. I don’t want to be defined by the pieces I choose to share with others and their perceptions of me. I—I want to find myself.”

“You’re you! Isn’t that good enough?” Ash piles over the cigarette tray as the cigarette lies limply in Rania’s hand. “Keep Nuhad’s memory sacred. You already know all of the history anyway. There’s no point reliving it.”

Marina’s eyes—the ones that look so much like Nuhad’s—look down at her hands. “The Nakba?”

Rania raises her eyebrows in affirmation.

“What happened then? To you—and my grandmother?”

Rania stares at the red embers of the dwindling cigarette. Hadn’t she said she didn’t want to relive it? But the words alone recall the memories without her permission, and the one that blazes the brightest is the look of helplessness on her father’s face that day.

Their adopted family had waited until everyone was out for something—a celebration or dinner perhaps, Rania can’t remember now—and then changed the locks on the door. It was the day before the war. Rania was a young girl. When her family returned home and the key didn’t work, they knocked on the door, wondering what had happened. Did their adopted family change the locks because a burglar had tried to come in? Or something worse? But through the window, Rania had seen the silhouette of the mother with her child, holding him tightly, as if he was the only anchor she had, and Rania knew by the way her cheeks whitened and her lips pressed together that she had done this on purpose. She’d claimed her new home. Every single one of their belongings was left inside. Rania’s family was left without anything to call their own but the claim to the land. The day after, they were just one of thousands of families like that.

It was enough to suffer it once, let alone retell and relive it. Sighing, she stands.

“It doesn’t matter what happened to me. It doesn’t. And for you, for your family, you’re the living history of them. And you’re here. We’re here. After 1967, then Camp David, the Oslo Accords … we’re here.” Rania empties out the remnants in her ashtray over the trash. The metal hits against the side: thunk, thunk—and the third thunk is covered by the unmistakable sound of a gun firing. Another shot. Another.

Marina sits up in her chair at the same time Rania straightens, looking past her and to the window. A part of Rania wants it to be fireworks, waits for a few moments for the fourth firecracker to pop, but she knows better. Complete and utter silence descends for a few precious moments before murmurs and yells begin to converge, overlapping into confusion.

Peeling paint flakes off against Rania’s grip as she heaves the window further open, looking below and beyond.

“What was that? Was that a—gun?” Marina asks. Her voice lowers on the word gun, as if whispering it will keep the reality away. She grasps herself with her arms and hugs herself close, and Rania finds it painful to look at her. She looks too much like Nuhad, like scared Nuhad.

“Come. Let’s go see.” Rania slides her feet into house slippers and opens the door, feeling Marina’s shadow close behind.

They need only walk a couple of blocks before they see a crowd burgeoning. Many on the outskirts are confused, hovering, standing on tiptoe to see farther in. Rania peeks around the edge of this amorphous semicircle, but the most she can see is a raised fist or two. Gravelly, throaty yells shout in cacophony around them.

“Shu sar?” Her breath is low.

“I think a young boy was shot,” a fellow onlooker says. Her eyes, too, dart about as she attempts to see through the crowd. “That’s what others are saying.”

“And?” Rania prompts. Her lungs sear with the suffocation in this small, crowded space. More people have come to see what’s happened, adding to the fringe, and in a matter of moments, Rania no longer stands at the edges but in the midst of a mad, mourning, murmuring body of people moving ever closer to the boy.

“Nothing! What could a child be doing? Kicking a rock down the sidewalk?” At once her eyes flash red and Rania knows exactly what thought runs through her mind. “Israeli police shot him.”

Details are the same monotonous pattern that do not give life or color to these stories. He wasn’t doing anything. Israeli police told him to stop. They shot him. The news will report it as an altercation and give the boy a knife. This is not just the Second Intifada; this is life under Israeli occupation.

“Is he dead?”

“We don’t know yet.”

The air is gone.

Standing on tiptoe, Rania attempts to peer over the expanding crowd, and even from her short stature she can see the crimson pool that slowly spreads on the ground, and beside it, in it, the boy. Fury and terror begin to rise in equal measure; everyone has seen the fallen child. Off to the side are two Israeli soldiers, automatic rifles strapped to their bodies, and they yell at the crowd, their eyes darting for other soldiers.

One, his finger on the trigger, steps over the boy. The crowd grows louder, angrier, hotter at this, causing an uproar—an anguished fury that is rooted in impotence and helplessness. The people move as one body toward the boy, wanting to protect him from the inevitable violence they will all endure. Look at him—look at him. He could be any one of our sons.

“Go away. Go away!” the soldier yells, waving his hand and gripping his gun even more threateningly. His throat clings to the difficult sounds of Arabic. He waves at them like they are petulant children, or dogs. “Disperse!”

“May God curse your father, and your father’s father! May God curse your entire bloodline!” A woman’s voice can be heard above the crowd, and her rage, the way that it cracks her voice and shakes her breath, is the match that ignites the rest. The yelling grows louder and people begin to test the boundaries of the soldiers, stepping closer and retreating, all eyes on their guns. A mother nearby rushes her own son away, his arm clasped tightly in her hand, as she pushes out from the crowd.

Rania remembers her own shadow and looks over at Marina. The girl has understood enough of the Arabic to know what happened here. Through the lines of worry creased between her brows, she can see cracks of terror and anguish. It is too painful, too familiar. Grabbing Marina’s arm, she pushes their way through the ever-growing crowd, jostling elbows with neighbors whose eyes are now lit with flames.

“It will only get worse,” she calls back to Marina. The girl’s gaze is trained in the opposite direction they walk, focusing on the boy. Rania yanks at her arm a little harder than she intends. “Yallah, Marina. We have to move.”

Marina’s long legs stumble after her, but they both stutter as they hear loud, staccato raps against the street. Ambulance sirens wail in the distance and Rania quickens her pace as much as she can, the thin soles of her house slippers slapping against her heels. The screams of anger grow louder even as their distance increases. Despite the noise, she can hear Marina’s breath: loud, laborious, heavy.

“Breathe through your nose,” she orders.

A whimper escapes Marina’s throat, but she does as she is told, and the sound of her breath slowly quiets. Rania only eases her pace once the endless blue is in sight. Seagulls squawk overhead, eyeing for scraps, and waves gently lap against the sand. The murder that has just happened in a Palestinian neighborhood feels impossible against this detached picture of beachgoing, café-eating Israelis. Her feet feel the worn softness of the weathered wood of the pier as she walks them toward the sea. She releases Marina’s arm.

“Sit.” Rania motions to a bench but Marina shakes her head.

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t? Just sit—please.” She adds this last plea for Marina’s benefit, for the young girl has started shivering as if they stood naked in the dead of winter. “I’ll get us some food. We can—I don’t know. Food will help.”

Marina nods, and suddenly Rania feels pity for her. These are the deaths that haunt this city—this country. Marina wasn’t prepared.

“It—it’s—” Words have escaped Rania for this. The air itself has disappeared from her throat. “There’s nothing to say. There is nothing I can say.”

“Can we move?” Marina’s soft voice is nearly drowned out by the waves and her face is splotched with red.

“Move?” Rania half laughs a disbelieving expulsion of air. It’s the type of darkly sarcastic Palestinian comment she herself would have made after the shock had worn off. “Sure, if you can get me a house on the beach in Greece, I’ll move there.”

“No—from here. Can we move off of the pier?” Marina asks. Rania turns, looking around them, but this is the easiest spot to sit at. On either side of them are beaches. “We’re too close to the water.”

Rania stares at her for a moment. “Just stay here. I’ll be right back with some food,” she says. “Food fixes everything.”

Marina sits, shaking, as Rania leaves. Nuhad is on her mind. Nuhad—her best friend and confidante who understood the importance of the sea’s nurturing embrace when bad things happened. Of course Rania had taken them to the sea. Where else would she want to be as she navigated the complex labyrinth of emotions of being a neighbor to a martyred boy? She looks back at Marina, whose shoulders are hunched and face is clearly etched with fear. Nuhad’s own granddaughter, afraid of the sea. Of water. Rania shakes her head.

For several moments, the only sound is the light, flaky whispers of photos being leafed through slowly. Haifa sits with a fan of memories surrounding her; the floor is carpeted no longer with polyester rug but with her mother’s papers, photos, and belongings.

Opening the box from the nursing home led to an inadvertent exploration into each item she pulled from within. More than anything else, the box is filled with old photos. They’re single, individual remembrances—not the collections from Nuhad’s dozens of scrapbooks with yellowed, sticky paper cementing memories in time. As a child, Haifa would attempt to follow along, looking through the various piles and attempting to read the Arabic scrawl on the back unsuccessfully as Nuhad put them all together. The hobby made Nuhad happy, or at least content. There are so many photos here that Haifa almost thinks she should make a scrapbook in her mother’s honor.

But none of these things represent Nuhad—not really.

Papers and photographs filter through her fingers and fall to the floor, suddenly apparent in their transience. Her eyes slowly fill instead with the screen of memory. A photograph cannot capture the quiet authority with which Nuhad used to sit in the corner of the living room; a letter cannot comprehend the tenuous grasp she had on her own fate near the end. These are just objects. There is nothing here but broken reflections piecing a shadow of a life together.

Grunting, brushing her hands against her pants, Haifa moves toward the kitchen. Yellow lemonade is sitting in the yellow kitchen for her. Liquid hits the cup loudly in the silent house as her mind wanders. What’s meaningful after death? Haifa didn’t even know her mother well enough when she was alive, let alone to be the judge of what single photograph could serve as a good memory of her.

The photo of Nuhad stares at her from the mantel. Even from this distance, Haifa can see the beginnings of who she knew to be her mother, the lines around her mouth that eventually would haunt Haifa and whisper that everything was already gone.

The lemonade is tart against her tongue and she leans against the counter. The clock says 5 PM Palestine time now, and Marina still hasn’t called. She broke when she awoke an hour ago, needing to hear Marina’s voice, but she was only greeted by Hassan, who told her that Marina had been out since the morning.

Marina is discovering the place where Nuhad was a young girl. Where she had friends. A life. Everyday mundanities. She is discovering that Haifa could never have measured up to the city of life and memory. No, Haifa is a shadow of what should have been.

With Nuhad locking her past into an airtight box, she sealed the person she was from the person she became, becoming a shadow too. On the rare occasion, Nuhad could recall a memory of youth, but did she also remember that she was a young girl once? Could she have remembered that feeling? Nuhad, to Haifa, was only ever a woman who longed for her home and city, detaching entirely from reality some days in service of the bitterness of those memories. She became ethereal. A dream, like Haifa.

She walks back to the living room, one fingernail between her teeth as she surveys the damage. Smoothing her eyebrows, smoothing the lines and tension she holds in her face, Haifa feels her expression relax, as if she wants to prove to herself that neither her mother’s secrets nor Marina’s distance is hurting her. It is in these moments that the grief weighs the heaviest.

“Okay.” Haifa sighs. She gathers the throw-away pile into the box and kicks open the door with her foot. Though it’s evening, humidity hangs over the air like a wet blanket. Her arms tremble beneath the weight; the box can hardly handle the burden of a life.

Unable to see over the box, Haifa trips over a raised crack in the pavement. As she falls, the contents of the box fly into the air, and one piece makes a shattering crash as it hits concrete. Heat braises her forehead as she sits up, inspecting the torn flesh of her skinned palms. She picks her way around the fallen glass and gathers up the contents again.

“Hm.” The photo from Haifa’s wedding—the one where Nuhad stood, smiling in the corner—is the one that smashed. The fragile photo paper waves against the air as she picks it up, threading it carefully through the glass. But something falls out from behind. It’s folded, and the softly permanent creases have been made and remade several times.

As she unfolds it, three more pieces of paper fall out from within the shattered frame. Faint, weak Arabic handwriting is barely visible on the main page, as if written with a trembling hand. On the three other papers is also an Arabic script that has been faded by time.

“Ana b-bidi—” Haifa struggles to read the main note, but the writing is spidery-thin and in a casual script that she’s never learned to read. She pockets the pages and gathers the rest of the fallen papers. The garbage lid slams shut behind the thud of the box, but Haifa is already on her way back inside by the time it echoes.

Sara’s number comes easily by memory, and Haifa punches the digits in one by one.

“Ah, Sara? Keefik?” she says after it connects. Unfolding each note, she lays them side by side on her kitchen countertop.

“Hi, habibti, how are you?” Sara’s voice sings familiar in her ear.

“I’m good—I might need your help with something.” Haifa turns on the overhead lamp, hoping that the extra light will help illuminate the writing. “Can you translate something for me from Arabic into English?”

“Taba’an.”

“It’s not long,” Haifa amends. That familiar feeling of guilt settles in her stomach. “I can drop it off whenever you’re free. Don’t worry—it’s not that important.”

“Of course, of course. Bring it by. Anytime this week—I’ll help you translate.”

“Thank you so much, Sara. Thank you. Really,” Haifa says, but she can already hear Sara waving her off.

In the beginning, the word haunting was never uttered.

The soldier drowned in old age, a kindness undeserved—I didn’t know, I didn’t know—and in death, his body laid the way for the others, carving the pathway to the sea, and no one said the word haunted.

But they kept coming.

They formed a wall of endless supplanters—living atop flesh—and the remembrance fell to me. How could I—how could I forget—they had endured senseless violence and I was the only one who could remember. The city and I—haunted.

And I began to consume.

Despite choking on the drowning water of anger, I consumed and suffocated them too, slowly at first, and then as quickly as they settled—for why should they not drown with me?—the taste of flesh the only thing to cut the pain of remembering. They sputtered in the water, the anger consuming us all, their claws in my chest and their blood in my throat, not understanding why.

Why—

As if they do not walk atop bodies, as if they do not live over death.

And if they were there, living over these graves, my own family could not return. The children, too—yes, the children, for if their children slept in the beds, how could my children return? The family came then, the one with the little girl—

She saw the reflection of my children in the mirror, saw them as she saw herself—children, innocents—and one night, filled already with the visions of those who lived here first, she drew a bath slowly and stepped in as it filled around her ankles; she looked up into the wall, into me,

I opened my maw for her and she saw inside of me.

She watched the deaths and the expulsions, the horrors and drownings, and she screamed, she wailed, it became too much for a child—

And she put her own hands round her neck and the walls drew closer, she could not live atop the brittle bones, atop the massacres.

She saw what was inside of me and it killed her.

To the ones I did not consume, the truth buried them alive—an unbearable agony that they could not reconcile. We drown together, an all-consuming, bottomless hunger that begs for a different past, a different reality.

Now, they spit the word haunted at me.

The bodies pile, limbs upon limbs, and my purpose is single-minded, intentional—there must be room for my family—and they fall into my mouth, into the churning, angered sea, into Death Herself, but now,

one has finally returned.

I claw at the settlers who come to gawk at the bones they stand on—Yes, come closer! Breathe me in!—and my purpose is redeemed, my life fulfilled, for one has finally returned, Nuhad’s eyes, and now that she is here, again, finally,

I promise, I promise, to stay empty for her return.

The fading view of Rania’s figure is proportional to the vibration of her legs pounding through the pier, and it’s only for these few moments that Marina can sense her presence before she detaches from her completely, becoming a speck in the distance. Marina attempts a deep breath, the air feeling shaky in her throat, and reminds herself that the water isn’t high. The waving little flags in the distance are green. The waves are mild caresses brushing against the shore. She breathes.

In.

Nuhad had a journal. She had a secret journal, living beneath the tile of her stolen home. It holds an account of her life. Of everything.

Out.

The hunger for knowledge overwhelms—she feels it in every interaction she has here. Everyone else knows their history. Except for her. She needs to feel whole.

In.

She looks down at the beach in an attempt to distract from these thoughts. It’s far easier to become consumed by others’ lives, real and imagined. There are people down there as little dots in colorful bathing suits splashing one another in the water and huddling together underneath beach umbrellas. They wave their arms and jump over the small waves that roll in, falling down and letting the water crash over them. They are all wearing sunglasses. It is difficult to imagine an impending storm amid this picturesque scene.

Out.

Her imagination spins out from beneath her, weaving a thread of make-believe: he could be a doctor, she could be a marine biologist, they could be a surfer disappointed by the calmness of the day’s waves. Marina leans back on the bench for the first time since she sat down. A pair of young children—they look like twins—run past her, and the pounding echoes from their feet into her arms. It’s far easier to be preoccupied with others. They know themselves.

In.

There are Palestinians on the street: construction workers wiping their brows from the heat, patrons drinking coffee at a café, waiters serving diners. Small, defiant flags wave from their businesses and stickers make their mark against the backs of their cars.

Out.

Something catches her eye—a sign near the entrance of the beach. The text is small and difficult to read from her distance, but as she squints, the English letters mostly form. She can fill in the blanks herself. BEACH ACCESS: ISRAELI RESIDENTS ONLY. Beside the sign is the cashier at the front, handling payments and checking IDs. Her nails dig into the soft skin of her thighs.

In.

The sun is bright, and Marina shields her eyes with her hands. In this half-light between open and shut, her vision fades to a chalky beige. The sea recedes and the beachgoers walk and jump over freshly turned soil, and as Marina squints, bright corners of plastic bags flash against the glare of the light. Her heart catches in her throat as she pieces together the disturbed earth and blaze of bags—the beach is no longer a beach but a mass grave. She sits back up, and when she blinks, the sand washes over it again. The dreamy summer scene superimposes itself over the nightmare.

Out.

A car passes, and its license plate glares with green lettering, loudly labeling them as Palestinians. It yells out—Look, people (possible terrorists!) from the West Bank!

In.

Behind the scattered Palestinians, there are the old buildings. Marina can see their yellowed stone without squinting.

Out.

She wonders if they, too, have bullet holes in their walls.

In.

and suddenly marina is taking in too much air entirely, she is gulping it down, waiting for the release and it isn’t coming; now the water is up to the edge of the pier—she knew it would find her, of course it would—and it winds its way around her ankles, and suddenly, before she can run, marina is bound by the strength of the sea. her eyes search desperately for rania, as hungry for her as she is for the exhale, but she is nowhere to be found, she is not coming back, she has shown marina death by zionism and then abandoned her to her greatest fear. the air locks itself inside of her now, afraid to come out in this choking, smothering city, and marina cannot breathe, and now the water is up to her calves and she can feel the pull, the strength behind the waves. her mouth is open but no sound is coming out; she wants to scream and howl for help but everyone on the beach is ignoring her as the water inches up slowly—she is drowning and why would the israelis help? the only good Palestinian is a Dead Palestinian. the water is up to her hips, its powerful icy grasp curling around her shrinking stomach, and marina reaches for the bench to ground herself but it is gone, swept away into the churning mouth of the mediterranean sea. this is the storm. her lungs burn with the fire of air bubbling inside, waiting for its expulsion; since she landed in tel aviv she hasn’t been able to breathe, she’s choked endlessly: on the air, the settlers, the grass, her own vomit—and now, she’s suffocating to death. the tide pulls at her and she is not strong enough to resist, and so it takes her, sweeping her with salt and unforgiving swells into the sea. saltwater stings her eyes with barbs; they are open and marina can see the scorched earth below, she can see the dead bodies, she can see the sea that is not sky blue but rather blood red—it is flowing with the dark liquid and the israelis are on the shore and they are perfectly fine, comfortable!, tranquil, laughing and splashing above the mass graves that they walk atop. marina’s breath finally releases, her vision clouded by the bubbles rising from her mouth, and she sinks to the bottom, where the reflection of the real city lies beneath: the old haifa, the one that her grandmother grew up in—it’s still down here! she tries to scream, yell, for someone to come save the drowning city and the drowning people inside and the drowning girl, but she cannot—her oxygen is depleted, she is underwater, she cannot scream anymore. she sinks to the house, her grandmother’s house, it welcomes her in but there are piles of bleach-white bones in the bloodred sea and the familiar, long shadow hovers around it, seeping from its windows and the cracks in its stone; she gasps, wanting to dive deeper but too scared of reality, and her lungs claw her insides for more air, but there is none to give, they have taken the air, too,

and she sinks further. her vision fades to black.

CHAPTER 7

Dyspnea

Please … please.

You were there—in the ocean. My ocean. Your flesh, melting with my salt. The waves. The stones and door—the way I once was. My city. But no—no more.

Arms wide, you reached for me, filled with so much hope and relief. And I—I opened for you, open, welcoming—a way of the past—but you swam away, terrified of me, of the sickness; it was in your eyes, wide with terror and spidery with blood; it was in your mouth as it dropped into a gasp—for air—but there is only water in this grave. This tomb of my city. My family.

Air hunger in your lungs, in mine; it rakes and gnaws in a forced struggle for breath, a fight for that which should be ours. You will breathe, dear Marina Nuhad, you will breathe; walls thick with rich, deep oxygen, you will enter and you will breathe, fully, and feel the click of satisfaction at the bottom, it is yours and mine and ours—

not the air hunger. Not the starvation.

You knew what was down here—fallen, an abyss below the glittering sea; you saw—this remembrance, ours—and you wanted what once was. Legs pushed off the pier; lungs gasping with anticipation; hungry eyes on my walls. On my city. We hunger together. You saw me, and I saw you—craving, forcing yawns to suck more air into your fragile lungs, sighing and exacerbating the appetite, whetting the blade of your awareness of the lack that we share. You wake at night and thrash in your twisted sheets and try to breathe—reality becoming nightmare—but it only comes in the short gasps of this perpetual, endless terror—

they don’t know what it means to drown on land.

You starved for your grandmother my Nuhad but her breath was the first to be stolen in the dark of night—cycle’s beginning—she sighed, she yawned, she clawed more air in an attempt to relive a time in the before. And she had your mother, who grew up in this sighing, yawning, gasping starvation—and the craving became hers, and hers, and yours, and mine—

and with every hunger, a memory.

This rotting, willful dyspnea is made up of three parts, dear Marina Nuhad: it is a hunger because we starve, we crave; it is an ask, deep in your throat and chest, for more, because this is not a life; and in its completion, it is a dissatisfaction because you have done all you can, given everything to the starvation—

No more.

We will satiate one another.

Please … please.

The first thing Marina feels, even before she opens her eyes, is the staticky-smooth stitching of the bedsheet beneath her fingertips. Low yellow light filters through the backs of her heavy, heavy eyelids.

Confusion strikes her for a moment as she looks around. A white sheet is draped over her body, and a tall gray curtain blocks part of the window beside her. Clouds have already gathered in the small slit that she can see through; the storm is brewing. The low, steady pulsing of a vitals monitor underscores this setting. Marina turns her head slightly. The crinkle of the pillowcase moves with her.

There is a man seated beside her, slumped in a chair with one fist underneath his chin. His eyes are closed, and his breathing is steady and low, matching the pace of his rising and falling stomach. He looks familiar, though she knows him with floppy dark curls and at the entrance of Rania’s house, welcoming her inside. Now, his hair has been shorn close to his head, giving him an air of vulnerability.

“Khaled?” Marina whispers. Disuse scrapes at her throat and she clears it. “Khaled?”

He stirs, lifting his head from his chin and blinking a few times. As he meets Marina’s gaze, he sits up abruptly.

“Hi. How are you feeling?” He stands and wheels the doctor’s stool to sit beside her.

“Where am I?”

He grimaces. “You’re in the hospital.”

“What? Why…” Marina trails off as her memory replays images of the ocean, feelings of falling. “Did I drown?”

“No, not exactly.” His fingers rise up to run through his hair for a moment before they touch skin instead, and they fall. “You fell into the sea. From the pier.” He winces again.

“I drowned?” Marina prompts.

“Almost. They had to pull you out. You were thrashing around.”

“Is that a hospital-worthy event?” She tugs at her nightgown and flinches with slight embarrassment.

“Ya’ani, I wish my grandmother was here. She would explain this better—she was there.” He sighs. “Apparently, they listened to your lungs and something sounded bad. You took in too much seawater, but they also wanted to observe you and maybe take some X-rays. I don’t know.”

As he speaks, Marina feels the truth of his words. It’s in the clouded obstruction of her lungs; even here, in the hospital, lying down, it’s like there are rocks scattered throughout the small alveoli. Oxygen struggles to snake past—there is only a thin stream of air getting to her.

“What did they say?” Panic rises in Marina’s throat. She suddenly feels very alone in a country that is not hers. The sensation of feeling lost, again, wraps around her cold shoulders and sudden tears spring to her eyes.

“I don’t know exactly,” he says. A small agony is written across his face. “I wasn’t there.”

“Where’s Rania—eh, Im Omar?” Her voice is throaty.

“She had to go to work. It’s”—he checks his watch—“nine o’clock in the evening now. She had to help her employers with some party.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Three, four hours. I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if I should wake you.”

“When is Rania coming back?” Marina asks, and she can hear how pathetic she sounds in this bare need. But Rania is her lifeline here—she’s the only comfort she has.

“Tomorrow morning. Don’t worry, Marina.”

Marina props herself up on her elbows and looks around the room. A divider separates Marina from her roommate. In the corner sits a tray of untouched food, save for an overturned, empty Jell-O container. A rattling cart steadily wheels itself onto the linoleum floor of the room, and Khaled peers around the divider.

“Miss? Miss—can you please give my friend her information?” he asks.

A nurse comes around the edge and sighs. The bags beneath her eyes are deep, and though her hair is pulled into a bun, Marina can see how thin it is. She stands with her feet turned away from each other as she flips through her clipboard.

“Marina?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“The doctor wants to do an X-ray on you tomorrow and see what’s wrong with your lungs. It sounds like there’s a blockage or something. She doesn’t think it’s an infection, though.” She smiles tiredly and returns to the other side of the room.

Khaled waits, his back erect on the stool, and watches the nurse out of the corner of his eye. When she finally leaves, he spins back to Marina and leans in. His breath smells of sleep. It’s a new intimacy, a new boundary that shifts Khaled deeper into Marina’s space.

“We’re going to try and discharge you tomorrow,” he whispers. “They had to take you to the closest hospital—there was no choice—but it’s Israeli. And, saraha, it’s one of the worst ones. Your American passport means little if you’re Palestinian. This one is notorious for medical malpractice and negligence for us, and they always get away with it. I wouldn’t trust anything they want to do.”

“Why?” Marina asks, but her gut already knows.

“Listen,” he begins. “When my aunt was diagnosed with kidney disease, she did her dialysis in this hospital for about a month before she died. Why? There was nothing else wrong with her. The dialysis should have kept her going. But—”

“They killed her,” Marina finishes for him.

“Exactly.” There is a grave fire in his eyes that scares Marina from asking more details. He nods once, curtly. “And that’s just one story. Don’t worry. We’ll try to get you out tomorrow.”

Marina swallows. She wants her mother. She wants her yellow kitchen, and her shitty air-conditioning, and to be reading some terrible fantasy book on her brown and pink bed until Haifa inevitably comes in to interrupt, open her curtains, and make her laugh. “Okay. Can I call my mom?”

“Of course.” Khaled smacks a palm against his forehead and it’s so cartoonish that it almost makes Marina laugh. She coughs instead, feeling rocks burrow into her lungs. “I would have called her for you, but I didn’t know her number. I just put some international minutes on here. You know how to reach her? It should be”—he checks his watch again—“afternoon in the States. You should be able to get her.” He hands her his cell phone, and Marina sits up.

She punches the number in slowly. Guilt sinks into her stomach—she hasn’t called Haifa since she landed, and in the day and a half since arriving, Marina has lived a lifetime. She wanted to find herself in her grandmother’s city, and now she feels stupid for even trying. The phone grows warm by her cheek as she clutches it tightly.

“Hello?” Her mother’s voice is such a breath of home that tears instantly prick at the back of Marina’s eyes.

“Mama?” she whispers.

“Marina? Sweetie, are you okay?” Haifa’s voice becomes clearer; she’s clenching the phone closer to her cheek. “What number is this?”

“I’m fine,” Marina says, and relays the entire trip to her mother. Haifa gasps almost immediately, concern rushing her every word.

“Marina! Marina, oh my god,” Haifa says, not even waiting for her to finish. “I’m coming to you. I’ll come to you. Don’t worry—I’ll buy my ticket right after this.”

“No, Mama, it’s okay. Please,” Marina says, but she knows it’s fruitless to dissuade her mother now. Her breath comes in gaspingly short spurts. “I can come home.”

“No, Marina, listen to yourself. You’re so weak that it sounds like you’re standing on a mountain and speaking through two tin cans and a piece of string. You’re not flying right now—that’s the worst thing you could do in your state. Don’t worry, I’ll be there soon.” Marina can hear the sounds of her mother moving things around—probably already packing. She clicks her tongue. “And in so little time! You just got there. You haven’t even had a chance to see the sights, or swim at the beach, or see Tata’s old house yet, or—”

“I did see it. Her house.”

Silence suddenly falls, and Haifa doesn’t speak for so long that Marina nearly takes the phone from her ear to see if it’s still connected.

“You saw it?” Her mother’s voice has changed from anxious to an open vulnerability. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“I saw it,” Marina hedges. She thinks of the journal she left lying on Rania’s kitchen table. “I’m sorry for not calling. But there’s some weird stuff about the house. I don’t know.” She sneaks a furtive glance at Khaled, but he’s closing the window curtains, blocking out the streetlamps outside.

“Weird? Sweetie, if you’re not safe, you need to go to Nazareth immediately. Go see Philippe.”

“No. I mean, yes, I’m safe. I’m fine. But the house—well, they all say it’s haunted.” She whispers the last word. It’s not something she would have admitted before, but now—now, she has felt the house. She has felt the city. Marina is still breathing, but it’s a strange sound, as if she’s sighing with each inhale.

“Haunted?” Haifa’s voice is tinny through the phone. “Honey, are you okay? Your breathing sounds bad.”

“I’m fine. Everyone says the house is … evil. I don’t know.” Marina pauses. “That’s what Rania said—she passes by it every day, you know, and she’s known the house for years—and then I went in and something … happened.”

“What do you mean something happened? And what does Rania mean? There are ghosts in the house?”

“She says it keeps kicking people out. People keep moving in and then something strange happens, and they have to leave.” Khaled is now staring directly at Marina. She shifts her gaze uncomfortably, fingers twisting around the bedsheet. “And then the house—responded to me when I was in there. Or something like that. I felt like it knew me.”

“Responded to you how? And did Rania elaborate? What are these hauntings?” Haifa says with an urgency that scares Marina.

“I don’t know, Mama. But there’s just something … off.” Marina’s voice suddenly sounds squeezed and small. Her mind flits to the elderly man on the sidewalk staring at her, attempting to tell her something, and the mass grave that appeared for a fleeting, agonizing second on the beach. Even if Marina hadn’t seen these herself, there is a shadow that weighs over the city heavily; it can be felt in the skyscrapers, the cafés, in the buildings whose stones carry their age but no longer their families.

“Habibti, are you okay? Tell me what’s wrong.” She can hear her mother stand up straighter from the change in her voice.

Marina sucks in a huge gulp of air and releases it in an audible exhale. The memory of the pier—of the city beneath the sea—suffocates her. “There’s something really wrong with the city,” she whispers. “It’s not just Tata’s house that’s haunted. The entire city is bad. All of it feels like—a response.”

“A response to…” Haifa’s voice trails off, but there is a certainty in it, like she already knows where Marina is going with this.

“The occupation,” Marina says, finishing her sentence for her. Her throat closes with the inability to say the rest: her trip to Haifa wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was the city of her grandmother’s childhood, the place her mother was named in honor of, and the place where Marina was to become whole. But reality inhabits the city with a haunting grief that strips the city of any air; shadows and specters hang over Haifa with the remembrance of its past. Marina’s dream has slowly fallen apart with each passing hour she spends in this suffocating city.

“Well, I’ll be there soon. Don’t worry. We’ll get through this together,” Haifa says, and Marina can hear the nail between her mother’s teeth. “Listen, before you go, give me Rania’s address,” she says, and her pencil scratches faintly in Marina’s ear as she tells her. “Okay. I changed my mind about Philippe—don’t go yet if you’re not healthy. Stay with Rania and get some rest. I’ll tell Hassan that you’re not coming back, okay? I’ll see you soon. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

The click sounds, and silence presses against Marina’s ear for a moment until she finally, slowly closes the phone. She waits for something to come to her, but there are no words to describe the overwhelm of conflicting emotions she has.

“Your mom is coming, ah?” Khaled asks.

Marina nods. “Of course.”

“You went to your tata’s house?” Khaled’s voice is quiet as he hovers beside the window.

“Earlier today.” Marina clears her throat. “Before all of this.”

“You actually went inside?” he asks, and Marina nods. “Did you hear anything?”

“Like what?”

“You would know. If you heard it.” He pauses, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t go that way very often. But once, a few months ago, I walked past it.” His gaze drops to his hands and he picks at an excess of skin around his thumb. “I heard—I heard a scream from inside.”

“Oh,” Marina says, but before she can think of what else to say, Khaled continues.

“I don’t know what it was. I was passing by and I swear I heard the most”—he searches for the word—“chilling scream I’ve ever heard.” He looks back up at her. “But there was no one inside. The doors were locked, the windows were shut. The sound still haunts me. I can hear it even now.”

Marina pinches the edge of the thin hospital blanket with her nails, scratching at the cloth. “Do you find the city…?” She trails off. “I mean, it’s not just the house, right? There’s something wrong with Haifa, too.”

Khaled leans against the wall as he considers her question. A deep sigh releases from his nose.

“I don’t know. I’ve lived here my whole life; I have no other sense of normal.” He swallows. “But I notice things. Sometimes there are—flashes. I see my aunt sometimes near this hospital, the one who had dialysis here. And wallah, it’s her. I swear. I always run up to her, thinking that one of these times, I’ll catch her and ask her what she needs. It’s stupid. Maybe I’ll leave her a shawarma sandwich on a bench outside if she really misses it, you know? Then I blink and she disappears.” His voice is soft. “And of course, I feel insane. For wanting to catch my aunt, yes, but also—no one else notices these things. When I heard the scream, I stopped in my tracks. Deadly still. I thought someone was injured before realizing it came from the house.” His intense gaze stalls Marina’s breath for a moment. “But no one else stopped. No one else looked. It was just me.”

The echoes of his words rest in the hospital walls for a moment.

“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Marina finally says, leaning her head back against the wall. “Everything is just … wrong.”

He hesitates, then walks over to reach for her shoulder and squeeze. His eyes are melted at the edges with a kind of soft kindness; there is no desire here, only genuine affection.

“You need to focus on getting better first. We’ll figure out the rest later. Your mom is coming soon—it’ll be okay.” Nodding silently to himself, he sits in the chair and flips through muted television channels.

“Thank you,” she whispers quietly. Silence stretches long, from wall to wall, until Marina speaks again. “Khaled?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I come stay with you guys? I mean, with Rania. After I’m out of here?” Marina intersperses Arabic into the English for privacy.

“I mean, we’ll have to ask her, but I’m sure she’ll say yes.” He rubs the back of his head. “Yeah. Yes. Of course.”

Marina pauses again. His earlier words press at the front of her mind: they killed her. She grimaces as she whispers the words aloud, but she has to know more. “Is your aunt buried in Haifa?”

Khaled looks up. “Yeah, she is.” He pauses. “Why do you ask?”

Marina looks down at her hands. “I don’t know. Was she from here? Like, was she buried in her homeland?”

“Ah. Yes,” Khaled says, smiling a little. “Our bloodline in Haifa runs deep.”

“Aren’t you ever worried, though?” Marina almost snaps with exasperation and anxiety, her true meaning coming out unbidden.

“About what?”

“About the occupation. The soldiers. The separation wall.” They killed her. “How do you do it?”

Khaled laughs a little, bitterness sharpening the edges of his breath. “Life under occupation has never been normal, but it’s the only life I’ve ever known. You have to cope somehow. If you’re not laughing, you’re crying, I guess.”

“Doesn’t that require—bravery, or something? Courage?” She coughs, and suddenly feels very tired.

“Only as much bravery as anything else.” He sits up on his chair and crosses his legs beneath him. “Listen, Marina—we’re not superheroes. It’s not something special to live in Palestine under occupation. We’re human. We have ordinary dreams of ordinary lives. It’s just—yes, we’re trying to change things, and get others to see the injustice and end the occupation, through activism, or education, or throwing stones. We all resist in our own ways. But in the day-to-day—it’s life. Same as any other. We’re not special, and I don’t want you or anyone else to think that. It turns us into something untouchable—a people with some brilliant ability to endure. And when we mess up, when we do our best but it sometimes isn’t good enough, we’re villainized because now we have such a far way to fall.”

Her face flashes hotly with shame. She doesn’t say anything.

“It makes people feel like they don’t need to help us because we’re so resilient.” An exhaustion hangs from the word. “A grandmother in Gaza cultivates a garden, growing her flowers again and again, even as Israel bombs it. A father in Ramallah has to deal with the tiny water allowance Israel grants him and make it last each week between five children. In Haifa, we ride the tram with soldiers. But this resilience is forced on us.” He sighs, and his voice is quiet when he speaks again. “You have to remember that we’re just people. What’s the alternative? To stop living? To stop growing plants, or drinking water? Of course not.”

Marina nods quietly; rocks tumble down her lungs as she breathes. “Anyone would keep trying.”

Khaled presses his lips together and flips back, staring at the television again. “You should really get some rest.”

Marina nods, but her mind is filled with flurrying, racing thoughts as she lies down. She thought she would find the truth in Palestine, but Nuhad had hidden it in order to protect her family. Guilt creeps at the corners of her mind, asking why she needed to do all of this in order to understand who she is, but she brushes it away.

In the space where the loss would normally lie is a small hole slowly being sewn together by Khaled and Rania and Haifa and Nuhad and Haifa the city. Marina is the product of everyone in her life—she is the very living history that Nuhad sacrificed her life and community for.

She imagines the fast deaths and the slow ones, and steadily, she drifts into a dreamless sleep.

The Cohen household is filled with the laughter of Benjamin and Noa’s friends; they are hosting a dinner tonight, rescheduled a couple of days early due to the impending storm, and asked for Rania to come in outside of her normal hours. With each course delivered, an equal number of dirty dishes is sent back to Rania to scrub. Her arms have been aching from cleaning since before the guests even arrived.

“Aha,” Rania curses under her breath. The dish soap is out, and the extras are in the supply closet.

Her gloves snap back from her wrists with a wet crack, but powdery dryness covers her exposed hands from the glove material. Calluses thicken the heels of the hands that come up subconsciously to pat down her hair as she exits the kitchen and enters the dining room. The party is all there.

“Ah, Rania, how are you doing in there?” Benjamin’s cheeks are rosy with the flush of alcohol, and beneath the low lighting, a thin sheen of sweat glistens off of his forehead.

“I just need to get some dish soap, sorry. I’ll be right back.” Rania returns a polite smile and squeezes herself between Noa’s chair and the wall in order to get to the hallway, but Noa calls out to her.

“Here, here—let’s get Rania’s opinion, yes? Rania?” Noa turns to Rania with a glint in her eyes. “Do you know the haunted house? The one off of Derech HaAtsma’ut? It’s one of the ones that sits on top of a storefront area.”

Rania cringes as she stills in her tracks; she remembers the street by a different name. She nods. “Yes. It was my friend’s home.”

“Oh, then you’re perfect for this discussion!” one of the guests cries out, her words slurring together.

“So.” Noa clasps her hands and props her chin up. She leans forward, lowering her voice. “Has that house always been haunted? Do you know? I ask because—I don’t know if you heard—the last occupants went missing. Well, one of them did. The other had to leave after they couldn’t find her body. And now it’s up for sale … again.”

“I don’t understand how they keep selling that godforsaken home,” another guest mutters.

“They sell it to Americans. You didn’t know? No one here will buy it,” a third guest says, sticking her nose into the air with a sort of false haughtiness, as if she knows the city and her houses more deeply than the Americans—as if she, as a grandfathered settler, is a single degree closer to the land.

“How does someone disappear in her own home?” Benjamin interrupts. “There must be a logical explanation.”

“And there’s the rub.” Noa breaks her ominous facade and laughs with the others. “Do you think the house is haunted? Truly, we’ve been debating this and need a tiebreaker.”

The room spins for a moment—Rania smells bleach and grasps at one of the guests’ chairs to steady herself. She cannot breathe.

“Are you okay?” Benjamin asks.

“It’s the haunted house curse!” Noa squeals. The table roars in laughter. It is so hot in this room.

“The house kills people,” Rania says, wanting it all to stop.

“Well, people certainly keep dying near it,” Noa says, stretching her mouth into a faux grimace. She wrings her hands as if she can shake the murders off of her. “So you think it’s haunted then?”

Rania nods. “Yes.”

“But Rania has an interesting perspective, dear,” Benjamin interjects. A glass of wine is swaying slightly in his hands. “Her friend used to live there. Was it always haunted?”

“Who knows what makes a house haunted?” Noa laughs.

Rania wants to be anywhere else in the world now. Marina beats in the back of her mind like a constant drum—why is she here, cleaning for this party, and the girl is still in the hospital? She would rather be waiting in the fluorescent-lit, sickly-scented, cold waiting room of the hospital for news on Marina than be subject to this questioning. Anything, truly, would be better than this.

“Murder,” she says quietly. Her hands tremble, so she clasps them together. “Murder haunts a house.”

The room stills. Everyone stares at Rania.

“Murder hangs over a house like the ghosts you think you know. You don’t know,” she says. The boy who was shot is emblazoned into her vision—his face is stamped in red over this crowd. “The reason that house is haunted is because my friend and her family were kicked out in 1948. Like so many—murdered. Displaced. In my family, too.” Rania reaches for her throat, feeling the heat of the words that lie there. Regret should be the dominating emotion—she’s ruined their night and possibly cost herself some hours, that much she can see by their falling faces—but she feels free in the truth. “That’s what makes a house haunted.”

Everyone freezes; Benjamin and Noa visibly stiffen. She grabs her husband’s hand beneath the table and squeezes. From where she stands, Rania can see this. She turns away, to the closet, and gets the dish soap.

When she returns, conversation has returned, if at a lower intensity. The room quiets entirely as Rania walks back through to the kitchen on unsteady legs. She makes it to the sink and grabs on to the stainless-steel edges as her vision continues to spin.

“Okay,” she mutters to herself. She only needs to make it through tonight. The next course comes out, and a fresh batch of dirtied dishes piles up beside Rania. She breathes through her mouth involuntarily.

The streets have quieted by the time Rania finishes. As her hand goes to put the extra cleaning supplies in the closet, Benjamin clears his throat behind her. She turns to face him.

“Rania,” he says. He has never said her name right. It is all jumbled in his mouth, the wrong tongue for the wrong name. “We’re making the difficult decision to let you go.”

Rania blinks. The only emotion she feels is anger for having finished her shift.

“Thank you for your hard work for us over the years. But—after tonight…” His voice trails off. “I think you understand.” His sympathetic smile is etched into his face with an ice pick. His lips are glued into place. “And you’re close to retirement, anyway. It’ll be good for you, too.”

A bubble of hilarity rises in Rania’s throat. Israelis have always had a knack for doing this—for phrasing things as if they are doing you a favor, when in reality it’s for their own benefit. It’s a skill, wallah.

Rania says nothing and instead drops the supplies where she stands. The gloves leave the same powdery dryness on her hands, but they are left—dropped—on the floor as she walks away. Rolling her sleeves down, she says nothing as she exits the house. She feels lighter.

Haifa is tearing through her house like the storm that will soon hit Haifa, her hands flying about like a dozen winged birds. Clothing is in one pile; toiletries have been half started and then abandoned in search of other things she needs for the trip. Her heart berates her with every pounding beat: stupid, stupid, stupid. She never should have let Marina go to Haifa to dig up what was buried.

“Fuck,” she hisses to herself. She’s found the list of Palestine phone numbers stuffed in the back of her desk drawer, but it reminds her that she needs a ride to O’Hare. Shaking with anxiety, she punches Sara’s number into the phone.

“Hello?”

“Sara?” she says immediately. “Can you please come pick me up and take me to the airport?” She checks the clock and does a quick mental calculation. “Tomorrow. First thing? It’s an emergency. I’ll tell you about it on the way—Marina’s in the hospital.”

She bites at her lip, worry catastrophizing the infinitesimal second it takes for Sara to give a curt “Of course. I’ll come pick you up at nine AM?”

“Yes, yes, that’ll be perfect.” Haifa grunts as she pulls her old, worn suitcase from its place beneath her bed. She glances around wildly, thinking if she needs to ask Sara for anything else.

The pieces of paper on the table—the ones that fell from behind the photograph—stare at her.

“Haifa,” Sara says, interrupting her thoughts. “Haifa—breathe. She’ll be fine. Everything will be okay.”

“I know, I know,” Haifa says absentmindedly. She grabs the papers and stuffs them into her backpack. “Can you actually also translate that thing I asked about tomorrow, too? Please?”

“Of course, habibti, but can you do something for me?” she asks, and at this, Haifa finally stops. Her limbs vibrate with nerves, and in the silence, she wonders if she’s finally pushed Sara too far. If she will finally stop being her friend because of all that she’s asked for. Haifa has always been too much and never enough.

“Can you just take a deep breath for me?”

Haifa nods, then remembers that Sara can’t see her. “Okay.”

She inhales deeply and holds it at the very top for a moment before releasing it all in a long exhale.

“Good,” she hears Sara say. Behind her, in the world beyond the phone’s receiver, an elderly man’s voice echoes as it calls for Sara. “Everything will be okay, ah? Listen, I have to get back to work. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Haifa says again. She flips the phone shut.

The thin gray mouth of the suitcase is stretched wide before her, and, kneeling, she pulls the pile of clothes closer, rolling and stuffing things into the corners as her hair falls into the front of her face; her breath is hot and labored, and suddenly she stops, staring at the luggage for a moment.

Haifa will return to Haifa.

The realization pains her like a knife to the stomach—it slices through the barely maintained focus since she spoke to Marina. Haifa, for the first time in her life, will go to the city of her mother’s memory. She will see the streets that Nuhad lived and breathed through, the beach that she so wistfully spoke of. Haifa will return to what she should have been. She stares through the window from her spot on the floor.

A figure crosses the blink of her eye in shadow, and her pulse quickens as she looks back at the room. There’s nothing there, but when she turns to the window again, Nuhad’s familiar gaze locks directly on to her.

She’s a ghostly shade of white and her mouth is open in a yawning maw, as if she’s yelling. The falling sunset lights her from behind and shades her face. Her eyes, hooded beneath age, are darkened by desperation—the same kind she saw just before Marina left.

“Mama?” Haifa whispers. Her voice catches.

“Don’t go,” Nuhad finally says. She presses her hand up to the window, and in her palm is the same dripping scarlet from before. She slides it down, leaving a single, broad pomegranate streak on the glass. “Already gone.”

Even in death, her mother cannot share the most vulnerable part of her soul with the daughter who should have served as the panacea to the pain.

Slowly, and without her permission, tears begin to fall silently down Haifa’s cheeks. Pain swells up in her throat from the lump of repressed sadness. Her vision blurs as she feels the same aching, bottomless need that has accompanied her for most of her life.

CHAPTER 8

Already Gone

“Oh, so you’re visiting your grandparents’ homes?”

The night passed quickly, and by morning breakfast had already been delivered. Marina snuck a glance at her roommate as she ate—she was a little bit older, with freckles spattered over her nose and cheeks, her skin slightly pink from the sun. They chatted easily. The girl was from New York and had been visiting for the summer—she had been on a boat with friends and jumped off of the diving board into the sea, but turned and flipped right as someone called her name, causing her an unnatural landing and a couple of broken bones. Her head had been knocked hard by the water and she passed out, and the hospital was keeping her under observation for a concussion.

“Yes,” Marina says, her voice slightly hesitant. When she’d told her that she had come to visit Palestine, this was the last thing she expected this American Jewish girl to say. But her face is eager, pleased that she’d landed on the correct answer.

“Where were they from?” she asks, her hint of a Brooklyn accent rounding around the words.

“Haifa and Nablus.”

“Nice,” she says, nodding. “We had that happen to us. A Palestinian guy came to our house once—maybe last year?—and asked if he could look around, since it was his grandparents’ home.” She flips her straight brown hair over her shoulder. “My mom was nervous, but I was like, yeah, of course. He should be able to see his grandparents’ home.”

“Right,” Marina says. She wishes that Khaled were still here, to see the expression on his face, but he left the night before. He’ll bring Rania to the hospital sometime today.

“Like, it was stolen, you know? Technically,” she continues.

“What happened?” Marina asks, as curious to know the ending of this story as the girl is eager to tell it.

Her eyes widen. “Well, he came in and was just so overcome with emotion. It was really sad, actually.” She pats at her heart and pouts slightly. “He wanted to buy it from us, but—you know. He lived in Ramallah. It’s just not allowed,” she adds.

“Ah.”

“And when he got to the garden—we have this beautiful lemon tree back there—he came to it and just stared at it. He plucked a lemon from it—whatever, I would’ve liked to have been asked, but it’s fine—and asked me who planted the tree.”

“Probably his grandparents,” Marina says automatically.

The girl continues. “Well, I told him I didn’t know. It could have been one of his family members, but how would I know? And then he just became, like, really furious. I’ve never seen someone get so red in the face before. He just started yelling about the tree, and seeds, and”—she shakes her head, shrugging—“I don’t know. Anyway, my mom called the police after that. But he left before they got there.”

Marina remains quiet, her eyes up toward the white ceiling. Of course, she thinks. Who wouldn’t let the grief grow into anger and consume them?

“So when are you going to go?” she asks, but before Marina can respond, Khaled strides into the room with his grandmother in tow.

“Hi, habibti, salamtik!” Rania rushes over as quickly as she can and sits beside Marina. Her eyebrows have been drawn on hastily. “How are you doing? How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine, really.” Marina sits up on the bed and leans back against the pillow. “How are you?”

“Ya Marina, you gave me such a scare. I came back to the pier with some food and didn’t see you! And instead, there was an ambulance with flashing lights.” She draws the picture with her waving hands. “I run up to the ambulance, hoping it’s not you, it’s someone else, but no—they’re carrying you in a stretcher and putting you in the back.”

Marina bites at the inside of her cheek as a stone of guilt falls deep in her stomach.

“And your face was so white, ya Allah, so white,” she says, drawing her hands now to her cheeks, patting them anxiously. She’s reliving it. “You were wet, and shaking, even though you were unconscious. And the guy in the ambulance is asking me, is this her, is this her, because I was screaming, where is Marina, where is Marina?” She sits back, panting a little. “Nuhad would have had my head if anything happened to you. She would return from her grave to punish me, wallah.”

“But nothing did,” Khaled says soothingly, patting his mother’s arm. His forehead is wrinkled with concern, and the rock in Marina’s stomach doubles in weight.

A doctor raps on the door quickly a few times before entering. She nods curtly at Marina’s roommate over the edge of her black-rimmed glasses and stands at the foot of Marina’s bed. She tucks an unseen piece of hair behind her ear.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” Marina glances quickly at Khaled, who raises his eyebrows slightly. “I’m fine enough to go home, I think.”

“Not likely.” The doctor’s lashes flatten against her eyelids as she glares at Marina over her clipboard. “We’ll need to keep you here for an X-ray. Maybe an MRI—we’ll see.”

“But, I need to—” Marina searches the recesses of her mind for an excuse.

“You’re in no shape to go home just yet.” The doctor’s words are clipped. Clinical. “I’ll be ordering the X-ray for later today.” She turns on her heel and leaves.

Khaled moves to stand beside Marina’s bed. “We’ll get you out of here,” he murmurs. His voice is low and laced with worry.

“I have to leave. I have to leave, right?” Marina says, her eyes darting back and forth between the two of them.

She looks to Rania, who nods slowly. “Of course. Don’t worry.”

Khaled’s attention diverts and his face turns toward the television. Picking up the remote, he raises the volume.

Professional Hebrew threads through the speakers, but Marina can understand what they’re saying without needing translation. A young Palestinian boy’s face fills the tiny square. He looks so serious through the pixelated CRT screen with eyes brown and wide, as if he was caught off guard and could do nothing but reprimand the person with a serious look. It’s the boy who was shot yesterday. Marina recognizes his face, and this recognition is almost materially painful in her chest—she has never been connected to a victim like this before.

“They’re taking him to jail,” Khaled says, half in English and half in Arabic.

“To jail?” Marina echoes. She cannot tear her eyes from his image on screen; here, without the dirt on his face and the pacing soldiers with their fingers on the trigger, he looks like a child. He just looks like a child.

“He’ll live, hamdillah. But they’re sending him to jail on terrorism charges.”

“Terrorism?” Marina repeats again in a whisper, and she finally looks away as a newscaster fills the screen instead.

Rania looks at her with pity, she thinks. “Habibti, don’t you know by now that we are terrorists just for existing? Erase the fact that we want our homes and land. Just by existing, we are terrorists. That’s enough.”

“No, I know, but—”

“But nothing. Children are terrorists for throwing stones. Men are terrorists for being men. Women are terrorists for giving birth to more Palestinians, to more terrorists.” She shakes her head. “That’s just how it is to them.”

Marina’s mouth twists and puckers in disgust. She looks down at her hands. “What can we do?” She can hear the helplessness in her own voice. The boy’s face is still imprinted in her mind.

“We can get you out of here,” Khaled mutters. He’s looking at her again with the same kind of genuine concern from last night, but now anger and grief hang on his shoulders. “For today, that’s what we can do.”

“Shway shway,” Rania says to Khaled, nodding, and with that gentle smile, Marina can see younger Rania in her profile. It recalls the memory that the house had gifted her and she speaks without thinking, momentarily distracted by the television. The image in her mind is still clear.

“Did you ever get fresh fish with my grandmother?” she asks. Rania turns to her, a slight surprise parting her lips.

“We did. All the time.” Her face softens with the memory. “And there was a dessert place right next to our favorite fish place, too.”

Her eyes appear just as tender as they did in the memory.

“That reminds me.” She shifts in her seat to find her large, square purse. From within she pulls out several sheets of paper stapled together and Nuhad’s journal. “Isma’ai, Marina.”

“You translated it?” Marina asks, wonder apparent in her voice. Rania had dashed any hopes for Marina to dive into her grandmother’s past.

Rania clutches it to herself and holds one finger up. “You have to promise me something, okay?”

Marina nods.

“I know you want to learn where you come from, habibti. But sometimes history is better left alone. Can you promise me that you’ll leave alone whatever you find in here? Just read it. Get to know your grandmother. Don’t dishonor the dead by digging things up.”

“I promise,” she says, but the words feel like a lie as soon as they slip from her mouth.

Rania hands her the stapled packet and journal. “I spent all last night translating it for you. Some might be wrong. But I couldn’t sleep, so I made tea and went to work instead.”

“Thank you,” Marina says, and her voice is suddenly filled with so much emotion that she hopes Rania can’t hear the hunger that lies beneath it. She recalls Khaled’s words. She doesn’t want to turn her grandmother into something untouchable, but she needs to know who Nuhad truly was. Even in the mundanities of her life. Who was the young girl that sacrificed everything for a daughter and granddaughter who hadn’t even existed yet?

She cradles the packet in her arms and smiles at Rania, but her face turns back to the television. The boy’s name was Bilal Khalidi.

In her, the remembrance and the pain receded. And now she is gone.

Their names are carved in blood—torn by flesh—with the stains of history rotting the contract made from my very bones; yes, the bones, the stones, the skin, the blood, and they sign—soul death—as a sinister smile severs his face into two parts, his teeth bared with greed, and he escorts this new couple, these new tenants—same sickening thievery—over my rotting corpse. They sign their names in red.

drip, drip, drip

Halting footsteps—pausing to point, and laugh, and imagine a life superimposed over what once was—pound against the stone foundation; the disturbance travels through me, shivers down the spine, and causes ripples within the still water down below, far down, the place where Death lies, and they walk through me—do they know they walk through a body? A body with wooden bones and stoned flesh and memories of sunlight and tiny socked feet. They must, they must.

But she cannot return if they are here.

Their footsteps are loud and violent and I feel exactly where they rove over my body. Seawater rotted with mildew gathers from the corners of my walls, rolling together to travel along the ceiling, and falling like lazy bullets from above—my skin, my face—and lands on one of them, the man, rolling down the back of his neck. Cold, cold. His hand reaches up to feel it and the man, the realtor, notices and pulls them away—no! Salt forms and crusts, falling into the windows—my eyes, those that have seen everything—and the floor beneath them in granular white remembrance and they pick up their feet, wondering what it is they could walk over and yet still, still, walking anyway; the realtor pushes them through, their footsteps slamming without care, and rushes them through the door and out of my grasp—

No.

Please … please.

He will always bring new settlers who eye my stones hungrily as he offers me up as a sacrifice, and Death will always rise from her perch—is it so impossible for these cycles to cease? Was it not enough punishment to tear my family, gasping, crying, screaming, from my embrace—is it so impossible to wake from this endless nightmare?

All I want is my family, and if they are here now, then she will think she cannot come, that she has no right, that my walls are closed to her forever, that the false deeds written in blood are real—

No. Not again.

There will only be one way for her to return; only one way for my pain to recede—Marina Nuhad has done it before, she is connected already—she has seen me, deep below the watery grave, hands outstretched toward me in recognition—

She has fallen into the ocean and she will do it again.

The water slowly rises against my walls and I open up to the salt; together, We will bring my family in the waves, the churning, frothing seawater and they will rise on the tides that will drown the others, the new settlers, and they will know how it feels; Death reaches for me, stroking, soothing, and whispers:

We will return her. We will keep her,

forever.

Sara’s car pulls into the driveway where Haifa is waiting, worn suitcase by her feet, and in a matter of moments they are on the road together. The O’Hare airport is an hour-and-a-half drive, but it’s a Sunday morning, and there is hardly any traffic. Haifa sits at the edge of her seat, a nail propped between her teeth, as she watches the road pass them by.

“So what happened?” Sara asks gently.

“Marina is in the hospital. There’s something wrong with her lungs, she said.” Haifa takes in a deep breath and it feels so satisfying that she wonders if she’s forgotten to breathe the past few minutes. “She fell into the sea. She didn’t drown, but—she fell.”

“Salamitha,” Sara says. “She will be okay.”

“We’ll see,” Haifa says, but the lilt of the end of her sentence ends on an upswing, as if she’s seeking reassurance.

“If she’s well enough to call and talk to you, she’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” Sara says. “If she’s at the hospital, she’ll be taken care of.”

“Yeah. Well.” Haifa wants to stop there, but it feels rude. “I just need to know she’s okay.”

A strange sensation, as if she’s being watched, prickles the back of Haifa’s neck and she twists to glance behind. The leather back seat is empty. She turns around, but the sensation persists. It is as if steady eyes are trained on the back of her neck for the rest of the journey.

Ninety minutes pass in a blur of highway, concrete, and billboards, and soon Sara pulls into the long line winding around the departure section of O’Hare. Though the roads have been mostly clear, the airport line makes up for it. They’re leagues away from the actual building—it’s a distant gray from their spot in line. Haifa unbuckles.

“I’m going to run into the airport and see if I can get a ticket on the next flight available while you get through this line. Is that okay?”

“Of course.” Sara nods.

“And—” Haifa bends over her backpack, drawing out the pages that were hidden behind the wedding photo frame. “These are what I need help with. Do you mind translating them for me while you wait? Please.”

“What is it?” Sara takes it and scans it over. “Oh.”

“I don’t know. They were stuck behind one of the pictures my mom had, but I don’t know what they are or where they come from.” Haifa opens the door and sticks one leg out. “Okay, I’ll be back!”

She half jogs to get to the first entrance in the airport; inside, it’s buzzing with people on summer vacations and group trips. There’s a wall of people wrapped around the security section, moving and breathing and waiting.

The airline desk is almost entirely empty as Haifa approaches. The woman at the front is primped to perfection—even her lip liner appears to be in exactly the right place—but she looks tired. A light smile brightens her cheeks but doesn’t touch her eyes. “How can I help you?”

“The next flight available to Tel Aviv, please.”

“Passport?”

Haifa digs through her purse for her passport. When she looks up, the attendant is gone.

Nuhad stands in her place.

Haifa freezes. Ice rakes over Haifa’s arms with cold fingers despite her skin being covered by a sweatshirt. The air has suddenly been sucked out of the room and her vision fades to black at its edges. She only sees Nuhad.

Her mother.

Agony is cut into Nuhad’s face. The memory of her eyes, the ones that Haifa recalls as being richly dark and deep, is being written over with the same desperation that has been carved inside of this ghost time and time again.

Nuhad reaches her hands toward Haifa. She chokes on her words and feels the ice-cold, bloodred hands of her mother slowly grip at her cheeks. Nuhad’s face is inches away. Below the surface of her skin is a boiling, churning mass of movement, like water. Haifa recoils, but Nuhad grips more tightly.

“Already gone.” In her open mouth Haifa can see flashes of images: a bleeding woman, a building turned to rubble, refugees wrapped in blankets. Nuhad’s fingers are steel against her skin. From her periphery Haifa can see the red on her cheeks; she can feel the slimy wetness of the blood as it travels down to the corner of her mouth. The taste of iron lingers at her lips, lurking in a crimson threat at the edge of her senses.

Nuhad’s face darkens and she squeezes. “Already gone.” Haifa’s heartbeat rattles as her head is shaken by her mother’s hands. Nuhad screams. “Already gone. Already gone. Already gone.”

“Stop,” Haifa gasps, and the blood finally touches her tongue, coating her mouth in sharp copper. “Stop. Please.” She grabs at her mother’s fingers, prying each wet one off of her face, and when she is done, her scream dies at the sight of the attendant in front of her. She stares at Haifa.

“Uh—passport, ma’am?”

Haifa nods, her hands trembling as they slide the small square over the counter. She looks over her shoulder, but Nuhad is gone. The feeling of being watched has disappeared.

“The next flight is this evening. Does that work?”

Haifa nods again, too afraid of what will come out if she speaks. The attendant completes the transaction and Haifa clutches her ticket tightly in hand, her eyes shifting for the ghost that haunts her. Even now, Nuhad doesn’t want her to go. Haifa will never measure up to the memory.

She just has to make it until tonight, then she leaves. Humidity sticks to her skin as she heads back outside to find Sara; her car has finally neared the entrance.

“That moved fast,” she remarks, her voice falsely inflated as Sara exits to meet her. She opens the trunk and Haifa grabs her bag. “Thank you so much, Sara. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Haifa buries herself in her friend’s shoulder as she gives her a hug. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, dear.” Sara searches her face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” Haifa laughs lightly, her breath expelling pent-up anxiety as her eyes search the road for the one who haunts her. “I’m fine.”

“Okay,” Sara says slowly. She hands her the pages clutched in her fist. “I translated the papers for you.” She opens her mouth to say something else, but decides not to. “You probably shouldn’t read it until you’re there.”

“Okay. Thank you, Sara.” Haifa stuffs them into the side pocket of her bag.

“I hope Marina is all right. Let me know if you need a ride back, ah?”

Haifa nods, giving her friend one final goodbye before racing back into the bustling airport. Nuhad’s warnings pound anxiously over Haifa’s heart like a drum—already gone—but she tries to smother the feeling. Across the ocean lies her daughter in a hospital bed.

The dark hospital room is sparsely lit with long rectangles from the fluorescent hallway lighting, the echoes of creaky wheels and footsteps scoring the night. Marina stares at the door, sleeplessness her companion. Rania has only left an hour ago after spending nearly all day shuffling between doctors and nurses, asking after Marina’s care and demanding that she be discharged soon. Just before she left, she made Marina promise not to read the pages until she’s had a full night of rest. But sleep evades Marina—and it will continue to.

After a moment, she sits up in her cot and turns on the small light above her bed. She takes the bundle of translated papers into the crook of one arm and reads.

7 August, 1947

I took a detour when I went to school this morning. I went to the beach for a bit and just stood at the edge. The sea feels like a great big breath. I missed a bit of my first class, but it’s okay—I got to practice rock skipping! I searched for smooth, flat rocks, and gathered them all in my shirt. I had a pregnant belly full of rocks. Once I was properly laden with stones, I let them fly. There was a tiny, calm pool without any waves. The highest number I got this time was five skips! I’ll bring Tariq next time and show him how good I’ve gotten.

Marina reads voraciously, hungrily. Tears blur her vision. Nuhad was once the same age as Marina—younger, in these pages—and dealt with the same complaints and highs and lows of life. She couldn’t have known that her words would become a time capsule for her future granddaughter to read on her return to Haifa.

27 September, 1947

Today Rania and I hung out with Amira. It was weird, because when we were in her room hanging out, we started to hear voices. Her parents were fighting in the next room, and Amira just pretended like she didn’t hear it. Her cheeks flushed, so I know she did. And her parents were really, really loud. It sounded serious. I think her dad hits her mom, too, because that just didn’t sound like a normal fight. Rania thought the same thing. I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell someone about this, but I asked Tariq if it ever happened to any of his friends. He didn’t know.

A lump of unshed tears forms in Marina’s throat; to think of her grandmother as a young child who didn’t know what to do feels overwhelming. To think of her grandmother—as a young girl.

12 November, 1947

Yunis doesn’t seem very interested. I asked to borrow a pencil in class, but he just shrugged me off, and then later I caught him staring at me while he sat with his group of friends at lunch. So weird. I guess I won’t waste my time.

The lump melts at the idea of her grandmother having crushes on boys in school. Marina has never known many men. Her father left shortly after the divorce, only to be seen a few weeks each summer, and both of her grandfathers died before Marina was born. Neither Haifa nor Nuhad ever remarried. It feels like a door that has been opened into another plane of existence.

14 November, 1947

I HATE TARIQ! I hate Tariq! He’s so annoying. He stole my journal and read it and started making jokes and dropping hints about the things I wrote in front of everyone, including Mama and Baba. I’m going to start hiding my journal somewhere he can’t find it. I wish I had a younger sister instead of him. I wish Rania could be my sister. Sisters are so much nicer. At least they act like they actually like you!

Marina reads these last sentences over and over again. Her brain is not processing the words properly, and she just keeps going over them again and again. A sister? A sister.

As she puts the packet of papers down, she notices that her hands are shaking. She sits on them. The tremors still move through her limbs and before she realizes it, her entire body is shaking. She sweats despite the air-conditioning and now her eyes are pricking with salt and every inch of her skin feels wet.

Marina tries to slow down her breath, gasping at intervals until it finally calms. She reads the words over again. Her grandmother wishes she had a younger sister instead—which means she had a brother. Nuhad had a brother. Horror and embarrassment form a strange dance in her heart; she feels as if she’s invaded her grandmother’s secrets and yet she’s suddenly angry to have never known this.

What else was buried?

Where is Nuhad’s brother? He could still be living in Palestine. She flips through the pages and notices that his name appears semi-regularly.

Did Haifa know about her uncle? Did she purposefully keep this from her, or did Nuhad never tell anyone about a long-lost brother?

“Tariq.” The name is unfamiliar in her mouth; her tongue rolls over the new sensation of having an uncle. “Tariq.”

Nuhad had a brother. Marina has a great-uncle.

CHAPTER 9

Where Is Nuhad?

If Nuhad could have traveled back in time, she would have never wished for the British soldiers to leave. She’d prayed for it each time she saw one of them, her father’s voice echoing in her mind, but the day they left was the day that her life ended.

It was April, it was springtime. It was meant to be the perfect in-between season of weather where Nuhad could walk barefooted across the sand in a dress that twirled with the wind. It was meant to be a time of celebration for the fishermen, whose catches would migrate closer to shore with the warming waters. The small mountain that Haifa was nestled into was meant to flower, to sprout in juniper and lavender, poppy and periwinkle, from its base all the way to the top of Mount Mar Elias.

But the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary group, would crack the frost of the thawing ground and force their way into the roots, killing the spring before her bloom. They were an unofficial army, one built from the Zionist settler colonialism that sought to expel Palestinians from their land and seize it; they said it was their God-given right.

Nuhad awoke to the sound of bullets raining, but there was something else this time. A distant echo of mortar shells shook the ground. Her heart leapt into her throat and she threw the covers off, rushing to the living room. Her mother already stood in the kitchen, her gaze suspended in the window.

Nuhad came up to her elbow, following her gaze, but she saw nothing but the building next door. “Mama?”

Victoria jumped. “Hi, habibti. Sabah il-kheir.” She patted her head and ran her fingers through Nuhad’s undone hair.

“What’s happening?” Normally, the sleep would still be in her voice, but a chilling fear ran through her veins.

“I don’t know. Baba went out to check.” Victoria snapped out of her trance and turned around. “You want some breakfast?”

As she slid into the seat at the kitchen table, the front door opened. Basel stood in the threshold, lit a cigarette, and waved the match to extinguish it. He took a long drag before he finally spoke.

“The British have already started leaving—”

“But they said they would stay for three months after the Mandate ended,” Victoria interjected.

“They lied. And they must have been working with the Haganah.” Basel raised his voice. His jowls shook with ill-held anger. “Because as soon as they left, the Haganah started for the Najjadah building.”

An Arab militia had been growing since the UN partition was announced—and in response to the Jewish paramilitary groups—and the Najjadah building had become their headquarters. Nuhad braided her hair as she listened to things far beyond her years.

“Tiberias has already fallen,” Victoria said. An unasked question hung in the air, and it would go unanswered, for no one wanted to think of what could happen to their beloved city.

“The sons of dogs are becoming bold,” Basel grunted. He finally closed the door behind him and sat at the kitchen table beside Nuhad. Smoke filled the air. “And of course they’re working together. Teezain bilbas.”

“What’s going to happen to us?” Nuhad rolled the edge of the tablecloth in her fingertips. She rolled and unrolled.

“Nothing, habibti, we’ll be fine. Go get ready for school.”

Nuhad stood, breakfast forgotten by all, and went to her room. She winced with each earth-shattering shelling. One for each arm hole and a third for the skirt as she slipped into her school uniform.

School passed agonizingly slowly with everyone’s eyes on the clock and their minds on the battle between the Arab militia and the Jewish paramilitary group. Everyone thought they had more time.

As Nuhad walked back home, the streets rumbled with the vibration of a large vehicle. She jumped beneath the awning of a storefront and watched as a Jewish tank rolled past. A soldier stood on top and threw leaflets from the opening. As one floated near her, Nuhad caught it and read at the same time she listened to the tank’s loudspeakers blare the repeated warnings:

“KEEP AWAY FROM FOREIGN VOLUNTEERS. STAY INDOORS. SEND WOMEN AND CHILDREN AWAY. WE WILL PROVIDE SAFE ESCORT TO ARAB TERRITORY. FOLLOW THESE DIRECTIVES OR WE WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR FATE.”

Sleep is a slippery thing for Marina. She’s consumed her grandmother’s journal from end to translated end. As tightly as she squeezes her eyelids to catch sleep, it evades her grasp skillfully with thoughts instead.

Thoughts.

Rania never warned her—she never said, don’t worry, your secret uncle is in here, but you’ll see. She assumed Marina already knew. And why wouldn’t she make that assumption? But the Nuhad that Rania grew up with, the one of childhood, had long disappeared by scarred adulthood. How was Rania to know that her friend would bury her brother along with her past? And Haifa—her anxiety for the city was always a smothering, heavy blanket. Did her own mother know what was buried in the city of the past?

Her lungs bear the weight of a mere taste of Israeli oppression already; she can’t imagine what her grandmother went through. One side of her heart understands why Nuhad wouldn’t want to share her past, but the other knows that healing cannot come from locking the past away—in fact, it only makes the pain grow, from grandmother to mother to daughter. Marina’s chest aches, a small, throbbing pang, for the pain of hiding everything away and never speaking of it ever again. Palestinians exist in fragments.

Bilal’s face stares at her in the backs of her eyelids. Other Palestinian children cross her mind, flitting through the racing thoughts—what about the girl she saw drawing with chalk on the ground in Wadi Nisnas? Rania’s small grandson doing homework on the table? She thinks of them, repressing the constant question that drives at the front of her mind: What if Israeli forces kill them in cold blood too?

The white hospital blanket is gray in the darkness and twists farther around her body each time she rolls over so that maybe, hopefully, this position will grant her sleep. The blanket becomes a force field in her mind, and Marina wants nothing more than to expand its reach and cover her land and people from their murderers.

Shame wraps her like a shroud. Marina has lived a lie thousands of miles away, thinking that she could empathize with other Palestinians. She didn’t know what it felt like. How could anyone imagine the reality of watching a boy down the street be killed? She couldn’t even truly empathize with her grandmother.

She tears the thin hospital blanket off, hot from the shame and anger that press against her heart and blacken her vision. Both Haifa and Nuhad protected her from reality, but Marina has been living a lie her entire life. Who is she? Who is she? Does it even matter in the face of brutal, murderous occupation? The question should be What can she do?

She squints at the wall clock in front of her. Another hour has passed. Dusty white light illuminates through the side pockets of the curtained window. Marina’s eyes close tightly, heavy weights atop her eyelids, and they stick there. They refuse to open again.

Hello.

There is a young boy seated on the chair across from her bed. His hair is dark and curly and falls over his forehead in a way that endears him instantly to Marina. He’s hugging his knees close to his body as if he’s cold, or shy. Matching pajamas paint lines on his tiny arms and legs.

“Hello. Who are you?” Marina whispers.

The boy grins at her and holds out a hand as he stands.

Come. I have somewhere to take you.

He speaks without moving his mouth, and yet his voice is velvety smooth in her mind. It’s like she’s hearing his general sentiment rather than explicit words. Her gut says to trust him, and though she doesn’t exactly know why, she decides to go with him. The cold shock of the floor doesn’t sting her feet as she takes his hand and follows.

The Haganah sliced their way through Haifa as a surgeon cuts open a body—a knife through flesh. The attack did not stay isolated to the Arab militia in the Najjadah building. Amid the gunfire and mortar shells, the tanks rolled through the streets for hours, blaring the same warning with the ominous implication at the end.

Nuhad’s father ordered the family to stay inside despite the initial trickle of panicked evacuations. Time passed slowly, except when all of the seconds were sucked from the air and frozen with each attack. Nuhad spent the in-between moments staring out at the sun, waiting for it to set. What was happening to Rania? To her school? Surely they wouldn’t do too much damage to her city—Haifa was the most prized Arab port after Alexandria.

“Watch your brother” was the directive given to Nuhad each time her parents stepped out of the house on that first day. It was the only time Nuhad could recall ever seeing such simultaneous vulnerability and strength from her brother, whose wide eyes betrayed the fear beneath the brave set of his jaw.

The impending night slowly smothered the city, and under its cover, panic began.

It was as if the entire city were watching the sun with Nuhad, for when the last line of orange disappeared over the sea, the people fell to chaos with the first scream. She snapped up in her chair with the harrowing sound.

“Tariq? Tariq? Where’s Mama and Baba?”

Her younger brother was curled up on the sofa, waiting for the interminable seconds to end with her. He sat up. “The neighbor’s.”

“Did you hear that?” Nuhad asked, but her question was answered when her parents came through the door.

“Lock it,” Victoria ordered Basel. She strode across the house to the living room window. “Nuhad, shut that window.”

Nuhad did as she was told, but terror underlined the instructions with more screams. Her last glance out of the window was one of people running through the streets.

“Mama, what’s happening?”

“People are panicking! What else?” Basel paced back and forth. “The Zionist scum have spent all afternoon telling us to evacuate. Well, now what do you think happens?”

“Are we not evacuating?” Tariq asked, his voice small.

“No, habibi. No. We’ll be safe. Don’t worry.” Victoria sat beside him, pushing his hair back from his forehead like she did when he or Nuhad was sick.

“But other—”

“We’re staying here.” Basel’s eyes were hard. “Go get ready for bed.”

Nuhad did as she was told, but the ground continued to shake, now with the added thunder of a hundred fleeing footsteps.

They slept in the living room that night, all four pressed together on the floor. In her wide-eyed insomnia, she wanted only to go to her bedroom and uncover her journal from beneath the tile. She craved to put pen to paper and scratch all of the worries from her mind.

Eventually, her eyes grew tired. Nuhad managed to sleep for a spell, but she awoke to the horrible sounds of screams. Her blood went cold.

“Mama? Baba?” She felt her way blindly through the dark, but there was no need, for her parents had already been woken by the wails.

“Nuhad? Tariq? Are you okay?” Her mother felt for her, but the warmth of her skin did little to ease her breath. They sat together in the heart of the home, a family of four, as they listened to the shrieks of pain and death coming from the streets.

“It sounds like they’re being butchered,” Basel whispered. He rose, crouching toward the window to see what was happening. His fingers flicked open the shade, and by the light of the moon, fear sharpened his eyes. It was the first time in her life that Nuhad had ever seen her father scared.

“Be careful,” Victoria said.

“Ya Allah,” he breathed. “There are thousands in the street.”

The sounds of screaming stopped for a moment, and beneath it, they could all hear what people were shouting.

“Deir Yassin! Deir Yassin! Deir Yassin!”

The coldness of her blood further chilled to a bone-deep horror with the implication of what they screamed. Deir Yassin was the small village just outside of Jerusalem that had been massacred only a couple of weeks prior. Men, women, and children were slaughtered without mercy and the shock of this cruelty had spread among the whole of Palestine like a terrifying promise: You’re next.

“We have to go. We have to go.” Victoria stood, her hands pulling up Nuhad and Tariq beside her. Nuhad twisted from her reach, wanting to grab her journal, the painting she’d bought, her homework—she would get in trouble if she didn’t do it.

“But—”

“I will not allow my children to be razed to the ground like they’ve done with everything else in this godforsaken country!” Victoria’s words overtook the mass outside. After a moment, Basel nodded.

“Come.” Basel ushered them out of the door, locking up after him and slipping the key into his pocket.

The sheer number of people on the streets stole Nuhad’s breath before she could even gasp. Men in nightclothes like her father’s carried babies; women wearing half-adjusted hijabs and house slippers had a panic in their eyes that burned brighter than the night; children in pajamas were being shuffled along, their hands squeezed white by tight grips that refused to lose them.

People pushed past one another in a desperate bid to seek safety, and the ever-growing, ever-moving mass of bodies swelled forward toward the sea.

Marina and the boy move quickly—it’s like the opposite of running in a dream. They float. They fly. There is no weight holding her back nor shadow of the city biting at her heels—she is a dove’s feather soaring in the wind. The fluorescent hallway and narrow alleyway flash by like movie frames flicking through a projector, faster than her eyes can adjust.

And then—

There’s the beach. The young boy, lying on the sand. A soldier above him, walking away, and Marina sees this through his eyes. He turns his head toward the ocean. His sister—

Stop.

It’s as if he forces the image, and Marina, from his head, and she sees the street as it exists again.

“It’s okay.”

Marina looks at him curiously, feeling as if she knows him but can’t quite place him. This part feels like a dream. Her being becomes even lighter as they move toward her grandmother’s home.

You know what it is.

Marina nods. The house is a small, inoffensive stone front that has been weathered by the sea for generations. There is a small pot of flowers on the front steps. In the window, candlelight glows.

“Yes.” She takes a deep breath in. “I’ve been here before.”

Does it know you?

He looks at her curiously, head cocked to one side. She nods.

“I think so.”

Silently, the boy disappears from her side, dissipating into the air like smoke. Marina pushes open the door. It’s as if the entire house turns to face her as a sunflower does to the sun, rumbling deeply in the stones below. It opens for her. She knows it opens for her alone.

“To the car!” Basel yelled, his voice hardly carrying over the screams. He gestured to the Studebaker parked in the street. With Tariq in hand, Victoria nodded and tried opening the door.

Nuhad followed suit, panting as she used all of her strength against the surge of people; as soon as she opened it a few inches, she stuck her hand inside for leverage. But an unseen person fell into her from behind, and the impact knocked the wind out of her and caused the door to slam shut on her ring finger.

A yowl escaped, an unreal sound that she didn’t recognize as her own, not until her father picked her up and shoved her through the open door of the driver’s seat. Her forehead knocked against the middle console.

“Climb to the back!” he yelled, but there was no need, for he was already shoving himself in behind her, forcing her to the dark leather upholstery in the back seat.

“You have the key?” Victoria asked. “Go. Go!”

The old Studebaker roared to life, the engine chugging rhythmically and vibrating beneath them. Nuhad tried to suck at her finger, but the sensitivity pained her, and so she waved it about as her father tried to clear through the road. Her head throbbed dully in the background.

“Get out! Out of the way!” Basel yelled through his rolled-down window, but there was only a single-minded focus on evacuation. The car inched forward once, twice, and stopped when Basel turned it off.

“What are you doing?!” Victoria yelled.

“We’re never going to make it out like this. We have to go on foot, like everyone else.” Basel turned back and locked eyes with Tariq. “Come. Come here. I’ll send you through the window.”

Tariq crawled forward, his pale blue pajamas bright in the darkness, and he whimpered a little as Basel held him out of the window. Tariq’s feet kicked out a path through the people and Basel managed to lower him onto a thin sliver of space beside the car.

“Come, Nuhad.” Basel did the same with her. Once Nuhad was safely on the ground, he and Victoria managed to crawl out of the windows and lower themselves onto the street.

“To the sea! To the sea!” From every direction, screams blazed together, one man shouting up ahead for his cousin to hear, or one mother screaming at her daughter to hurry her little feet.

They formed a line—Basel grabbed Nuhad and Tariq by the hands and Victoria came to Nuhad’s other side. Together, they were linked in a fragile chain as Basel pushed their way through the bulging, heaving mass of people.

The crowd was so thick, so viscous in its movement that Nuhad felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Her hands gripped tightly to her mother and father, knuckles straining to keep hold, and the oxygen came only in irregular gasps in time with her heartbeat. People pushed at her from the back and sides, and she in turn pushed those in front of her; it was an impossible, unending torrent of forward motion. Her unsteady balance threatened to trip her with each dangerously shuffling footstep—if Nuhad fell, she knew she would be crushed.

Then, she lost contact with her mother’s hand.

Nuhad glanced behind her, hair flying into her face, and through the black strands and mass of people she could no longer see Victoria. She yanked on Basel’s hand as hard as she could, and he turned to face her. His face was pure terror—unlike anything she’d ever known from the father who was supposed to be a strong, unmoving guide. In the darkness, the whites of his eyes were ablaze.

“Mama!” Nuhad screamed, pointing her chin toward the onslaught. Her voice barely carried above the screams, the bodies, but Basel understood. He hoisted both children over his shoulders, flopping them so that they folded over his body, and pressed against the oncoming tidal wave of people.

Thick anxiety clouded all other thoughts—her mother had been lost, sent back with the current—but in the darkness, she saw a pale hand reach out from the cobblestone darkened by shadows.

“Mama!” she screamed again, and pointed at the outstretched palm below them.

Basel gripped the two children and Nuhad was righted, clutching at her father’s loose nightshirt. He half crouched to grab Victoria, but the relentless surge of panicked people fell to the side and on top of her in their own inescapable forward-moving rush; turning, he put his back toward them and became an immovable object as he helped Victoria up.

Nuhad and Tariq grabbed at her arms and strained to pull her up. She managed to get to her knees and Basel put one of her arms around his shoulder to help her stand. Victoria’s face was a white moon.

“I fainted. I fainted. I’m okay,” she said, but Nuhad was the only one who heard her.

Basel charged through the crowd, screams unabating at all sides around them, Nuhad not knowing if the next would be theirs. The blue-gray of dawn was finally lightening the sky a bit and cast clarity on the crowd. As Nuhad was pulled forward by her father, her small hand nearly crushed in his tight grip, she saw something on the ground, on the stones.

A body.

Nuhad looked up immediately, sudden tears streaking her face, hoping that the sky would wash away the sight. But she’d already seen it, an old woman lying face down, dark marks of dirt or blood streaking the back of her house dress. Trampled, like her mother could have been.

The crowd finally thinned out and the lightening sky cast illumination over the sea, where boats of all kinds and sizes were ported.

“Go! Go! The British army will give refuge to anyone who gets there!”

They were tens of thousands of people whose first breath free of the surge was salted with sea air, and every single person turned toward the British army—the ones who would leave them that day—and ran.

As the house opens to Marina, it blooms in memory tinted by longing. Shadowy images of bustling activity on the storefront floor cross the corners of her eyes. There are fishermen buying bait and laughing with one another, but when she turns to look at them, there is only emptiness. And Marina and the boy—they, too, are ethereal. She waves her hand and it moves like a lazy cloud of smoke.

Look without looking.

The boy is at the top of the steps, holding the door open for her. Marina nods. She knows this game. Her eyes unfocus and blur, and there it is.

The store is packed with people buying bait and poles; in the corner, the owner tells stories about his greatest catch as a child. She tries not to stare—that’s how he disappears—but there’s a familiarity in his features. Nuhad’s mouth. Haifa’s jawline. Marina feels a kinship to him, and as she moves toward the stairs, she reaches out to touch him. Her hand passes through his arm like air, but she shivers. She’s suddenly cold.

Come, the boy beckons, so Marina climbs up the stairs.

The living room opens in the same way, and as she enters it, it feels honey-sweet and golden-lit and Marina wants to sink into the sofa and let herself be taken by its warmth. There are small trinkets on a shelf, little camels and pyramids. Sunlight filters in through the windows and splashes across these souvenirs.

Look.

Marina walks through the kitchen that faces the sea, down the light pink hallway and past her great-grandparents’ bedroom, beyond her tata’s bedroom, but the house’s throat keeps going. It yawns open at such a distance that Marina’s eyesight ends before it does. There are doors along the wall, spaced evenly.

“It’s so much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside,” she breathes, hovering at the entrance of this grand hallway. “I don’t remember this.”

There are treasures in here. Memories. Let me show you.

The boy offers his small hand and Marina takes it. Her other hand traces the walls as they float through together. They pass dozens of doors—jagged, like teeth—before he finally stops at one. His chin points toward it, an open invitation.

A floor carpeted entirely in photographs is the first thing Marina sees in this room. It’s the only thing—the photos are on the ground, tacked to the walls, hovering in the air on invisible strings. They are black-and-white moments when she focuses, but when Marina looks away, the lives within begin to dance off of the paper and into the air, and she can hear snippets of conversation and music.

“Look,” Marina says. “It’s my tata.” She kneels, pointing to a photograph of her grandmother as a child. She’s smiling in a dress that whips in the wind as the sea roars behind her. Marina can feel the salty wind against her teeth.

All left behind.

Marina gathers the photos in her arms, sliding them neatly into a small pile, but they disintegrate into dust as she walks back over the threshold. The door-tooth snaps shut behind her, locking into place.

“What’s happening?” The hallway feels dark and damp now, and cobwebs hang above them at the edges of the ceiling. Marina’s feet crunch over something. She looks down and there is a white gravel beneath her feet.

Salt. The house’s salt.

Marina pinches a bit of salt in her fingers and feels the overwhelming grief from its touch. Slowly, the walls of the hallway begin to close in. Her legs are shaking, but still, she trusts this boy.

Come.

She follows him as they continue down the shrinking hallway. They walk so far down this bottomless mouth that when Marina looks behind her, crouching, she can no longer see the wall they entered from.

Her bare feet sink into the carpet, squishing softly against the increasingly warm dampness that soaks through. A rumble roils through the floor and beneath Marina, causing her to lose balance, and a hot gust of wind, like breath, washes over her with a sickly-sweet scent.

“Are we safe here?” Her voice trembles as she clutches his hand tighter. “It’s like—like the house is eating us,” she whispers, afraid that the house will hear. If there is a tongue, and throat, and breath—there must be ears, too.

No. It’s sheltering us. Protecting us within the past. You’re safe with me.

The boy stops in front of the last room at the end of the hall. Marina’s eyesight deceives her; a moment ago, all she could see was yet more hallway, but now, they’ve reached the last door. She crawls through.

The beige of the British army’s uniform was like a beacon in the early dawn light. Into soldiers’ hands were thrust babies, by their sides were left elderly family members. All of this was done in hope as the din of people clamoring for refuge rose.

A scream ripped the fabric of the crowd, and it was mere moments between the sound of that shriek and the next sound of bullets being fired. Nuhad ducked, but her father’s hand came away limply, and she looked up to see blood leaking through a narrow gash on the collar of his nightshirt. An officer shouted and waved his hands in the air: “Don’t shoot! We’re British!” Beside him, a soldier was on the ground with the bullet that had just grazed Basel.

Basel moaned and let go of Victoria, keeling over as he pressed his hand against his neck. All of this happened in a matter of seconds. Nuhad’s heart clamored against its cage. Victoria, her face a sickly shade of translucent now, came around and pried Basel’s fingers off.

“Let me see.” They kneeled together as two boulders in the still-moving crowd. Nuhad covered her eyes with her hands, leaving only a dark slit through which to watch her mother tear open the nightshirt hole and reveal a bleeding gash through his neck. “It’s just a graze. It’s just a graze,” she said. Blood continued to drip down his arm.

Basel murmured something, but the blood spurted as he spoke, gushing into the red rivers pooling against his body. He shook his head and pointed to the boats.

“Yes. Yes, you can. Come on.” Victoria’s voice was hysteric despite her words being calm and authoritative. Sweat beaded on her brow as she helped hoist him up with Tariq and Nuhad, and all three tried to move Basel toward a ship.

Nuhad finally tripped, the shared weight of her father too much, and her knees scraped the pavement before she pulled herself back up. Basel collapsed against the seawall, and in the light, his face was as white as Victoria’s.

“You’re losing blood. Oh, you’re losing blood, habibi!” Victoria screamed. Her calm demeanor broke as she tore the sleeve of her nightgown, pressing it against Basel’s throat and looking about wildly. Her shoulder was also now darkened with Basel’s life. It was everywhere, dripping from his arm and onto the ground below them—nearby, a child screamed, and Nuhad knew it was for the nightmarish sight of her father.

Victoria’s face hardened. She grabbed Nuhad and Tariq by their wrists and dragged them, carving a space through the crowd, to the British army. “Go!” she yelled, and pushed them both toward the sea. “Swim for a boat!”

“Mama, no,” Nuhad said, and Tariq was shaking his head back and forth, his lips trembling with a silent refusal.

“Go. Now.” Victoria’s lip curled in a final anger that Nuhad had only ever known for homework or curfews. Then, her face softened, and tears fell across her cheeks. “I have to get help for your father. You’re children. They’ll take you.” She patted their heads again and again despite the desperation in her voice.

Nuhad nodded. Her gaze had blackened at the edges and all she could see was the crying face of her mother; all she could hear was the sound of her pleas.

“There are others swimming. You have to go. Now.” And with the final word, Victoria pushed them again toward the water. She turned on her heel and ran to find someone, anyone, who could help Basel.

Nuhad faced the sea and ran. It had always pulled her to its waves, but now, the only pull she felt was to her city. To her parents, who she was being forced to leave behind. Her legs were like lead as she ran. The water was still freezing in the early spring morning. Nuhad’s teeth chattered as the water reached her waist, and as it teased the cold against her sensitive skin. She pushed through, feeling the resistance of the shallow part, knowing that the sea wanted her to stay on the shore for once, and dove into the water.

There were hundreds of others in the sea, their bodies all bobbing desperately atop the high waves for the boats that were already moving away from shore. Some yelled as they came up for air.

“Stop! Please!”

“Stop!”

“We’re here!”

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.

Interlude

rania misses her friend. she misses her so much it hurts.

I miss my family, I miss my family, I miss my family.

They are gone.

rania is one of four thousand palestinians left in haifa now. there were sixty-five thousand before april 21, 1948. now, one month later, there are four thousand. everyone left by boat or car or foot or gun or mortar.

when rania walked past nuhad’s home, it had a flag in the window. it’s called israel. she couldn’t stay long, her mother rushed her past, because there were soldiers there, soldiers that she did not know.

There is a man here, but I do not know him. His fingers slide against the door’s edges, seeking the catch that will allow him into the store. My hinges tighten—it is the first time I have had to do this—but he has a gun that he rams into the glass and the shards fly. It hurts.

His dusty green clothing melts into the darkness of the store as he slides up the staircase, cigarette ash falling over each step in a way Victoria never would have allowed. He breaks in again—a violation—and enters. He slings his gun over Basel’s chair as he looks around, nodding, and walks to the radio to turn on the news. He forages through the kitchen for food and dumps the clothing out of the closets, setting shirts and pants aside as if they were his. They are not yours—I am not yours.

I want to scream.

that night, rania heard them. the screams. she heard everything. but she wasn’t in the old town anymore, not after their adopted jewish family locked them out of their home. they meant to go back. her father wanted to go back the very next day with a locksmith, or a blacksmith, or a battering ram if he needed to.

but the next morning the haganah bombed the najjadah building. and that evening—

they never made it back. that night, rania heard the screams, but she didn’t see the way people ran through the streets as though their lives depended on it, or the tramplings, or the corpses. no, that night they stayed with an uncle and aunt on the outskirts of haifa.

and when rania’s family did go back, after the city fell, she stood off to the side, in shock, as her father shouted fearlessly at the soldiers. he demanded that they force their adopted family out of the house, but they laughed. the soldiers laughed in his face. and rania stood there, weak and trembling, scared that it would be a bullet instead of a laugh into his chest for defying them. and later, she was ashamed of the fear she felt.

My family feared for their lives and so they left in the middle of the night, when the wood was warm and the walls were dark, and scrambled out of the front door, even taking care to lock the door behind them. The screams reverberated through my stones and shattered the walls. I thought they were coming back. They left, and the streets—filled with terror—swallowed them into the masses.

This violation pains me; it grows sharp claws that scrape against the plaster and tears a hole in the bottom of the floor, allowing water from the sea to slowly trail in with each passing day that my family isn’t here. But they will come back. The ghosts of their faces linger in the mirrors, putting hands to glass, and the memory of their scent floats through the hall. The man senses it too. I know he can. We both know: they will return.

I test the strength of the hinges and the porousness of the walls and I lie in wait. I have faith, still, but the soldier is still here—now he has brought a wife and she, too, takes from the closets and sits on the furniture and settles, the blood on both of their hands staining everything they touch. The water rises slowly and something forms—hard and cold—deep within its still reflection.

It—hurts. I miss my family.

and now rania misses her old life. she misses nuhad and nuhad’s home and the beach. she misses her own home that still exists but has become an impossibility, somehow. she is so far from the sea now … it hurts. and her best friend feels far—nuhad lives in nazareth, which isn’t much distance at all, but she doesn’t see her every day anymore. there is no running through the beach with sandals in hand. there are no more dates with fresh fish by the water.

and also … nuhad isn’t the same. tariq died, and nuhad isn’t the same.

nothing is the same.

rania misses her friend.

CHAPTER 10

Salt

The salt was acrid bile coming back up her throat as Nuhad choked on the waves. The water pushed against her on all sides, pinching everything to her tightened middle. She was the focal point of the hurricane, but rather than an eye of calm, she was the source of the chaos. It was all wrong.

Nuhad looked down to her hands and feet and found weights attached to them; they were metallic and heavy and pulled her down even farther into the ocean’s maw. Struggling to free herself, to breathe air, she instead could only gasp water into her lungs. Her nose was just barely higher than the waves and she kicked furiously to stay above. She was so heavy.

There were screams—horrible screams, like the ones from that night. Nuhad twirled around in the water, splashing up against the angry, tossing waves, and finally, through the froth, she saw them.

Her family was lined up in a row on the shore: Victoria, Basel, Tariq. Her older sister, Siham, was missing—she hadn’t been in Haifa. They were in their pajamas and their bare skin shivered in the air. There was something wrong, she could see it. Etched into the gray of their faces was a knowing fear. Her mother opened her mouth to scream, but Nuhad couldn’t hear it.

“Mama?! Mama!” Nuhad paddled furiously, attempting to get to shore, but the weights were so heavy. And she was so weak.

Saltwater blurred her vision for a moment, but she blinked against the foam. She found the source of their fear. There was a soldier on the shore in front of them. The gun attached to his hand waved wildly as he yelled at them. Tariq cried—she could see his tears from here—and a wet spot formed on the front of his pants.

“Tariq! No, no—STOP!” Nuhad screamed, but none of them turned toward her. She splashed furiously, attempting to release herself from the water’s grip and get to the shore.

Her screams sliced the air in two as she watched. The soldier fired.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Each shot fired knocked one of her family members on the ground. They fell into the sand on their backs, and Nuhad could see, just barely, the blood pooling out around their bodies. They were motionless.

The soldier turned to face Nuhad directly and fired his gun at her. She heard the sound, but her voice was torn from her throat and she silently screamed as her mother did moments before. There was no pain, but Nuhad suddenly felt tired. She felt so, so weary, and the weights were so, so heavy, and she had to stop paddling and allow the ocean to take her.

The waves smothered her gently as they pushed her down into the depths of the sea. She opened her eyes, stinging, and watched as each of her family members’ bodies was thrown into the ocean. They floated there for a moment before sinking to the bottom. Nuhad followed them, allowing the weights to take her down, and when she arrived, she could see the whole city. There were neighbors, their bodies piled on top of one another. There were the fishermen with nets still in hand. And there, completing the entire city, was her family with their store and the home that was protected by the gods. If Nuhad lowered her eyelids, even just halfway, she could imagine that everything was normal. Haifa was still Haifa. It was just underwater. The people were all still here, drinking tea and smoking and watching the sunset together.

Nuhad’s body became as heavy as the weights, and as her feet trailed against the sand, she let the water enter her lungs. Salt coated the lining of her throat, and the cold spring water filled her body slowly, a stream of bitterness flooding through her in all parts and steadily, quietly, dangerously into her lungs, until—

Nuhad awoke with a start, gasping and clawing at her neck. She coughed, the air coming in too quickly, and pulled herself into the fetal position on the bed. Her hair fell in her face as she attempted to regulate her lungs. Tariq was gone. Tariq was buried. Tariq was dead and it was her fault.

Uncertainty colored the walls and room for a brief moment before her memory painted them back: she was in her sister’s house in Nazareth. Even after a week, she still wasn’t used to waking up here. Sunlight streamed in dust-filtered air and brightened the red-brown walls. Nuhad flipped onto her back and stared at the ceiling, silently watching a series of moments play across the white.

Nuhad? What happened?

The words had hardly escaped her mother’s lips before she took in the sight: Nuhad, covered in dried blood, seawater still dripping from her clothes, a haunting in her eyes. On seeing her mother, Nuhad had tried throwing herself into her embrace, but Basel fainted almost immediately and Victoria had to push her away. She slowly lowered his fainted body to the concrete instead, her arms shaking with frantic restraint. She’d been given a needle and sutures by an overwhelmed paramedic and had to attempt to close Basel’s wound herself—the more they waited, the more blood he would lose.

Stay still.

Victoria poured a tiny bit of alcohol over the wound, and Nuhad saw her father’s eyes roll in the back of his head. She held her breath, and it was as if all thoughts of Tariq’s death were wrapped up in that moment: if her mother could successfully stitch her father, it would fix everything. He had already lost so much blood from his neck. Her father would die if Victoria didn’t do it right then. So, Nuhad concentrated on Victoria’s hands and how they trembled only a little. When she finally sat back, sweat on her brow, Nuhad breathed. And in the ensuing relief of releasing held breath, she wailed.

Tariq. Tariq.

Whimpers punctuated her retelling after her sobs subsided. Nuhad led her mother—leaving Basel, still unconscious, in the vicinity of a handful of stressed doctors—to Tariq’s body.

Where is he?

Where is he?!

Tariq’s body had been moved. Supposedly, it was picked up to be buried. Victoria knelt by the dark spot on the ground as Nuhad asked others nearby if they had seen who moved his body. No one had, and they pointed them in the direction of graves that were being dug.

After a moment of silent grief, Victoria stood and walked silently back to Basel. A man nearby helped them shift Basel’s body into the front of their earlier abandoned car, where his head lolled against the seat.

Please, do you have room in your car?

An old woman appeared at the window, her skin a leathered tan from years in the Mediterranean sun and her hijab tight against her cheeks. Her face shone like the rising sun. Victoria said no, hajje, we need to find a hospital, but when the woman begged them to take her grandson—a young boy who didn’t even reach the window—Victoria acquiesced. The old woman grabbed her face and kissed her three times on her cheeks. Nuhad moved so that her thigh was pressing up against the warming inside of the car as both the old woman and grandson squeezed in beside her, endlessly repeating their thanks. The car inched forward slowly and newly made refugees flanked them on all sides, still in pajamas, still covered in the dust of rubble or blood, still attempting to figure out what to do next. There were women with their belongings in baskets on their head and elderly men whose canes tapped against the stones as they wandered, looking for a place to sit down for a moment. Sweat dripped down all of their faces and in each of them, Nuhad could feel the same grief that she had suppressed. None of them had made it to the boats in time, and now the Haganah had won.

Look,

Victoria said, but she needn’t have said anything. Nuhad froze as the car crawled past their home. It still stood strong and immovable, but now, the blue and white Zionist flag hung from within the window. Already. Outside, a Jewish soldier walked with his gun. It wasn’t enough to take the city.

Victoria said nothing but rather pressed on the gas and the car moved forward. The hospitals in Haifa were overwhelmed; they needed to drive the forty minutes or so to Nazareth. The Haganah hadn’t attacked there. Hospitals were still functioning, and they had a home to go to. Siham had one extra room, and Nuhad could sleep in the salon while they waited for Basel to heal. As they drove away, Nuhad twisted in her seat to stare at her home until it became a dot in the distance, covered by the mountain and busy streets. When she could no longer see it, she turned around and stared straight. She could feel the boy’s eyes on her but wouldn’t dare meet them.

Mama, your souvenirs!

Nuhad said this abruptly, the words coming out before she registered the thought, but her mother remained silent. The small trinkets from Damascus and Jerusalem and Cairo had popped into her head, and the idea that the soldier would take them was entirely violating—her mother had worked over a lifetime to collect them all. But the Sayadis had brought nothing with them. They didn’t even have the luxury of debating what small, unimportant things to leave behind in the chaos of the night. No one did. Mama, your everything. Mama, your Tariq. Mama, our world.

Siham had taken them in once Basel was safely in the hospital, welcoming them with fear and trepidation in her eyes at their state and the old woman and young boy they brought with them. The cord tying Nuhad to the sea had thinned here; she could feel its fragility. She felt how far her brother’s body was from them. They would go back, Victoria said. They would try to find him and bury him properly after they got Basel a blood transfusion and proper stitching. But everyone knew that it was over. Siham tried her best to make them feel welcome and at home, but how does one feel at home in a place that is not their home?

Voices interrupted Nuhad’s ceiling slideshow.

“Why aren’t we going to Lebanon?” Basel asked. His voice carried throughout Siham’s house. Victoria had learned, very quickly, to boil water when they fought in this new house in an attempt to drown out their voices.

“Ya Basel, we cannot have this same conversation again.”

Nuhad crawled from the cot she lay in to the door, where her ear perked at their conversation. Her knees stuck to the cool marble tile. It was a question her father had posited often in the last week, and so far, the answer had been the same, but the constant wondering left Nuhad feeling like a bird. She was perched on the edge of a branch, her wings ready for the inevitability of flight.

A slam reverberated through the house and Nuhad knew that her father had raised his fist against the table. “Victoria.” His voice was low but harsh and Nuhad strained to hear him. “Everyone is going to Lebanon. It’s safer there. We need to take Siham and her husband, too.”

“How do we know it’s safer there? Do we have a guarantee? Do we know that they won’t be attacked like us?” Her mother’s voice waved in and out as she walked around the kitchen. “No. Siham has a home here. Tariq is buried God knows where in Haifa. Have you forgotten that? We have to stay here.”

“And what did Balfour say?” Basel’s voice rose over the whine of the kettle. Nuhad’s knees ached and she shifted her weight to a squat. “He promised the land of Palestine to the Jews. He did not say Lebanon, or Syria, or Egypt. Palestine! He said Palestine. How do we know that Nazareth won’t be next?”

“Basel,” she said, her voice brimming with frustration. “Who could wage war against the city Jesus was born in? Mish ma’aoul. Nazareth is like Jerusalem—they’re both sacred.”

“The city Jesus was born in?! Jesus probably swam in the seas of Haifa and they still destroyed the city! He probably cured illnesses in the village of Deir Yassin and look at them! They don’t give a damn about Jesus! They’re going to keep taking lives—keep taking everything.” The whistle of the teakettle quieted as Victoria put the pot away. There was shuffling for a moment, and then the door slammed shut. Nuhad imagined Victoria’s arms waving as she gestured for Basel to go outside to continue speaking. Slowly, with care to not open the door too quickly and have it creak, Nuhad tiptoed out of her makeshift bedroom and to the kitchen.

A narrow, tall window was high above the kitchen table, and through its open pane Nuhad could hear her parents’ voices. She crouched, her feet halfway in and halfway out of the kitchen, and listened.

“We have no guarantee about Lebanon. We are not going there.” Her mother’s voice was stern. “Unless you would like to go to the Haganah personally and make them stamp approval that they will not invade Lebanon too.”

Basel clicked his teeth with frustration.

“Victoria, don’t be stupid. We have already lost everything.” His voice quieted. “We have lost our business. Our home. Our son. Everything. Everyone else has gone to Lebanon from Haifa. Why not us?”

“We have not lost everything!” Victoria yelled. “How can you dare say that?! We will go back! Everything is still—”

“What are we waiting for, then? Yallah, let’s go back to Haifa! I’m sure our home is now miraculously empty and our things are still inside.” He scoffed. “You don’t see what they have been doing all over this land? Stealing! Taking the land, taking the houses! This is their plan!”

“Why are you giving up? Why are you ready to give up?”

“Give up?” Basel laughed sourly. “Habibti, that is the only option. What else are we to do?”

Victoria slammed her way inside. She glanced at Nuhad, still hovering at the edge of the kitchen. Her cheeks were pink with indignation.

“The Haganah zift. May God curse them and their whole history!” Victoria pulled down a bowl and slammed ingredients on the counter. Tahini. Spices. Chickpeas. “Nuhad, you remember that. They think they are God. They are killing people!”

“They’re not God,” Nuhad affirmed quietly.

Through the window, Basel sighed. The door opened a moment later.

“Your color looks good,” Nuhad remarked to her father, trying to change the mood of the room. It was also something she’d checked for every day since they retrieved him from the hospital. Basel’s hand reached absentmindedly for his neck.

“It will take a lot more than that to kill me.” The edge of his lips turned up slightly.

The airplane is stuffy with bottled air. Each time Haifa closes her eyes, attempting to sleep, they spring back open. Subconsciously, she tears at a hangnail on the side of her thumb that’s already been shredded with worry.

Haifa believes in the supernatural world. Her mother always told her that a ghuleh would eat her if she didn’t behave, and Haifa, susceptible to fear from a hyperactive imagination, would believe her. It sparked a chain of beliefs that Haifa has unconsciously held herself to for the rest of her life. She doesn’t waste salt, for if she does, she’ll be forced to pick up each wasted grain with her eyelashes in the afterlife. If a shoe accidentally lands upside down, she has to right it immediately. Over the front door of her home and around her neck hang evil eyes. And now, as an adult, she sees Nuhad. She hears her warnings.

As a mother, she tried to keep Marina away from these superstitions. They have chained Haifa to a life of hypervigilance and simmering fear and she wanted better for her daughter, but she knows that in this, too, she has failed. Despite never warning Marina about the ghuleh that would eat her, or warning her of wasting salt with a cosmic punishment, she knows that her daughter still felt Haifa’s superstitions even without words. With every evil eye trinket Haifa gifted Marina, with every flip of a fallen shoe at the door, Haifa passed down her beliefs without words. Marina, in turn, doubted everything.

And so if Marina said the house—her mother’s childhood home—is haunted, then there truly must be something wrong with it. The city, too. As Haifa stares up at the dark blue ceiling of the airplane, she feels the true meaning behind Marina’s words, despite her unstable state. There is a heaviness here, even now, in this vessel in the sky pointed toward Palestine.

Anxiety has flooded her veins through the long hours of this flight. Haifa cannot move, cannot rid herself of the worry of returning to her mother’s city and seeing her childhood house for the first time, even haunted. She sits up straighter—an unconscious response to measuring up to the dream. Her hands whisk back and forth, back and forth, over the top of her thigh.

She sighs, giving up, and turns on the reading light above her. A small halo of yellow surrounds her. If she cannot sleep, she will read.

Her head bumps against the reclined seat in front of her as she digs through her bag for the translated sheets from Sara. The pages rustle delicately beneath the roar of the plane engine as she pulls them out, and there, by the light of the small, circular lamp, is her friend’s hasty scrawl.

The sweetshop was filled with the laughter and conversation of patrons each day, but its walls were not painted by the tall tales and jokes of the fishermen from their store in Haifa. Nuhad’s feet dangled over the stool she sat on at the register.

“Hi, Nuhad, keefik?” The cold brush of winter’s wind came in with Siham. She took off her coat and unwrapped the scarf from her neck. It was one of the only things Nuhad remembered from when Siham still lived with them—she’d bought it at a store by the sea. It was the color of the ocean.

“Hamdillah,” Nuhad replied, but she wasn’t feeling good thanks to the grace of God. There were bags under her eyes, and she felt the weight of exhaustion each time she returned home even on easy days. She hadn’t made any friends at her new school yet, and she spent most of her free hours working at their sweetshop. It had been her mother’s idea and she’d gotten to work immediately, learning the secrets to making the perfect knafeh and baqlawah so that their family would have a means of survival. No one needed fishing supplies an hour from the sea—even if they did, they’d lost it all.

“How has the shop been today?” Siham looked around at the quiet and answered her own question. Warm candles lit the emptiness and flickered; the sun had already set in the late afternoon.

“Where’s Philippe?”

Philippe was Siham’s first son. He’d been born prior to 1948 and was already a few years old. His personality was beginning to show, quiet and moody, especially for such a young child, but Nuhad appreciated it. She felt his feelings in his silence. When they played together, they understood one another without many words.

“Mama’s watching him.” Siham dragged over a stool, scraping it on the ground, and sat beside her younger sister. She sighed for a moment as she contemplated her words. “It’s … nice. Having everyone here.”

Nuhad glanced up at Siham without moving her head. She stared for a moment. “I guess it would be, for you.”

“It’s not like everyone was so far before, but”—Siham placed a hand on her belly and smiled softly—“there’s a difference between having a mother forty-five minutes away and having one right here. It’ll be nice when she’s born, having her family here.”

“She?”

“I’ve decided she’s a she.”

Siham’s belly had rounded out slowly with her growing child. She’d realized she was pregnant a few months after they’d had to move into her home, and Victoria especially was ecstatic. She’d already taken all of the extra time she could to take care of Philippe. The young boy provided them all with a distraction, and a new baby would give even more chances. Victoria—Nuhad could clearly see—was filling the cavernous hole in her heart.

“Do you know what I heard today at the school?” Siham asked. Nuhad raised her eyebrows. “The Haganah used loudspeakers. During the war.”

Nuhad’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“You said you heard screams, right? They used loudspeakers to broadcast them. Some were real, but most were fake. They wanted to add to the chaos. A lot were prerecorded over the speakers.”

“Fake?” Nuhad looks into the distance, staring at a candle flame. “Fake?”

“They played the sounds of people being tortured and killed.”

“How?” Only this was whispered, for if Nuhad said anything else, it would come out as a whimper. She had heard bloodcurdling cries that night. She still heard them in both her nightmares and her waking life; even when she stuffed her ears with her fingers, the wails came through the muffled wall of her mind nonetheless. In fact, they almost felt more intimate there, for they were the only sound to penetrate.

“I don’t know.” Siham reached out a hand and patted her knee. She shook her head. “I don’t even want to think of how they got those sounds.”

Nuhad looked at her sister. It was true, what they said about pregnancy. It caused her sister to emanate a slight glow from the inside out—even now, when she was concerned. It also helped that, in the end, Nazareth had been spared in the war.

Nuhad forced a smile and shook her head.

Her sister hugged her sideways. “It’s going to be okay, khayta. Tariq is watching over us.”

Nuhad pressed a response out of her lips. “I know,” she said, but she didn’t. Siham was constantly referencing Tariq’s death, but he’d only been six or seven when she left home. She didn’t know him. Not really.

“Come on.” Siham stood and wrapped the sea scarf around her neck again. “Let’s close up early and get going.”

“But we don’t close for another thirty minutes.” Nuhad was already standing, ready to leave even as her words resisted.

“Yes, well, there’s a new settlement nearby.” Siham walked around the counter and blew out the few lit candles. “I’m not leaving you alone at night to close by yourself.”

Licking her thumb and forefinger, Nuhad stamped out the last candle. It hissed and sputtered to darkness.

“A new settlement? Here?”

“They’re coming in droves now. New ones are popping up everywhere. Every day.” Siham held open the door for her sister and ushered her outside. The cold nipped at her through her coat. Outside, rows of stores with houses above them sat across from their store. Nuhad avoided their gaze. “It’s not that far away. I’ll point it out on our way home.”

Nuhad opened the car door and shivered as the leather touched her through her clothes. “How?”

The car strained to start, then, roaring, Siham turned out of the small street that their family’s shop was on. “How can they live atop other people’s lives? I wish I knew. That’s another question entirely.”

They sat in silence and Nuhad looked out the window. Winter had a way of stilling everything, of cocooning everything in its cold grip. Siham’s words echoed in Nuhad’s ears. She wished that after the war, everything had come to a halt as it did in winter. It was impossible to her that within the week after that night, Nuhad had been attending a new school. She was expected to make new friends. Nothing had stopped, let alone slowed. Siham slowly pressed on the brakes as the car came to a small overlook. She pointed.

“There.”

It was a small pinprick of light in the valley’s darkness. Buildings had already cropped up, seemingly from nothing.

“Is it…?”

“Yes. It’s new. Built out of thin air.” Siham waved her hand.

Nuhad pressed her eyelids shut for a moment and heard a low rushing sound in her ears. “How long have they been there?”

Siham shook her head. “They just moved in.”

Nuhad didn’t take her eyes off of the settlement as Siham drove away. Everything had frozen except for the settlement expansion. They just kept going. Taking.

As they stepped foot in Siham’s warm home, Nuhad’s shivers would not leave her. The settlers were there. Their lives were superimposed over the lives and deaths of the people who were killed or displaced to make room for them. They traveled from far-reaching places to settle their blood-soaked land and make it a country of their own. It was as if by settling over these bodies and houses, they made their worth greater by placement alone.

What made their lives worth more?

Haifa gnaws on a nail as she adjusts the first page in the light. Her eyes are drawn to the sentence written at the top like a magnet.

This is my confession.

She immediately looks out to the seat in front of her, pressing a hand against her mouth with the sudden realization that the pages are written by her mother. Her handwriting was fragile, and thin, but with these words, she knows it’s Nuhad. Who else would write and seal a confession behind a photo of the two of them together? It must be her.

Tariq died in 1948. And it was my fault—I killed him. I swam toward the boat just as a soldier caught him and shot him. I left him to die.

Haifa’s blood chills her skin and causes goose bumps to crawl over her flesh.

Who is Tariq?

Whether friend, or relative, or neighbor, Nuhad wrote of his death clinically, as if she were a doctor reporting the death of a patient. One paragraph. Tariq died.

It’s painful to read in her mother’s voice. Haifa slumps back in her chair, her eyes scanning the same line over and over again: It was my fault—I killed him.

The realization of it comes crashing on Haifa like a tsunami. If her mother really did kill someone, it makes sense as to why Nuhad became the distant, avoidant mother she’d always known. Nuhad was hiding a monumental secret.

Who was Tariq?

It had to have happened during the war—when Nuhad first began locking the past away. If she did kill someone—and it must have been accidentally, Haifa rationalizes—why would Nuhad want to speak about the extent of the horrors she’d experienced, let alone relive them? It would have been harrowing enough to experience it as a sixteen-year-old girl.

Haifa’s heart pounds as she reads the final sentence of the paragraph:

But this is not my only confession.

Basel started closing the shop each day at sundown, afraid of keeping it open after dark with the new settlement. In the thin veil of a long winter night, Nuhad knew he feared every possibility. More and more people were moving in each day, and the threat of displacement grew. It was an aching, gnawing worry that fluttered through the backs of their minds, ever-present with the fragile decision to stay in Nazareth.

Nuhad’s back was hunched where she sat on the stool as she waited in front of the register. The door opened and the bell jingled.

“Ahlan,” she said automatically. They were a pair of men—one was older, with a full beard whose long whitish whiskers tickled his mouth, and the other looked to be his son from their similarly broad chins and deep brown eyes. The younger one had a yarmulke on his head that he re-clipped as they walked in.

“Shalom,” the older man said.

“What would you like?” Nuhad asked. Imperceptibly, she nodded at her father, who stood beside the stove. He had taken on the role of sweets chef, and his constant presence was a daily comfort with these new fears. Basel met her gaze, understanding her meaning, wiped his hands, and came to stand beside her.

“What can I get for you?” he asked, gesturing to the glass case with sticky-sweet displays of hariseh and warbat and knafeh and baqlawa. Nuhad stared at them as their eyes were taken to the sweets. There were no guns on their backs. Her shoulders relaxed slightly.

“Hmm,” the older man mused. “What’s in that one?” He pointed to the triangles of warbat.

“It’s filo dough with ishta inside,” Basel said. Nuhad noticed the confusion on the man’s face and kept her face impassive, though she felt a satisfying laugh bubble in her throat. They could not claim the land and its gifts, not truly, not ever. It was a small consolation, but it nevertheless turned up the corners of her mouth slightly.

“Mmm,” he said. “I’ll take one of that.” His son also pointed to another dessert, smudging his finger on the glass. Nuhad stared at it and her eyes narrowed at this greasy blemish, becoming slits as she willed all of the hatred she held into its print. That small oily stain would be wiped up later, and Nuhad’s evil eye curse along with it, but she didn’t care. It deserved every bit of hostility.

“Nuhad?” Basel’s gentle voice snapped her out of her gaze. “Can you get them some water?”

“Ah.”

“Are you okay?” he murmured, nodding slightly with the question. Nuhad smiled back and he squeezed her arm knowingly. Basel was kinder to the settlers after healing from his injuries, believing that if they only could understand the Palestinian plight, they would be compassionate and leave.

Nuhad turned to the opposite counter. She felt off, like everything in the room had been shifted a half inch to the left and she was standing in her usual spot, wondering why she felt strange even though everything appeared the same.

The cups were stacked in a long tower in the corner and she stood on tiptoe to grab two from the top. She filled them each with water, the sound trickling slowly and raising pitch as it reached the top. A wave of sudden dizziness threw her off-balance and her vision went momentarily black. Nuhad gripped the counter with white knuckles and blinked, hard, staring at the floor. She waited until her feet were no longer shaking.

But there was a double vision. In one eye, she saw herself pick up the salt shaker and begin to salt the cups; in the other eye, she waited to steady herself, but her sight kept trembling no matter how much she breathed. In her evil eye, the small crystals fell into the water. Some sank to the bottom. Others dissolved instantly. The color clouded momentarily and then cleared.

“Here.” Nuhad watched herself set the cups in front of the patrons and walk away. The aroma of pistachio nuts and atir heating up on the stove slowly filled the restaurant with sweet, earthy scents. She saw herself sit back down on her stool.

“Nuhad? Can you watch this for me, please?” Basel wiped his hands on his apron and set the spoon in her direction. As Nuhad stood, her vision finally cleared and her shakiness ceased.

The men sputtered and coughed. She turned on instinct.

“What is this?” The older one’s eyes blazed with fury and indignation. Water sloshed against the sides of his cup as he held it up, his hand shaking. “Are you trying to make me sick?!”

“Ugh!” the younger one coughed. “Is this … salty water?”

Nuhad took one, two steps toward them, but her father was already ahead of her. “Go. Take care of the atir.”

She lingered for a moment, watching her father walk to their small side table. He would offer their sweets for free, she knew. The younger one muttered something in Hebrew under his breath, but it sounded like Arabic. Did they steal the curse words, too? Nuhad turned away and stirred the sugar water, careful not to let it caramelize and burn. She squeezed a tiny bit of lemon juice into the mixture.

The men left, their shouts following them through the door. It slammed behind them, and though their voices were muffled, she could still hear them cursing their shop for a few moments before they finally petered out.

“I don’t know what happened.” Basel spoke from behind her, his voice low. “How would we get salt in the water here? We’re so far from the sea—the wells should be fresh.”

Nuhad shrugged, stirring the sweet mixture with a wooden spoon. She felt a surge of power, a sense of control for the first time since they’d had to move to Nazareth. She smiled to herself.

There are torn, yellowed sheets from another journal attached beneath the confession—Haifa can tell it comes from an old diary entry because she sees the date written in Sara’s hand.

15 December, 1948

Haifa breathes in sharply. These pages are from after the war. After the genocide.

I did something today for the first time. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t even think I realized that I had done it until the cups were before them on the table. I walked back to the kitchen with a strange, jumpy feeling in my stomach. Baba was upset and I felt bad. He’s been worrying about the settlement so much. Was it bad to do? I could have made them sick, and that could have made them angry enough to call the army. Or come back with guns.

The thin sheet of paper trembles in Haifa’s shaky hands as she follows the handwriting in the weak circle of light.

27 December, 1948

I can’t stop thinking about salt. Salt has become my revenge. If the sea will not do it, I will. I feel such a sense of power when I pour it in their drinks. I can always tell it’s them—they are rude and unyielding and speak in Hebrew. They expect us to understand. Why? Why should we understand them? The most frustrating part is how many words they’ve taken from our language to fill in the gaps of theirs. Sometimes I hear one of ours, accented slightly to fit their tongue, and it makes me laugh. A fabricated society speaking a fabricated language. I keep salting the water. I cannot stop.

Haifa looks up, her gaze searching for something in the darkness through the open window. Now, it’s as if she wants her mother’s ghost to return, to appear on the back of the seat in front of her. Haifa needs answers. Her heart beats heavily, but she cannot hear it over the din of the plane engine.

7 January, 1949

The settlement is growing. There are more and more people moving in, and my stomach churns every time I see a new house. I hate them all. It’s different from the way they did it in Haifa, where they stole everything as it was and moved in happily. Here, they’ve built everything from the ground up. That’s what Siham said. They even built their own water well. The construction equipment and jackhammers went on for days to dig that well from the ground. I know what I am going to do. I’m scared, but something has to be done. If salt in a cup worked well enough, I can imagine what a well would do. If the sea won’t do it, I will.

Haifa’s entire body trembles as she flips back one page.

Salt has become my revenge.

The dots connect in her mind before she’s decided to accept their reality. Her heart flutters on wings made of cobwebs from the past. This is why her mother needed saltwater. It wasn’t just to cleanse herself from this deed—she wanted to relive what she had done. She wanted to taste her own revenge.

Darkness was a cloak that fell on Nuhad’s shoulders like velvet. She stepped lightly on the dirt and stones, using the clouded light of the moon to illuminate leaves and twigs that would announce her presence. The well was on the edge of the settlement, so Nuhad didn’t have to go in very far. It was surrounded by new buildings, and slits from closed curtains revealed darkness inside too. The height of the windows was to Nuhad’s advantage—their bottom ledges were just above her head. She could slink against the wood panels of a house and not be seen from the window.

She shifted her weight as she examined her path. There was nowhere to hide once she was at the well; it was an open area. If she was shot at, she would have to run at least a few paces in any direction in order to use another building as cover.

Though the weather held a January bite to its wind, sweat still leached from her hands onto the container of salt. She’d brought a large, industrial-sized case from the back storage of their restaurant. She felt guilty about stealing from the family business, but this would hopefully make up for it.

Nuhad took a deep breath in, letting the night air fill her lungs. She closed her eyes for a moment. There was nothing to be scared of. If the gods could protect her home from sea storms, they could protect her now. Tariq pressed against the back of her eyelids for a fleeting moment before she opened her eyes again.

“Yallah,” she whispered to herself.

The loudest sound was the beat of her heart and the rush of her breath as she stole her way across the open, unprotected space. Nuhad’s eyes skirted from window to window, searching for any sign, any sliver of light, that would reveal that she had been spotted. It was 3 AM when she had snuck out of her home. The winter pinched at her legs and face and her stomach roiled with nerves; everything felt like a sign to go home.

She nearly stumbled over the wall of the well with the momentum she’d gained from her low, crouching run. Nuhad slid down the side of it, her face still open to a few houses. Her heart beat a rhythm: Go. Home. Go. Home. Go-home. Go-home.

She turned and snuck a peek into the well, her eyes just barely above the ledge. The dark water at the bottom reflected the gray, cloudy sky. She panted with trembling breath. It almost felt more dangerous to have her back to the houses.

Nuhad’s hands shook uncontrollably as she tried to open the container, her palms slick with sweat. She rubbed them against her jacket and tried again. The lid flipped open. Her heart began to beat a different tune.

Can’t. Stop. Can’t. Stop. Can’t-stop. Can’t-stop.

Nuhad’s eyes were everywhere: on the salt, on the well, on the settlement. She overturned the container, holding it with both hands around the large circumference, and shook the salt inside. It fell like torrential snowfall into the water.

“Come on,” she whispered.

In the still quiet of the night, a door opened. Nuhad’s vision sharpened, tunneling into one focus as the edges blackened. Her heart stopped for a moment with the sound. In the distance, a shadowy figure stood beside their door. The glow of a cigarette was bright against the night.

Cursing silently, Nuhad held her breath and dropped the entire container into the well. Before she could hear the deep splash, she ran, her head down and her shoulders hunched over. Her legs stretched out before her in impossibly long expanses. She tried to avoid the leaves and twigs, but a couple of them snapped beneath her hurry. She waited for the bang of a gun, for the earsplitting pierce of a scream in the night, but only the sounds of her breath and the interminable silence were with her. Nuhad stopped at a row of trees just outside of Nazareth. Her legs, trembling from cold and nerves, fell to the ground under their protective canopy.

She glanced behind her, but there was nothing there. No one had followed her. There were no angry settlers or fiery torches coming after her. Nuhad had done it.

A laugh bubbled up in her throat and spilled over the trees. Tears pricked at her eyes, and Nuhad gasped between sobs and laughter. Her stomach ached with the continuous contractions. Nuhad doubled over, seeing Tariq in her watery vision.

She sat back on prickly pine needles, panting. The moon’s disappearing crescent peered out from beyond its cloud cover.

The walk back to Nazareth was quiet.

Haifa stands as a vibration of energy in line to exit the plane; her fingers tap against her jeans until it is her turn to leave. The walk to customs is long. She counts the number of strides it takes to reach it, attempting to avoid confronting the reality of what her mother had done as a child.

“Hello, shalom,” the guard behind the counter says.

“Hi.” Haifa slides her passport through.

The officer types on a keyboard for several minutes before picking up the passport and examining the sticker on the back. It’s long, and yellow, and has a string of numbers that Haifa didn’t understand when the additional security slapped it on in Chicago. Finally, she looks up at Haifa over the glasses that sit halfway down her nose.

“Your name is Haifa?”

“Yes.” One-word answers. One-word answers.

“But your last name is Italian.”

“Yes.”

“Where does this middle name come from?”

“My father.”

“And where is he from?”

This is my confession.

The words echo on repeat in her mind, and Haifa picks at a loose thread at the hem of her T-shirt. She loops it around her finger and counts how many loops she can make. Her eyes dart everywhere: the guard, her desk, the fluorescent lights above them.

“Here.”

“Here where?”

“Nablus.”

Three loops.

“So you’re Arab?”

Haifa nods. Five loops. Her finger reddens with tourniqueted blood.

“Where are you staying?”

“In Haifa.”

The guard sighs and snaps her passport shut. “Go down to the hall—”

Haifa’s heart drops into her stomach. The string snaps.

But before the guard can continue, Hebrew crackles through the walkie-talkie attached to her shoulder. She types on the keyboard, talking back into the microphone as she shuts her station down.

“Go. Go,” she whispers to Haifa, brushing her hand away impatiently.

Haifa retrieves her passport and rushes away, keeping her head ducked. If she had been sent in for further interrogation, they would have found her mother’s confession. And if they had found the confession—

She doesn’t realize that she’s made it to the exit until sunlight falls on her worn gray sneakers on the carpet at the door. Tears suddenly thicken her throat as she looks up.

Palestine.

Her country.

The days dragged on, hour ticking slowly into hour, as Nuhad waited for news. School minutes slipped into work minutes, and at night, Nuhad lay awake in her makeshift bed, eyes tracking the darkness of the ceiling, for within its endless black, there were visions of settlers leaving and Palestinians returning. If this worked at the Nazareth settlement, she could do the same thing in Haifa. They could go home.

“Have you heard any news of the settlement?” This question slid out of her mouth without her permission, but after nearly six whole days of waiting, Nuhad couldn’t bear it. Her hands trembled and, as in school, she wanted to sit on them to hide her anxiety nearly every moment.

The edges of her mother’s mouth turned down. They were rolling waraq dawali, placing small pinches of rice and meat into each grape leaf and folding them. It was a delicate balance, attempting to keep them tight but not so tight that they would burst in the pot. Her mother’s were perfect—as small as a pinky finger.

“No. Why would their news come here?” She paused, then looked up for a moment. “I did hear that they had a sickness that went around, actually. Samir—the neighbor all the way down the street, next to the government building—had to go and fix something for them.”

“The well?”

Victoria picked up a pinch of rice and meat. “Something about the water, yes. It made them sick but I think they got it repaired.”

Nuhad accidentally tore the delicate edge of a leaf. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes in frustration. Deep within her throat, a lump began to form with the realization that her plan had failed.

“Habibti, be careful. We only have so many leaves.”

“Hader, Mama.” How could she share this grief?

They sat in silence together until the last of the leaves was stuffed with the spiced mix. As Victoria lined them in concentric circles at the bottom of the pot, Nuhad bumped open the door to the backyard with her hip. The new water pump gleamed silver beneath the lone sun, and Nuhad shivered at its cold touch as she bounced the handle up and down. Even with several pumps, only a few drops came out.

Her calm, barely kept within, broke.

“God damn it ALL! God damn the settlers, god damn this water pump, god damn the WORLD!” Tears squeezed from her eyes unexpectedly, but her vision was hot and red. She swiped at her eyes and kicked the empty bucket, sending it flying across the yard.

“Nuhad? Nuhad?” Victoria emerged from the kitchen door, the scent of lemon and tomato trailing behind. Her forehead was creased with worry. Nuhad’s vision blurred and her mother transformed into two clear ovals. She clenched her fists. Her face was wet with grief.

“What? What, habibti, what happened?” Victoria clasped Nuhad’s shoulders and shook her a little. Nuhad let her head roll with the movement for a moment before snapping.

“Why won’t they leave?!” Nuhad grabbed on to her mother’s hands and stared her in the eyes. “Why won’t they just go away?”

“Meen, Nuhad? Who won’t go away?” Victoria’s face was drawn in concern; her eyes were piercingly wild with intent to understand.

“The settlers! The goddamn settlers and their goddamn settlements over the bodies that they killed.” Nuhad’s voice was wretched, pulled from a place deep within her gut. Tears tore at her throat and clawed their way out, freshly watering her face again. She tore herself from her mother’s grasp and sat on the stoop, giving up, her fury spent.

“Is that why you asked about them?” Victoria sat beside her and brushed aside some of her tears. Her voice was soft.

“Yes.” The word was ripped from her vocal cords. A confession. “I wanted them to become sick and leave.”

Victoria was silent with shock for a moment.

“Never mind. Never mind,” Nuhad said, feeling her mother’s understanding tip over the precipice.

“Nuhad, did you—did you have anything to do with their water making them sick?” Victoria’s eyes grew wider with each word. Her face revealed a painful realization: her own daughter had participated in this war.

Nuhad sat beside her mother, her body giving in. “I just—I feel like I’ve been holding my breath. Ever since April. Since that night. I’ve been waiting for so many things to happen: for Tariq to come back, for us to go back home and find and rebury his body, for me to go back to my old school. For life to return.” The tears threatened their return, but she took a shuddering breath and met Victoria’s eyes. “But none of that’s going to happen, is it? I’m going to be stuck waiting. My breath will always be held.”

Victoria winced at her words. She patted Nuhad’s hair gently. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“This is all permanent,” Nuhad said. Her shoulders deflated with this final realization.

CHAPTER 11

We

It’s a dream. Marina knows it’s a dream. There’s a voice, whispering,

Come to me, Marina.

Arms made of stone open wide and within their embrace is a warm, homey living room with well-worn sofas and photographs hanging on the walls.

Come, and I will ease everything, it whispers. Its voice wraps around her like a sharp icicle caressing her skin, leaving a thin trickle of frigid water in its wake. Marina shivers despite knowing it’s not real.

Come, and I won’t let you go. Not again.

Grainy particles invade Marina’s mouth and stick against her tongue as she spits. She raises her head in confusion and is nearly blinded by the bright white light of the sun over the shore. Seagulls squawk nearby, searching for food.

Her hands touch hard earth as she pushes herself up. Peeling away from the ground, Marina can feel that the concrete has made shallow grooves on the side of her cheek. The waves lap gently onto the shore despite the storm making landfall tomorrow. Sand flies into her eyes with each soft breeze from the sea, and she rubs at them with equally grainy fingers. Marina stands, wobbling on both legs.

The sight of the black tar of the parking lot reminds her—

Tariq.

His grave is here. Grief and anger washed over the young boy who would stay young forever, and they stood together over this spot—here—and Marina watched as he vanished into his grave. Hair flies into her mouth as she whips her head to the side, looking for him, but she knows he’s gone. He reburied himself.

It’s mine.

The gaping, gasping absence of oxygen in her lungs grips her throat and blackens the edges of her vision. She wants to scream, but there’s no fuel to light the fire she feels. Tears squeeze through the corners of her eyes and drip down onto her clothes—

Her hospital gown.

She’s still wearing the thin white gown that she had woken up in the day before. She sways, all of the memories of the past day overwhelming her: the hospital, her lungs, Tariq. And her mother—her mother is coming today.

Marina nearly collapses under the weight of memory, but she manages to stumble forward, her hands grasping on to the trunk of a warming car. She pants and looks ahead. The streets are empty; in fact, she holds on to the only car in this parking lot. It’s too early.

A figure moves at the edge of her vision and Marina turns her head automatically, but there is only a Styrofoam cup trailing down the road in the wind. The figure moves again, off to the right, and she whirls to pin it in place, but again, it disappears. She can only see the ghosts that haunt this city at the edge of her vision. Knowing that they are there is almost a comfort laced in grief. The city is haunted but it is hers, the land holding both her great-uncle’s body and her grandmother’s home. The specters of memory live at the edges of Haifa, but still, they are here. They are here.

Sighing, trying to force air into her lungs, Marina focuses on her feet and each step they take forward to take her back to Rania. Or a taxi. She can’t go back to the Israeli hospital.

“What…?” Her whispered voice trails off. Saltwater moistens her feet; as she looks down, she stands in a puddle that didn’t exist a moment before.

Her vision swims as she looks into the distance. The water continues down a thin pathway against the concrete, just as it did in the house when she found Nuhad’s journal. Her eyes follow it to the sand, where it soaks into the grains. It wants her to follow.

The house. The house is here.

The water drip, drip, drips down the parking lot stairs. Her hands grasp whatever they can find for stability: poles, trees, trash cans. With each breath, her lungs burn with air that should feel oxygenated but instead feels like a continuous, smothering suffocation. Her eyes are trained to the ground.

The trail transforms from parking lot to sand as it guides her to the beach. The water has become a rushing sort of trough, carving the sand away and pushing churning seawater through. To the sea.

Marina follows the watery path.

She holds on to nothing as she stands against the edge of the ocean. The horizon is still dusty blue, and the bright, impossibly glittery water doesn’t absorb the morning sun—it reflects it, gives a mirror to it. It holds the sun up to itself and says: Here. The light is within you.

Come to me.

Her body knows what she’s about to do before she does. Her legs continue across the hot sand. Her breath is loud in her ears from earth to sea, but there is an infusion of fresh oxygen into her lungs. She breathes properly for the first time in two days. A small wave washes over her toes and a delicious thrill runs up her spine, leaving cold goose bumps on her arms and legs even in the heat. Energy suddenly thrums in her limbs.

“The sea,” she murmurs. It’s involuntary, she doesn’t know where this reaction comes from, but she gives in to it and surrenders to the ocean. Her mind has now caught up and though there is a voice that’s screaming at her, telling her she will drown, it’s overtaken by the wave of emotions she feels being in the water. It’s warm and crystal clear, and she can see white sand and small flashes of minnows below the surface.

She’s up to her knees now. The same small voice is in the back of her head, telling her this is dangerous, but she pushes it away. She has spent her whole life fighting the pull. She’s tired.

Soft sand inches between her toes and over her feet until the water surrounds her at hip level. Her stomach shies away from the temperature, contracting with each wave lapping up around her. There’s something here, a memory—

Fill your belly with air. Yes, just like that—

Marina breathes deeply, perhaps for the first time since arriving in Haifa.

—and float.

She tips back, every single neuron in her brain aflame with fear and excitement, trusting in the sea of her grandmother. There. She floats up on her back, even waves her arms slowly through the cool water. Swimming comes naturally, as if she’s always done this.

The sun warms her face and she yearns for something unnameable.

The water is up to her chest now when she comes back down, and in the distance, she spots a point where the sea is calm. There are waves on both sides of this small channel, gently rolling away from its smooth surface.

Come to me, Marina.

Marina swims toward it, wondering and hoping for a sandbar. An indescribable childlike joy bursts from within. She could bring back some shells with her and maybe make a necklace out of them or put them in a clear glass cup on her desk back home. Resin would bind it, and she could put a label on it as a forever reminder of her grandmother’s home: HAIFA, PALESTINE.

Marina only barely reaches this immovable channel before the water drags her away with unfathomable speed. For a moment, Marina wonders where the sandbar is—she’s clinging to this notion that she’s just missed it—and it’s not until the beach moves away with frightening speed that she realizes that this is a riptide. It’s carrying her out to sea. Marina thrashes against its pull, but the tide is far stronger.

In the reflection of the waves—through the froth and into the depths of the clear water—she can see, just barely, the outline of the house. It is a dark and ominous shape that swallows the sea and sand surrounding it. As Marina stares, the energy from the house absorbs her within.

Her legs stop kicking for one moment and the house draws her lower. Marina’s bottom half sinks, tilting her upward, and slowly, as she stares into the intoxicating gaze of her grandmother’s childhood home, the water inches up toward her neck and she descends. The sea laps against her throat.

Its stones open up to her, and the front door flies open—

Choking seawater floods her throat, and she thrashes, separated from the link to the house. Her survival instinct is triggered, and Marina attempts to claw her way back to shore, but the pull drags her away, farther and farther out to open water. Her heart pounds, panic setting in as she realizes that she won’t be able to last much longer. Her arms are already tiring from trying to fight the current. And below—

A shadow spreads up from the open door and reaches long, gray fingers toward her. It is the same as the one in the city that follows her as she walks, the same as the one in Rania’s breath when she speaks of the past. Water enters Marina’s mouth again, coating her cheeks in salt, and she sputters as she slowly sinks further, closer to the shadow. Closer to the house. A desperation oozes from it.

Breathe. Float.

It’s a different voice than before—gentler—and so, counterintuitively to everything she feels at the moment, Marina pushes herself to float on her back and allows the tide to continue rushing her out to sea. Beneath the water, her ears drown in the sound of the rush of the waves and her own heart beating loudly. Much, much farther below, a quieter voice dripping in bitterness and hostility speaks.

Come to me.

She shuts her eyes tightly and remembers a chorus from a song, and she repeats it over and over again until she can no longer hear the voice. After what feels like an interminable amount of time, the riptide pushes her out of its hold. The sea calms, and Marina can feel the waves gently pull and push against her, bobbing her up and down. She rights herself and squints to find the shore, purposefully avoiding looking below into the deep, dark maw of the sea.

It’s far. It’s so far.

Despite the water, Marina’s forehead breaks out in sweat and the heat swells, spreading throughout her body. The warmth of the sun no longer feels welcoming—it’s a menacing presence that’s dehydrating her body and gives her no cover under which to swim the length back to shore.

Two stones feel as though they attach themselves to her ankles and begin to weigh her down; as she looks to the seafloor—instinctively, without meaning to—where the house still sits, she sees there are two empty spaces inside of its stone wall. The house wants her; there is a pleading beneath this desire—

Breathe.

She hears the voice as if it’s coming from beside her, but she is a lone speck in the middle of the sea.

Breathe.

Marina follows the directive and inhales, the air pushing her chin above the water.

Breathe.

As she exhales, she realizes she knows this calm voice—it sounds the same as it did in her dream. Her child uncle, Tariq.

Gathering strength from a reserve she didn’t realize was there, Marina pushes herself to swim back toward shore. She times her strokes with the waves and uses their strength to propel herself gently with each breath, and slowly, the stone weights feel as if they detach. Her eyes burn from the salt, but she focuses on the shore, and slowly, it grows larger.

When her feet finally hit the sand, she collapses. Even with the buoyancy of the water, her limbs tremble with exhaustion and relaxation. Marina crawls on her hands as the water becomes lower and drags herself onto solid, wet earth, panting.

She looks around. The beach is still empty—even the lifeguard chair still sits unoccupied. No one even noticed that she was swept away by a stray riptide. There are no claps, no awards for her bravery or ingenuity. She is the only witness to her near death.

Marina lies for a moment more, feeling the cold wetness of the ground. Her skin is pink, and she knows she’ll have a slight burn tomorrow. She gently pushes herself up, her legs still shaking, and stumbles toward the road, dazed, wondering where she is. This is a different shore than the one she left from.

Her feet trudge against the impossible resistance of the sand, her thighs aching, until she reaches the pavement—

A young boy stands in the middle of the parking lot in pajamas. His body flickers in and out of reality, as if he’s made of old film. He looks directly at Marina. His eyes are wide, sad, innocent; they plead with her. A gust of wind blows and slightly ruffles movement from something beside him.

Tariq stands over this mass grave. Atop his own body, there is a pile of salt.

Bit by bit, Marina limps her way to Tariq. Her fingers reach for him, but he disappears as she does so, just as all of the other ghosts of Haifa have done. Here, but already gone. The pile of salt remains.

Rocks tumble down her lungs in greater force and Marina grasps at her throat, pinching the skin away, attempting to widen her air tubes. She gasps—in survival and grief.

Air finally threads through her throat in a thin, spidery rope. She turns to the street. A lifeline pulling on her waist, Rania’s home tugs Marina gently to a safe space. As she pulls herself slowly uphill, water drip drip dripping down her nightgown, a lone taxi slows beside her. Before it can even make a full stop, a figure jumps out and rams into Marina, hoisting her up by the arm and shifting her weight onto her shoulder. This figure is not a specter but flesh and bone.

It’s Haifa. She’s finally here.

“Marina! Marina, Marina—oh, my god,” she says, and her mother’s voice is like a soothing, honeyed remedy to Marina’s ears. She’s a piece of home. Marina squeezes, holding on to her mother’s embrace as tightly as she can despite the weakness of her limbs. Haifa’s skin feels cool against the wet fabric.

“Mama.” She gasps for air. Tears form in her eyes. “Mama.”

In this moment, despite everything, Marina feels like a whole human being. The sections and pieces of her life are gathering together in one city—there is no one defining instance that she can force. This is it. The feeling.

“Yee!” cries another voice that has become just as honeyed and soothing in its own way. Rania shuffles to her other side and hoists her up. Marina’s vision swims with sand and black spots. “What happened?”

Her lungs—her lungs—

In the clearest spot of her vision, a young boy appears. Tariq. His pajamas are still on, and his mouth is stretched into a yawning scar. A pile of rotted leaves surrounds his feet, whisking and turning in the wind.

“Help me! Help me!” Tears run down his face and Marina’s own return, but they are dry heaves. He pulls on the collar of his shirt in desperation and the blood blooms over his chest slowly. “Help me!”

The screams echo around her, blending with the worried, anxious noises of Haifa and Rania. Even the taxi driver now, too, has climbed out of the car and is helping hoist her back up. Tariq is crying, and it is all too much—

“Tariq,” she cries, needing it to end. “Tariq. Tata had a brother. She had a brother.” Her voice is wild and unrestrained, and as she yells, the black spots of her vision grow stronger. The breath is gone. As she collapses into them, the last thing that she sees is Tariq.

No no no no no—n—no, no nonono—

SHE. WAS. HERE.

But torn from my grasp. Torn—cut—like my family.

These new parasites drag heavy boxes against the tile and into the rooms, weighting their own memories over my body, but nothing will stick to my stone for there are no roots for imposters to latch on to, only slippery, rotten seawater surfaces.

Please … please.

When will it be enough?

She gives me breath, life; she dulls the pain of remembrance; I need her in my walls, within me, I need her to stay and never leave, root into the deep parts, heal the salted earth of my foundation, oh, to have my flesh within me again, to have my lungs full of her breath—

but they are still here.

And while they force nails into stone, sleeping and breathing and eating—in peace, in peace—and rest over my corpse, they keep her away. They walk through a body as if the others have never been here at all—thieves, stealing among themselves—and the cycle is unbroken and yet new.

But Death has promised.

She has raised the tides of the sea and gathered the clouds in the sky, waiting, waiting for the moment—it is over, it is almost over—and She has vowed that We will keep her, she will return and she will never leave because We’ll keep her safe within the walls—

Death rises from the still water pool again and Her shadow slips within the rafters silently, curling around these thieves’ bodies, and she whispers, her promise ice-cold:

They’re next.

When she wakes, Marina waits for a moment before blinking her eyes open. The backs of her bare arms shift against the comforting scratch of a well-worn cloth covering the sofa, and her toes are wrapped in new socks.

“Marina?”

Haifa’s concerned face hovers over her, fills her vision when she finally opens her eyes. Her mother kisses her forehead and pushes the hair back from her head gently.

“Marina, sweetie, how are you feeling?”

“Marina? Is Marina up?” Behind her, Rania appears in the kitchen door, wiping her hands with a dish towel. Anxiety quickens her words.

“Hi. I’m up.” Wincing, Marina pushes herself up. “I’m fine. Now—I feel fine now.”

“Oh, honey, you scared me so much.” Haifa’s careful mask of composure has fallen into worried relief. “I just saw someone on the sidewalk—I didn’t think it was my own daughter—and when I saw the hospital gown, and got closer, it was like—”

“Haifa,” Rania interrupts. She sits beside them on a reclining chair. “She’s still waking up.”

Marina smiles a little despite herself. Rania’s presence has almost become like a security blanket for Marina in this haunted city. The elderly woman reminds her of her own tata in the smallest ways: she curls one finger to beckon people over, she drinks her coffee black, and she hugs and kisses aggressively, as if time is running out.

“I can finally breathe.” And it’s true—in here, when she’s lying down, Marina’s lungs don’t fight her the way they did earlier that morning. Somewhere below, there is also a sense of completion. “How long have I been out?”

“Only a little while. You’re good.” Haifa picks Marina up by her arms and gently guides her to sit up. “Oh, I am so glad to see you. I’ve missed you so much,” she says, elongating the words so they stretch out with the tight hug she gives Marina.

“I missed you too. A lot.” Marina pulls back gently and looks to Rania. “I think … I think I sleepwalked.”

“Sleepwalked? Honey, you were soaking wet! What happened?” Haifa asks. “I used to sleepwalk as a kid, but never like that.”

Haifa remains seated by her, one thumb rubbing against her shoulder to soothe. Smog and cigarette smoke hang over her. Her hair is unkempt and flattened, likely from leaning against headrests for the past twenty-four hours. Tired, too, are her eyes and the bags that accompany them, but they crinkle with a smile when they meet Marina’s. She wonders if her mother saw the bullet holes in the building near the bus station.

“I—I don’t know,” Marina says, realizing it’s the truth.

“And you made it all the way to the beach.” Rania puts one hand up to her cheek. “Maybe tonight, it’s better that you both stay here. I can keep an eye on you.”

“No please, khalto, I don’t—”

“Haifa. Please stay here. Just for tonight, at least.”

“We have family in Nazareth. Just a short drive away—it would be better to stay with them.”

“Stay here for a couple of nights. Let Marina rest, and then you can go.”

Haifa pauses, then nods. “Okay.”

“Marina, habibti, you came back screaming. About Tariq.” Rania shifts and leans forward in her seat. Her eyes search Marina’s. “What was that? Why did you—?”

“I wanted to know that too, sweetie. Who’s Tariq? Why were you screaming about him?” Haifa’s eyes betray pain and her voice is urgent.

There are several moments of silence. Marina stares between Haifa and Rania.

“Tariq—your mother’s brother. What do you mean, who’s Tariq?” Rania’s face has a pained look across it.

“My mother’s brother…?” Haifa leans back into the couch. Marina notices her hands tremble. Haifa shakes her head as if she can change the course of what she clearly already knows to be true. “She didn’t have a brother. She just had one older sister—a much older sister—Siham. I remember Auntie Siham. I would’ve remembered an Uncle Tariq.” She laughs lightly, nervously.

“Tariq. He was four years younger than Nuhad and I,” Rania says slowly. “She had an older sister, yes, but a younger brother also.”

“No. No.” Haifa laughs again, but in her wide eyes is denial. “No, she couldn’t have. I would have known.”

“She did, Mama. Tata had a younger brother.” Marina shifts her mother’s hand from her shoulder and holds it in her own. “Rania and I found one of her old journals. She wrote about him. Tariq.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” Bereft of any denial now, her voice is lost. She sounds like a young lamb abandoned by her flock. “And … and what happened to him?”

Silence fills the room. Marina hesitates, meeting Rania’s eyes for a moment, then looks down at her palms.

“What happened to him, Rania?” Haifa asks.

“What happened to this city? He was killed, of course.” She waves her hand dismissively, almost irritatedly, but her face is anguished. She doesn’t want to relive this, Marina realizes. Death surrounds. Death is on the next block over, wearing an Israeli military uniform, holding an automatic rifle in hand, and lying in wait for the next Palestinian boy to kick a rock down the street.

“Where was he buried?”

Rania’s hands search for a distraction—she wants a cigarette—but she reaches for a hard candy. Her voice is somber. “There were so many mass graves for people. Nuhad—and I—always thought that he was buried in one of them.”

Iron-hot, the parking lot burns through Marina’s mind. She wants to tell them, but who would believe that Tariq’s ghost guided her through the house and to his grave? The morning still feels like a dream, as if she’d always just been lying on Rania’s couch. She isn’t even sure it happened. Her mouth opens and closes, and she sits in her own discomfited silence.

“How did he die?” Even in the coolness of the early morning, Haifa’s glasses keep sliding off of her nose and she keeps pushing them back up. She seems helpless against the world and all of its cruel intentions.

Crinkles from the candy wrapper punctuate Rania’s voice as she plays with the small piece of plastic.

“Nuhad and her family left the morning after the siege. Tariq had died sometime that night, or that early morning, I don’t know. I didn’t even know what had happened to them—I thought maybe they were one of the lucky ones to get on a boat. It wasn’t until a couple weeks later that I learned they were still here, just in Nazareth.” Rania sighs, but it’s purely a sad sound now. There is no irritation waiting in this casket she must reopen, only grief. She folds the wrapper of the candy.

“How did Tariq die?” Haifa repeats quietly.

Rania shrugs. “I don’t know. Nuhad never told me. I never asked. Those days were—” She cuts herself off and looks in the distance, searching for the word. “They were hideous. My uncle and cousin were killed. We were sheltering a Jewish family at the time, too. They locked us out of our own home the day before the war started. We lost our home with everyone else.”

“Oh, my god,” Marina muttered. She notices a slight movement from Rania; her back stiffens and her shoulders clench toward her ears.

“Of course. It was like that for many people.” The wrapper has been folded into a tiny square and can be folded no further. “And after, we all just had to pick up the pieces. The people I had known either were forcibly expelled or killed. Even Nuhad—until I heard from her, I just had to hope that she wasn’t dead.”

“How was Tata kicked out? What happened to their home?” Marina asks. Haifa’s face is still frozen in a shell-shocked silence.

“By the time I finally made it to the old town in Haifa, near the port, a soldier was living there. He had taken residence immediately. The very same day that the war ended.” Rania’s voice becomes thick with memory. “I never spoke to him but I knew his name. A few years later—maybe in 1951, 1952—a real estate company decided to come into the city and take what was left. With the military’s permission, of course. They tore through every single home people were forced to abandon, or disallowed to return to. They just broke in, changed the locks, kept the furniture. And they sold everything to Jews only. Even if Haifa residents wanted to return and buy back their homes—tsawwari—they couldn’t.”

“Ya’ani, it was his company? That soldier?”

“Yes,” Rania says. “And eventually, of course, he had children that took over. I remember seeing one of his sons’ faces on the company’s flyers. I didn’t recognize him, of course, but the name was the same. And then Nuhad’s house—well. It responded. Like we all did.”

“Oh,” Marina says softly. She wants to say: I can’t believe you’ve seen all of this, I can’t believe you went through a genocide, and continue to, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But instead, she just reaches over for the old woman’s hand.

“That’s life, ah?” Rania smiles bitterly as she slowly extracts her hand from Marina’s. “I could never return to my childhood home. But I’ve always kept a close eye on Nuhad’s house. I pass by it every day, so of course, I wanted to know. She was my best friend.”

The room is quiet, and slowly the roar of car engines and construction fills the morning air. Haifa sits with a hand curled beneath her chin and her eyes are far away. She doesn’t ask about the haunting. Her face is like stone.

“Let me read the journal,” Haifa finally says.

“I left it—” Marina starts, but Rania waves her hand.

“While you were sleeping, Khaled brought your things back. Here.” Rania stands and picks up the journal and its translation from the dining table. “I don’t know how much consolation it will be.” She offers it to Haifa, her hand outstretched.

Haifa hesitates, but then takes it, holding it by the edges with only her fingertips. She’s scared, Marina realizes.

“Let’s all get some rest,” Haifa says, but her eyes are still trained on the papers. “It’s been a long few days.”

CHAPTER 12

The Path of the Moon

Slowly, the ceiling darkens from white to yellow. Haifa follows the change silently. She had managed to read her mother’s journal just before her eyes, heavy with jet lag and the weight of tears, finally fell closed. She slept in gasping, fearful pockets throughout her nap in which all she could see in her dreams was salt. Salt—icy, white, cold. And there was Haifa, in the afterlife, picking up with her own eyelashes all of the salt grains that her mother spilled.

She sits up on the sofa in Rania’s living room. The sun lowers in the late afternoon and the pages are still strewn about her lap. The last page rests on top, the one entry she kept rereading before finally succumbing to sleep:

March 14, 1948

Things are only getting worse. Mama says to focus on my homework, and some days I do. I get so consumed that it helps distract me, but then other days all I can think about is everything going on. There’s too much. I just want to fly to a place, or a future, where things are better again.

Tears fill in Haifa’s throat once more as she reads it again. Throughout the entire journal, she had seen her mother transform from the carefree, lively, playful young girl she once was into the distant mother she knew. And Nuhad’s trauma hadn’t melted away, no—it had simply cascaded to Haifa. Nuhad’s fears of instability and war had made their way into ensuring Haifa would be perfect. That Haifa would be protected in this perfection.

Haifa sets the papers on the coffee table and stands, stretching the kinks out of her back. But at her side gnaw the pages of her mother’s confession. Leaning over the sofa, she pats her backpack, making sure it’s still safely tucked away inside. Neither Marina nor Rania needs to see it.

A thought has been hovering at the edge of her mind all day: Nuhad wanted her to find the confession. She hid the pages behind a photograph of them together—she knew that Haifa would take the picture once she died, and that eventually Haifa would find the pages. A guilty woman would have burnt it to ash. No, Nuhad was proud of her revenge. She wanted Haifa to find it and understand.

Haifa’s eyes search the window. She was lucky, Rania had told her, for she arrived just before the storm. Calm blankets the city for now.

Haifa moves to the bathroom to splash her face with water. She pulls her curls back, pats them against her head as she clears her face for a moment in the mirror before popping her head into the bedroom where Marina sleeps. Her breathing is even, and her belly rises gently below the thin blanket. Haifa’s eyes are dry from the lack of sleep; as she walks out to the balcony, they squint from the yellow of the light outside. Haifa sits on one of the white deck chairs, the plastic eating through her thin clothes and into her skin.

Haifa breathes deeply. Her brain wants to dull the memory of everything that’s happened in the last day. Here, above the city, things are simple. Rania cares for a small lemon tree in a pot at the edge of the balcony, and the whispers from the leaves calm her despite everything.

Steady breathing from the sea echoes in the distance. There is silence in the rolling waves, even from here. Each cycle sounds like a breath in, a breath out.

Who was her mother? What had she had to endure? And who is Haifa? Did she change because of her mother, or would she always have been this, in every lifetime?

“Mama?” she whispers into the afternoon air. There is a part of her that wants to call Nuhad’s ghost back, bloodied hands and all. She wants to see her mother’s face again. What she really wants is the approval—

But her mother’s approval never did come, and it certainly won’t now. Haifa must give it to herself, an idea that makes her heart pound in fear, for if she accepts herself, her life changes.

A single tear falls from the corner of her eye and traces a path down her cheek. Haifa lets it drip from the bottom of her chin as it falls to the white stone of the balcony.

Perfection became the absolute minimum for Haifa because Nuhad felt as if she had failed her entire life. In the years after 1948, she felt like she had to atone for Tariq’s death—her own guilt pushing her as far as poisoning a settlement’s water supply. If Nuhad could go to such lengths, and then emigrate to another country, why shouldn’t Haifa have been expected to be perfect? Haifa sees herself through her mother’s eyes. Why not have a daughter and name her for the city and life she’d lost? Why not place all expectations into a daughter to make up for her own failings?

But Haifa was just a young girl, like Nuhad was when the Haganah came. A hollow ache spreads through her with this realization; it is less of an epiphany and more of an emptiness as answer to a question she’d had her entire life.

Haifa is her own mother now—she is Marina’s mother. A sigh shudders through her lungs. A small part, the one from the hurt child of the past, wishes she never had to experience, or even understand, her mother’s trauma.

She wipes her face before standing to turn back inside in search of Rania. She will go to Nazareth tonight. Philippe—her oldest cousin—knows that she’s coming.

“Rania?” she whispers into each of the rooms, but there is no response. She turns to the kitchen to find a notepad, where she hastily writes:

Going to Nazareth today. Call if you need anything.—Haifa

As she turns to stick it on the fridge, she nearly bumps into Rania.

“My god, you scared me,” she says, her breath crashing out of her throat. Adrenaline courses through her veins and her heart beats heavily for a few moments before calming.

“What do you have there?” Rania gently takes the note from Haifa’s hand and reads it. Her hair is pulled into a low bun, with loose flyaway hairs blurring the image. Her housedress is long, reaching her ankles. “You’re going to Nazareth today?”

Haifa nods. “I’ll take the bus. It’s not far.”

“You’re not taking Marina?”

“I will, I promise. But first—” Haifa looks down at her fingers, spreads them out against the background of the white tile floor. “I have to talk to my cousin alone. It’s too much for Marina—she needs rest first. She’s already gone through so much since coming here. I’ll take her when she’s feeling better.”

“Well, you’re not going alone. Take my car. We’ll go together.” Rania turns to face her squarely, her jaw set with determination.

“No, auntie, I can’t—”

“Take me with you.”

“What about Marina?”

“I’ll call Khaled. He can take care of her for the evening.”

“Okay.” Haifa nods. She cannot turn Rania down. “Let’s go.”

Groggy and with the taste of sleep in her mouth, Marina wakes. She doesn’t need to check the clock to feel the warmth of the sun cascading rays through the window.

Stretching for a moment, she pauses, soaking in the stillness, then sits up. There are no rocks in her lungs—not yet. Breath flows normally in and out.

“Mama?” She opens the door and peeks through to the living room. It’s empty, save for Khaled, who sits at the table with a notebook and pen.

“Hey. Sabah il-kheir,” Khaled jokes. “Your mom and my grandma went to Nazareth. They’ll be back tonight.”

“She went without me?” Marina stands in the middle of the hallway.

Khaled shrugs, an apologetic look on his face. “I don’t really know what her plan was. Maybe because you’ve been in the hospital.”

“Oh.” Marina sits on the couch. She is sad for a reason she can’t even articulate; she didn’t even really want to go to Nazareth in the first place. But now—despite the haunting—she feels her grandmother in Haifa. She wants to feel her in Nazareth, too. Marina clears her throat. “What are you writing?”

“I’m figuring out my schedule for next semester. I’m cramming to finish my master’s, and it’s going to be busy.” He flips the pen in his hands.

“A master’s in what?”

“Electrical engineering.”

Marina nods. “Nice.” In the silence, Marina realizes that Khaled is here to look after her. “So you’re my babysitter for the day?”

Khaled laughs, and the joy reaches the wrinkles of his eyes. “I guess so.”

“I’m already feeling better,” she says, and as she speaks, she realizes it’s true. In the safety and calm of Rania’s home, she breathes easily.

“Well, if you’re feeling better, I have an idea.” Khaled leans back in his chair. “I have a great spot I can take you to. If you’re feeling up for it.”

“Where?”

“Just trust me.” Khaled grins. “And if your mom and my grandma get to go on a field trip, why can’t we? You’ve barely even seen Haifa yet, right?”

Marina’s lips twist into a barely suppressed smile. She nods.

“Okay. Let’s go on a field trip.”

People and buildings and trees pass by the window in a blur of color. Haifa fiddles with the air-conditioning; the car is old, and as the clouds gather outside, the heat is heavy and wet.

“Mirtaha?” Haifa asks, her eyes flicking to Rania for only a moment before turning back to the road—she is hunched over the wheel with hands tightly grasping the leather. Haifa has never driven outside of the United States before.

“Yes, I’m fine.” Rania shifts in her seat. “Ya’ani, this is from years of cleaning. Day after day. There’s nothing this old car or any other kind of seat could do to fix it.”

Haifa doesn’t respond. She finally turns onto the highway and Rania’s car heaves back and forth, back and forth as the engine exerts itself to accelerate. It shakes for a moment and settles into gear. Haifa’s shoulders finally drop a bit.

“Thank you for letting me drive your car,” she finally says. Haifa can sense Rania’s gaze on her.

“Thank you for driving me,” Rania responds. “I haven’t had a reason to go to Nazareth for a long—” She sighs. “—long time.”

They settle into another silence. Haifa thinks back to her first and only other time in Palestine, when Nuhad had taken her for a visit to Nazareth.

Haifa is with her mother, playing in the garden and picking up fallen carob pods and seeing how far she can throw them. Can they spin? They must. They look like helicopter pods back home. But no, they’re too heavy.

Haifa, do you want to visit Haifa? Auntie Siham asks. Auntie Siham is old, much older than her mother.

Yes! Haifa exclaims. She has always wanted to visit the city she is named after.

But Mama and Auntie Siham have a murmuring low-voice conversation, and Haifa knows they will not go. Mama is worried about the city, the changes, the soldiers. She doesn’t want to dig up old memories, but Auntie Siham says it’s good for her to see it. You can even visit the house! Why would I want to visit the house? Why would I want to see what the Israelis have done to our home? Tayyeb, khayta, zay ma biddik.

Sorry, Haifa, we’ll go another time, her auntie says, giving her an encouraging smile.

It’s okay. Haifa shrugs and goes back to her carob pods. She catches her mother’s eye, and there is disappointment there, too. As if it’s Haifa’s fault that they couldn’t go to her mother’s birthplace.

Did Haifa the city disappoint this many people?

“I can’t believe the sweetshop is still there,” Rania murmurs, breaking Haifa out of her reverie.

Haifa clears her throat, settling back into the present. “Have you been before?”

“Of course.” Rania shifts again in her seat. Her face is pinched with pain. “Nuhad showed me around. Her new home and room. Their family’s sweetshop. Her school. But…” She trails off. “She—wasn’t the same. Even when we said goodbye, it felt final.”

“You only saw her one time after the war?”

“Of course not. We saw each other again.” Rania remains silent for several seconds. “But the old versions of ourselves—our friendship—were dead.”

Haifa nods.

“And I—I didn’t visit often after that.” Rania closes her eyes and leans against the headrest. “It was too much.” Silence settles between the cracks of the leather seats before she speaks again. “Did you hear the news?”

“News?” Haifa stares at her profile for a moment but even if Rania feels her gaze, she doesn’t meet it.

“About your grandmother’s home. You didn’t see the news? The neighbors told me yesterday.”

“The house? No. What happened?”

“A new couple bought it. They already started moving in.”

Haifa turns away and looks at the road again. Her grandmother’s home, bought and sold on the day she arrived. She doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“How—?” The question is unfinished, but Rania nods, a companion to Haifa’s grief.

“Who knows. New settlers come from all over America and Europe. They get tricked into buying it before they know anything about it.” Rania shifts in her seat again. Nazareth is already coming into view in the distance.

“It’s interesting. I…” Haifa returns to the memory. “I keep thinking about what gets passed down.” She pauses again. Rania says nothing. “Not like eye color or height. All of my mom’s—stuff—was passed down to me. Confessions. Secrets. Horrible, wretched trauma. And all of these Israelis get … what do they get? Beach houses and mandatory conscription.”

“We try our hardest to not pass down our shit onto our children. But it happens.”

“And this house—my mother’s childhood home—is passing down grief. It’s drowning people, and making them disappear, and haunting them.” Haifa’s grip on the wheel tightens. “And I—I’m haunted by my mom.”

They’ve left the sea behind them, and in the sky, the rising crescent moon appears faintly, opposite the falling sun. It’s like a drawing among the pale blue.

“Everything that happens in this world is a cycle. We always repeat, and redo. And make the same mistakes our forebears did.”

Haifa shakes her head. “My mom never even let me know what those were.” Sadness weighs on her shoulders. “She just gave me vague warnings. About everything.”

“You know the moon phases?” Rania nods to the faint moon. “It goes from total darkness in the sky to a full moon and back again. With all of the phases in between. Why else does God put these cycles in nature? We do the same.”

“How do I know what I’m repeating? How would I know?”

“There are worse things in life than not knowing,” Rania murmurs softly. “Nuhad never told you anything. So what? The Nuhad I knew was … different—forever, since 1948. She was my best friend before. After the war, after Tariq’s death—that changes you. She became an adult too quickly. We were just girls one day, and the next, we were forced to grow up. To pick up the pieces of what was left and move on.” Rania sighs. “You and Marina want so badly to know Nuhad, but this is life.”

“Is it so bad to want more?” Haifa rolls to a stop at a light and looks at Rania. Her eyes are sad. “I just wish I knew her.”

Rania meets her gaze for a moment, then looks at the light. “It’s green.”

Haifa sighs and drives them farther into the city. After a beat, she asks, “So what will happen to the house?”

“They’ll leave. Then the real estate agent will sell it. Like they always do.” Rania shrugs. “They’ll hold an open house, and only Jews will be allowed to buy it. Another person will move in, and the house will take its revenge. It’s happened all my life. Since the war. Shu bidi asawi?” She shifts and looks over her shoulder. “Let’s stop by the church for a bit. I want to pray for your mother.”

Silence keeps them in a shroud. Haifa stares at the rising moon. We are all echoing our ancestors in a cycle; like daylight shifts with the seasons, like fruit blossoms and then hibernates, there is a path of the moon in each of us.

The tires shift and bump beneath Marina’s seat as the car winds its way up the mountain road. She has been quiet the whole ride.

“Here,” Khaled says, pulling onto a small patch of dirt. Beyond the fence is a wide overlook. As Marina steps out of the car, the sky opens up before her, growing in breadth and air as she walks closer.

“Wow,” she breathes. Before her stands Haifa, a small enclave of a port city that she could cup in her palm if she so chose. Seagulls flap overhead, the gentle beat of their wings a soothing symphony with the wind. The sea widens into the embrace of the sky. Each reflects the other: the two lungs of Haifa. Somewhere below is her grandmother’s haunted house. Somewhere, near the sea, is Tariq’s grave, a thought that pains her to recall with such clarity. And in all parts, the ghosts of Haifa wander the streets, trailing at the edges with heavy shadows and the long gray fingers of memories.

“Ah, she finally speaks.” Khaled lets out a light exhale’s laugh. “I was starting to wonder if you were still feeling okay.”

She laces her fingers and cradles her head, elbows wide into the sky, as she looks out and breathes. She decides to be honest. “I don’t know if I’m okay.”

Khaled lets the silence expand, allowing her to fill it if she wants. When she refuses it, he points to the north.

“On a clear day, you can see Akka from here.” Marina squints, but the clouds are already forming. “And farther beyond is the border of Lebanon.” He pauses. “Then Tyre, then Beirut.”

“You know your geography.”

“Ah, Marina.” Khaled sighs, then expands his arms to hold the sea and sky. “When Palestine is free, I’m going to walk all over this land.”

He laughs suddenly, allowing his joy to grow wings and fly with the seagulls in the free air.

“I’m just going to walk,” he says, his cheeks red with hope. “I’m going to lace up my shoes and walk from Haifa to Akka to the small villages at the border of Lebanon. I’ll visit my uncles in Beirut and stop by Tyre. I’ll circle round to Damascus.” His voice catches, but he clears his throat. “What a world it would be. What a world—to just walk from here to Nablus. To Jerusalem. To see Al-Aqsa. I’ll walk all the way down to Gaza, then through the Sinai, and go into Egypt to see the pyramids.”

“How beautiful,” Marina says softly, but the wind steals her voice and carries it out to the water. The ocean hears her instead.

“That’s all I want. I just want to move freely. To see baladi.” His gaze is straight out to sea. “It’s not much. But it’s my dream.”

There’s a pain in Marina, as if her heart is crying. She’s had several dreams in life: to become whole, to swim freely, to visit Palestine. But the weight of Tariq’s grave hangs on her, and despite wanting the simplicity and heartbreaking beauty of Khaled’s desire, she realizes that she just wants to give Tariq the justice and dignity he has needed for years.

“You have family in Lebanon?” she asks, because she can’t think of any words worthy enough to measure up to his dream.

“Yeah,” Khaled says. He turns around and leans on the fence, facing the car. “My mom’s brother studied at AUB and decided to stay. My grandmother has some family there. Everyone’s scattered.”

“It sucks.”

“The life of a Palestinian, habibti.” He smiles quietly. “Everyone takes different paths. I think I’ve got a couple of cousins who were resistance fighters back in the day.”

“Really?” Marina turns away from the sea now, too, and faces Khaled. Her elbow rests on the fence. “When?”

“In the 1940s. A couple of them fought for Haifa. How could you not?” He sighs. “But they were killed in battle. Buried in a mass grave.”

Marina tastes the words on her tongue as they roll around in her mouth. The tendrils of a plan begin to form in her mind.

“A mass grave?”

Khaled meets her gaze, his thick eyebrows lifted earnestly to frame eyes that look at her with concern. There is a light within them, too. “Yeah. In one of them.”

“I think—I think my great-uncle was buried in one too,” she says haltingly. “In one of the graves by the beach.”

“How do you know?”

“Just … a feeling. That he’s there.”

Khaled lets the air deflate out of his lungs in a sigh that comes through flapped lips. He stares at her for a moment. “A feeling?”

“Based on my grandmother’s journals. Yeah,” she says.

“Right. The journals.” Khaled leans back from the railing. “So what are you going to do about it? Now that you feel you know where he is.”

I’m going to dig it up. The thought comes to her like lightning.

Marina shakes her head and shrugs. “Ah—nothing.”

“Nothing? You’re sure?” It’s plain on his face that he’s concerned about her mental state after the hospital.

“Yep.”

“You’re not going to attempt to do something stupid? While soldiers roam every inch of these streets? And the fact that there’s a huge storm tonight?”

The storm. That would be the ideal cover under which she could steal a jackhammer—maybe from a nearby construction site?—and dig below the parking lot.

“Nope.”

His eyes search hers again; his face shows the same concern he had at the hospital. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Marina nods.

“Come on.” He starts walking toward the car. “We should get back.”

“Great,” Marina says, forcing her voice to maintain an evenness.

Darkness descends over the sea heavily and immediately. Marina turns to look out, where thick clouds have gathered silently and now block out the sun. In the far distance, sheets of rain fall over the sea, and soon they will fall over the city.

The storm isn’t here yet, but it will be.

Haifa shifts her weight on the sofa—it’s old and threadbare, and she can feel the springs beneath her. She and Rania have spent the afternoon in the church, and now, without any other distractions, Haifa is forced to confront her mother’s secrets. Philippe’s verandah is otherwise beautiful: the twilight streams in, adding a melancholy from the outside to the joy of small things inside: a vase filled with freshly cut flowers, a tray of sweets from the shop, tiny wallet-sized photographs of grandchildren propped up on a side table. The flowers are pink, with round petals and an inner ring of darker pink.

“So you knew about Tariq?” Haifa asks.

Philippe sighs heavily. His shirt stretches over his kersh and hair pops out of him everywhere: through the top of his shirt, through his nostrils, from within his ears. He is a big, imposing man with the soul of a butterfly. She hasn’t seen him in decades now, but he’s still the Philippe she remembers.

“Yes. My mother told me about him when I was old enough to learn.”

“What did you know about him?”

Philippe takes his cup of qahweh in his hands and rests it atop his belly. “Mama told us that she didn’t know him well since he was the youngest in the family. She was so much older than your mom and him.” He pushes up his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “But she said he was a scamp. He loved playing by the sea. He was kind of a troublemaker, too. She said he would often sneak sweets and chocolates that were hidden in high cupboards. He stood atop some concoction of tables and chairs to get to them, and once, he fell and broke a wrist—tsk, did he get in trouble for that one.”

Haifa smiles, imagining her uncle as a child. It’s hard to put a face to someone she’s never met before, but his personality is being colored in. Philippe speaks of him in exact, measured words; he’s repeating the same stories that were told to him.

“Do you have any pictures?”

“Yes, of course. Lina!” he calls.

His wife, a slender woman whose graying black hair is pulled back into a bun, stands at the doorway. “Na’am?”

“Can you get the photo album with Tariq in it?”

She nods and disappears for a moment. Her footsteps tap against the stone floor as she comes back in with a massive album in her arms.

“Here.” Philippe leans forward as Lina opens the album, flipping to the very beginning. “These are all of the old pictures I have of our side of the family. You can see—there’s Siham, my mom, and Nuhad together on the beach.”

Haifa runs her hands over the plastic, attempting to cement the photos to memory. Nuhad looked so happy, her hip bumping against her older sister’s as they stood in front of the waves.

“Habibti Nuhad,” Rania murmurs. Her fingers are beside Haifa’s, grazing the same photo.

“Here’s Tariq.” Philippe grunts as he leans forward even more, pointing to a page.

“He’s the baby?” Haifa frowns, trying to remember where she’s seen this picture before. Tariq is in a baptismal gown and smiles without teeth. “Oh! My mother has this picture. I’ve seen it before—in her box of photos.” He’s been in her home this whole time—she just never knew. A pang slices through her heart.

Philippe nods. “I guess it’s the only photo of him that survived. They had to leave Haifa. You know. My mom was the only one left with any of these memories.” He flips to another page. “Here.”

“He’s grown up.” Tears spring suddenly to Haifa’s eyes as she sees her own mother’s face in his in a single page flip. He has big, round, warm brown eyes and the corners of his mouth are tugged up mischievously. Rania pats her back softly and Lina hands her a tissue. “Oh, my god.”

“This is how I remember him.”

Haifa dabs at her eyes, feeling slightly embarrassed at breaking down. She clears her throat. “Why did my mother never talk about him? Why all of this secrecy?”

“Haifa, you have to understand…” Philippe trails off and searches for the right words. He sits back again in his chair. “It’s hard to relive this stuff. Especially for your mom.”

“Especially? Why?”

Philippe presses his lips together and shares a glance with his wife. “It’s just hard.”

Haifa looks at the two of them, her eyes darting back and forth. “He was shot, right?”

“I don’t know,” Rania says. Her voice is hushed. “Nuhad’s mother told her to swim for a boat, and she did. She never told me what happened after that.”

“Oh,” Haifa exhales. Here it is: the reason for Nuhad’s confession. She accidentally left her brother behind. A sudden sickness roils through her stomach, and she hinges forward, clutching her stomach as the wave of nausea passes.

“He was killed by a soldier. That’s all there is to know,” Philippe says. His mouth twists. “So many were killed by soldiers.”

“And buried somewhere we don’t know. In a mass grave, maybe.” Haifa’s voice drips in bitterness.

Philippe shares another glance with his wife. Rania keeps her gaze trained on the photographs.

“It’s painful, Haifa.”

Thunder booms in the distance, and Lina stands to close the door. Rain begins to fall in droplets that tap, tap, tap against the glass like little fingers asking to be let inside.

“And after the war?” Haifa asks.

“They moved here. Auntie Nuhad was my favorite.” Philippe smiles at a memory. “They opened the sweetshop and acclimated to their new life. What else can you do? Nazareth is not so far from Haifa, ya’ani, but it was a big change. Their home was gone. I don’t know. She was always so playful and fun when we were together, but there were times…”

He trails off, and Haifa knows he’s seen the mother she grew up with. Her heart hurts—not just the flesh, but the chest and the rib cage and the lungs that all surround it begin to ache. Her mother had to endure so much that it fundamentally changed who she was as a person, even into adulthood.

“Can I please … use your washroom?” Haifa stutters through the question, wincing from pain.

Lina points her down the hallway and Haifa clutches the wall papered in purple flowers against a white and green background as she walks. There is a mirror—a great, big, round mirror with gold gilding at its edges—hanging at the end of the hall. Haifa pauses in front of it, holding on to both sides, and looks at her tired eyes with dark circles; some stress acne that’s popped up on her forehead; her frizzy hair and the sheen of humidity that has collected on her skin.

And there—

behind Haifa, is a figure. She squints.

“Mama?” she wants to whisper, but her voice is caught in her throat. Nuhad has finally returned.

The ghostly, pale figure flickers in the low hallway lighting as she comes up behind Haifa and looks at her from over her shoulder. Her face is a gaunt calm. Haifa is frozen, too terrified to turn around and lose her, and her eyes remain on Nuhad. Unblinking.

Go home.

Nuhad smiles at her, and there is a softness in this longing sadness that Haifa’s never seen before.

Go home.

Haifa understands. She nods.

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.

CHAPTER 13

Return

Haifa becomes progressively darker as they near the city. The storm clouds that were beginning to look menacing over Nazareth now loom right over them—visible even in the darkness—as Haifa parks in front of Rania’s apartment.

“Perfect night for some shay,” Rania says, shifting in her seat to look at Haifa.

“Yallah, then.” Haifa exits the car and jogs around the other side to help Rania out in the rain. She leans on her arm.

The inside of the stairwell echoes with muffled rain. Rania fumbles with her keys for a moment, but when they step inside, her home is quiet. Haifa checks the bedroom, where Marina is sleeping peacefully. She closes the door gently.

“Is Khaled still here?” she whispers to Rania.

She nods. “In the other bedroom.”

“We should also probably sleep. It’s already midnight.”

Rania nods and then pauses; for a moment there is only the sound of rain splashing against the windows.

“I loved your mom,” she says finally. There is a catch in her voice—Haifa looks over and Rania’s eyes brim with the same wetness that the city cries with. “I—”

“Oh, auntie.”

“I loved your mom. I loved your mom.” Rania takes a shuddering gasp in as she gives in to her sobs. Standing alone, crying, Rania appears like a vulnerable young girl. The windows shake slightly in their frames with the wind. “I loved your mom. I loved your mom.”

“Khalto.” Haifa walks to Rania and pulls her in for a hug. She wishes she knew if it was appropriate to call her habibti or hayati; the etiquette stalls her tongue, though terms of love are all she wants to say.

“I loved your mom.” Rania reaches up to brush the tears from her eyes. She looks down at her feet. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let’s go to sleep.”

Haifa walks her to the bedroom and pulls down the nightgown hanging behind her door. She pauses, then gives her a kiss on the forehead as she would for Marina, as she places it in Rania’s hands.

“Good night, Rania.”

“Tisbahi ala kheir,” she says. May you wake up to good news.

Thunder claps in the distance, and Marina’s lungs burn on waking. She gasps in the darkness, but she can hardly hear her own inhales over the fierce booms. The tiny watch alarm stops beeping as she clicks the side button to silence it. She checks the time: 2 AM.

Peeling back the blanket, she only needs to put socks on, as she has been dressed since the evening, when Khaled brought them back in a silent car. Marina tiptoes to the living room, where Haifa’s light snores can barely be heard above the din of the storm. It offers perfect cover as she slides the keys into her pocket and slips into her shoes, quietly locking the door behind her.

Marina needs no map to recall where she is going. Her lungs heave as she climbs the steps into the city, half racing, half jogging. Tariq’s body is buried below the earth; atop him lies the bitter salt. In her head echo his cries: “Help me. Help me. Help me.”

All around her, the last of the vehicles of the evening are clearing away and doors are shutting behind people as they seek shelter from the storm—it is only Marina who stays on the street, her legs stumbling over one another. The only light comes from the streetlamps.

“Marina!” A voice yells to her from the street, and she turns. Khaled’s face is pale with nerves as he sits in his grandmother’s idle car, waving Marina over.

The rain begins to fall. It’s quiet at first, but as soon as Marina crosses the street and gets inside, it hammers her skin with a force that can only come from the sea. As she slams the door shut behind her, the world becomes muted for a brief second.

“What are you doing here?” she says, panting.

“What am I doing here? What are you doing here!” Khaled’s mouth is set in a grim line, but it lifts a little.

“I—”

“I knew it.” He slams the steering wheel. “You’re such a bad liar. I knew you were going to go find his grave.”

“Well.” Marina fumbles for an excuse and throws one hand in the air nervously. “Now that you’re here, do you know where we can find a construction site?”

Khaled laughs, a forceful exhale out of his lips. “Are you serious? You really want to go through with this?” He gestures to the storm. “Look around you.”

“Fine. I’ll just go myself.” Marina grabs the door handle, but Khaled locks the doors.

“No.” He sighs, and his eyebrows are knit together in concern. “No. You won’t. Are you kidding me?”

Marina unlocks the door. “No. There’s an injustice here.”

Khaled groans and slams the steering wheel again. “Fine. I can at least drive you, if you’re going to be so determined.”

“Thank you,” Marina says. Khaled nods and shifts the car into drive. They slowly inch up the street, both searching in the midst of the sheets of rain for orange construction cones.

The wind whips powerful gusts, dangerously swaying traffic lights held up by thick wire; lights flicker in bursts and flashes, illuminating the dark, hungry night as the power shifts in and out; rain pours in a never-ending torrent, a sheet of water that slams against the windows and pavement.

The storm is here.

“I think that’s one! Over there!” Marina yells at Khaled over the sound of rain cracking against the car.

He says something back but Marina can’t hear him. Shoulders hunched over the steering wheel, he pushes forward as gingerly as he can through the flooding streets. The orange cones become clearer as they drive closer.

“I’ll go check!” Marina yells. She pushes against the car door at the same time that the wind pushes against her; as soon as it’s just cracked open a few inches, a gust of wind shoves the car door back onto her hand and slams her ring finger inside.

Khaled climbs over her, reaching both arms forward to force the door open. Marina frees her finger and there is no pain. Adrenaline courses through her veins instead of blood. She rushes through the small opening Khaled has made for her and all of a sudden, the wind and rain and storm have her in their clutches. They clamor against her, her steps belabored against the full force of nature.

The wind asks her to keep her eyes closed, but she can’t—squinting, with water pouring off of her hair and eyelashes, she searches the construction site for a jackhammer. A glint of silver flashes against a flickering streetlight.

She doesn’t need to check that the street is empty—they truly are the only ones left outside now. Marina waves with her arms and points to the jackhammer, hoping Khaled can see her and understand. Her clothes begin to weigh heavily on her limbs, sinking her with their watery burden.

Marina grabs the handle and pulls, but the metal doesn’t have any traction against her skin in the rain. It’s heavy. She lifts it up from its body and nearly runs right into Khaled.

“Let me.”

The wind has abated slightly, and it is now only the rain that pours on them, like a well has tipped upside down over the city.

Khaled lifts the jackhammer and they run back to the car together, water flying from the tails of their clothes behind them. Marina gasps as she sits back in the car.

“Did you see? No cord!” she exclaims, sitting back with an exuberant grin over her face. The jackhammer being a battery-operated handheld feels like a sign from the universe to keep going. Her wet hair plasters itself to her headrest, and cold water seeps through the unexposed part of her neck. She looks down, realizing just how wet she is. “I’m sorry. I’ll help you clean your car tomorrow.”

Khaled smiles grimly. “If you make it to tomorrow without being arrested.”

“Do you see the streets?” Marina gestures widely to the empty, flickering city. “This is the perfect night to do it!”

Khaled just shakes his head silently as he inches forward, following Marina’s directions. The parking lot—the mass grave—comes into view. She suddenly sobers as they park beside it.

“I can’t come with you,” Khaled says, looking at her.

“I know.”

His gaze holds her for several seconds. Neither looks away.

“I’ll help you carry the jackhammer to the site. Then I have to wait here.”

“Okay,” Marina breathes, but she knows he doesn’t hear her over the storm outside.

Khaled cradles the tool in his arms like a baby as they both half run, half walk to the empty parking lot. There is one working streetlamp here, and its yellow light comes in strobes of broken rain droplets that scatter over their somber faces.

“Oh, my god.” There, in the same spot that it was earlier that day, is the pile of salt. Even now, with rain and wind and storm, it still stands. Not a single grain is left out of place. Marina walks over to it and points. She looks up at Khaled. “Tariq.”

He stands beside her, looking down, his eyes wide.

“Hey!” A barking sound bites through the wind and stabs Marina’s ears. She looks up, muscles immediately tense.

A pair of Israeli soldiers walks toward them.

Marina glances at Khaled, whose face is rigid with panic—she grabs the jackhammer and, fingers stumbling, feels for the switch and turns it on and there, the rumbling power courses through her arms and she holds it steady over the pile of salt; the wind whips at her face, stealing breath right from her lungs and yet she has never breathed better—all of a sudden there is air, an abundance of oxygen that fills her lungs despite everything.

The soldier yells again. They both run toward her. Khaled grips her arm. One of the soldiers raises his gun.

Sleep drifts in and out of Haifa’s hand that night. Her mother had returned to her. Told her to go home. And Haifa went home—to Rania’s. She would go tomorrow, she rationalized. The storm would be too much tonight.

But now, lying on the couch, eyes wide open, Haifa wants to fulfill her mother’s wish.

Go home.

She wants to go home.

Haifa sits up, stretching out her neck, and moves to check on Marina. As she opens the door, a flash of lightning illuminates the room.

The bed is empty.

“Marina?” she whispers. Haifa tiptoes to the bathroom, but the door is open and no one is inside. Her voice becomes louder. “Marina?”

Haifa checks the other bedroom, where Khaled would be. She knocks, but in the silence, she opens it slowly.

“Khaled?”

His bed is empty, too.

“Marina?” Haifa calls, her voice becoming louder and more frantic. “Marina? Khaled?” But there is no response.

“Haifa?” Rania stands in the doorway of her bedroom, her nightgown askew. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, auntie, I didn’t mean to wake you.” Haifa shakes her head. “Marina and Khaled aren’t here.”

“What?” Rania’s face hangs with worry. “Where could they be?”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Haifa says, but her heart beats out the same pattern of anxiety. “I’ll go look for them.”

“I’ll come with you.” Rania turns around and picks up some clothes that hang off the side of her hamper. “Just give me a moment.”

Haifa shakes her head, feeling the weight of a greater worry sink into her stomach. Rain thrashes against the window and her exposed flesh rises in goose bumps. “No. No. I have to find them now. I’ll go alone.”

“Be safe.” Rania presses a warm hand against Haifa’s arm.

“It’ll be okay.” Haifa reassures her as much as she reassures herself.

“Take the car.” Rania fumbles for the keys and presses them into her hand.

Haifa takes them, but as she leaves, taking the last step outside, she turns and sees the empty space where Rania’s car should be. The storm has worsened. Water droplets pelt her like small bullets. She uses her arms to protect her head.

Haifa wants to scour the city for Marina and Khaled, but there is only one place Marina would go in a storm like this. She can feel it as deeply in her bones as the words that echo in her mind.

Go home.

Her footsteps are drawn to the house; they already know exactly where they need to go, despite slipping against the wet cobblestone. The pull is almost spiritual. Soon she is entirely soaked through—not a spot of her clothing is dry.

Go home.

She does. She stands in front of her mother’s childhood home.

It happens in a flash, and later, Marina will play and replay it in her mind like a film. Each time, she will be surprised.

The wind picks up speed, its anger lashing out at the city. Breath is stolen right from Marina’s lungs, but it’s not because two soldiers are running toward her with guns; no, it is swept away by the sight of a tornado the likes of which she’s never seen before. Water spirals in a column of air, and though it’s small, up close it appears to be larger than the skyscrapers in the distance. It towers over Marina, winding and spitting salt in every direction as it whirls closer.

Khaled’s fingernails dig into her arm at the same time that one of the soldiers stops in his tracks. Pulling Marina toward him, Khaled shoves her in between his body and a nearby pillar, and his arms encircle her and the jackhammer and lock them both into place around the concrete.

Water spears through her clothing and stabs at her skin with powerful, small daggers the wind throws. Through the gap in between Khaled’s arm and his head, Marina can still see.

The soldier who stopped looks up in horror and tries to grab his partner, but only finds air, for the man is already running toward them, his gaze deadly and immovable. He lifts his gun, and even from here, Marina can see his finger move for the trigger.

Breathe.

The flickering streetlight now dies completely; in fact, all of the light from nearby buildings goes black. The moon is cloaked in gray storm clouds, and so it is in complete darkness, blurred by water, that Marina sees these things.

The tornado roars, rushing a column of air that moves toward the running soldier. It picks him up and throws him somewhere—Marina can’t see. She only hears the faintest echo of his cry as he is taken up.

The other soldier, his face a mask of terror now, turns back and runs. But the wind, hungry for more, has a fallen tree trunk in its maw. It spits it out and the wood lands with a sickening crack against the soldier. He falls to the ground, and in the darkness, there is only the flapping of the branches over his body.

The tornado moves south, away from them, and in its absence, Marina can finally find oxygen.

“Was that a tornado?”

“A waterspout. It must have been,” Khaled releases Marina from his grip and rubs at his shoulders, wincing.

“Are you okay?” She reaches gently for his arm.

“Fine, fine. Just sore from holding on so tightly. I was worried that we would be blown away.”

Marina stumbles back into his embrace, wrapping her arms around him. “Thank you,” she mumbles into the wet fabric of his shirt and skin. He squeezes back gently.

“Come on,” she says, pulling away. “That was a sign.”

For once, Khaled can’t argue. He stands off to the side, near Rania’s car, as Marina grabs on to the handle, praying it still works despite being soaked through. She deflates with relief as it starts. In the constant thunder, the roar of the jackhammer is hardly heard. It vibrates beneath her, and she grips tightly to direct it right above the pile of salt, the one that still remains perfectly in place.

The jackhammer shakes with power beneath her hands, but it is as if it understands her mind. Bits of tar fly into the air as Marina grits her teeth, keeping it steady over the salt. It is only a few moments—

“Here! Khaled!” Marina screams, but there is no need to. He’s running for her as soon as her knees fall to the destroyed earth.

He picks up where she can’t, using his hands to claw away bits of earth. She watches, suspended in a type of horrified stupor, as the image becomes clearer—even in darkness.

They’re decayed, but it’s clear that there are body bags buried beneath this parking lot. They come apart in degraded pieces as Khaled continues to claw his way through, bits of yellowed bags for some, cloth for others.

And there are the skeletons. They are all bones. Skulls. Femurs.

And Marina finds the smallest skeleton in this tiny spot of dug earth—the one with salt flakes dusted on its surface—and she carries him in her arms. She cries for the boy that she never knew, letting the wind steal her cries and letting the water wash away her tears.

She didn’t expect to feel like this. She didn’t even know her uncle. But there is an overwhelming, consuming feeling taking root in her heart: these were all people. Every bag. Every bone. They all had lives, hopes, dreams, memories, wishes, inside jokes, favorite recipes, plans for the future—

And this is only a small part of the earth, here. This is just the salt spot. With Tariq in her arms, she looks across the expanse of the parking lot.

And she weeps.

“Marina. Oh, my god.” Khaled takes two steps back and covers his mouth in horror at the mass grave. “My god.”

Marina turns away but in front of her stands a ghost.

Tariq, his image flickering in and out, points to the body in her arms. He takes her hand and leads her away. Marina doesn’t look behind for Khaled—she knows he will find a proper burial site for the rest.

Her chest feels squeezed and strange, and no matter how many deep breaths she tries to take, she can’t get enough. Her legs stumble and her arms clutch tightly to Tariq’s body. Bones don’t weigh very much, and the wind is strong.

Tariq leads her home.

Haifa crouches behind the corner of a stoop as she sees the front door of the house open. Two men dressed in police uniforms come out, shielding themselves from the rain with their arms. Invisible hands plaster a new FOR SALE sign in the window.

Rania had only told her this evening that a couple had moved in. And she was right about the pattern—the house would kill them, or force them out, and they would sell it again. Another man exits, smiling with white teeth. He smooths his wet hair down while shaking the police officers’ hands—already, they are trying to sell the house, again and again, despite whatever could have occurred inside. Just as they have done for years, since Nuhad was torn from her home as a young girl.

Her mother’s house—haunted.

The police officers climb down the stairs and get in their car, the lights flashing for a silent few seconds until they turn them off and leave. The realtor hovers in the doorway, watching them for a moment. His smile falls from his face as he retreats back into the house. Something about him is plastic.

Rain trickles inside of Haifa’s shirt, invading her skin. She moves like the water itself and slides against the back door. It’s unlocked. She hopes that Marina isn’t inside hiding from the realtor, but a wild, desperate desire flares in her heart—to convene with her daughter here, in her mother’s home, before it is sold again.

Haifa whispers a prayer as she opens it gently, holding her breath as she does. Her feet steal through the back storage room of the storefront. There are narrow, wooden stairs here that lead to a door above. Water drips off of her and dampens the floor.

She tries the latch, holding her breath, and it opens silently.

The kitchen. Her mother’s kitchen.

Yes,

yessss—

I feel her. I feel the blood of the Sayadi family my family within my stones. I can feel her Nuhad attempting to slip in.

She is so close. She remembers, just like me. It’s Haifa Nuhad. I know her blood like I know the stones. There. The shelf of small things. The scent of mjaddara in the winter. I feel her. She’s in my bones my lungs.

My family has returned they will never leave.

The first look of the house brings unexpected tears to Haifa’s eyes. This is it—her mother’s home. Her home, even. Tears spill from the corners of her eyes, and it feels like she is one with her lost city; they both weep for history, for lost lives and stories, and through her blurred vision she sees

her mother doing her homework on the kitchen table, while

her grandmother lines the bottom of the pot with tomatoes and

her uncle runs around, zooming like a madman, creating paper airplanes and flying them round the house and of course

her grandfather grumbles and mutters, smiling from behind his newspaper.

Haifa’s fingers trail against the kitchen counter as she wanders through the room, her mouth slightly open in awe. She looks up. There is something about the wallpaper—there. A corner. Reaching up, her hand intuitively moving, she rips it. The torn paper reveals an entirely different color, aged by time and yet preserved by the bond of the new one. It’s yellow: yellow flowers on vines. Just like her kitchen back home.

“Oh, my god.”

This comes out as a whisper as Haifa drops to her knees and allows the release of all of her tears in a silent bawl, empty cries behind full tears, but she quickly picks herself up; she doesn’t have time for that, can’t have time for that. Her eyes search for Marina, but they are drawn toward old items—from her mother’s time—as her fingers trail the skeleton of the house.

The wallpaper. The marbled pink vase whose age shows in the delicate cracks over its surface. And the painting in the corner, by the window that faces out to the Mediterranean, the fisherman’s taut line brimming with a hope and love for the sea. It is entirely different from the painting that was beside Nuhad’s bed, in which the woman’s mournful yearning could be felt without ever seeing her face. It was a response—like the house, Haifa realizes. Every single aspect of life, including Nuhad’s love of paintings, had been cut and maimed by genocide. She knows it is her mother’s painting from when she was a young girl. She can feel it. And in this lost home, despite everything, there are these three mementos still preserved in that lost past. In the time before.

Three things from the past. Three small things from her mother’s time, left inside of the house. Why keep remembrances of the people whose ghosts still linger? Why not throw out everything that reminds you of the bodies you stand on? She thinks back to her conversation with Rania just earlier today. Settlers inherit stolen goods—this house, its bones and marrow, were from her family. Haifa can sense how every part of the foundation was built upon her blood, but none of it is hers now.

Haifa has little time to ponder this before a heavy sigh is accompanied by the jingling sound of keys from the other room. She freezes, her legs encased in ice, but the stones shift beneath her feet, and she almost trips, almost falls, but she gasps her way to a closet off of the kitchen.

Her heart pounds.

The realtor sighs again from the other room and a small sound is indecipherable beneath it, but it sounds like he’s shuffling something heavy across the floor. Haifa peeks from behind the crack in the door and clamps a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.

It’s a body bag.

It is black and plastic and when the realtor drops it—panting as he does so—it thuds to the ground with the weight of a human being. There is silence for a moment and Haifa feels the closet tighten. The house kills people. The house kills people.

The phone rings, and Haifa nearly jumps out of her skin. She grasps the edges of the wall for stability, her vision swimming as she backs away slowly from the crack in the door. The realtor remains in sight, a tiny sliver of color against the black.

“Hello?” He speaks English. “Oh, hey, Ryan! I’m good, how are you?… You would not believe the night I’ve had, man. Guess what?… Yeah, the occupants I just sold the house to died. Drowned, if you can believe it.” He laughs. “I came to check on them tonight. Just needed another signature for something. The house was empty, so I figured I’d just leave it inside with my extra key, right? Well, I came inside”—he wipes his forehead—“and found them. Called the police, of course, and they did a whole examination. Took pictures, the works. The whole thing took hours—it’s crazy how late it is already. And on top of that, they said the medical examiner can’t come until tomorrow … What? No, no. So I’m dragging their bodies to the door. It’s gross but what can you do? I’m trying to be efficient here. Hopefully they can pick them up first thing tomorrow and we can get to selling again!”

Another laugh. “No, no, don’t worry. It’ll sell again—it always does. Shit happens, but the buyers don’t need to know about every little detail for me to get my check. Can you imagine living in this fucking house, though? But it’s weirdly beautiful in a way … Well, I just mean, like, this was my grandfather’s old home”—Haifa sees red—“and now I get to sell it. The cycle of life … Thanks, man. I appreciate you saying that … I know. Listen, I gotta get moving these bodies so I can go home. I can’t believe the police don’t do that. They take forever to get here and then don’t even help. Ah, well … all right, talk to you later, man.”

He hangs up and shoves the phone in his back pocket, leaning over to drag the bag to the door. Haifa holds her breath, wondering how long it takes for a corpse to begin decaying. Tears squeeze at the edges of her eyes; this is not how she wanted to first see her mother’s childhood home. She stands in the darkness, listening to him drag the second body.

Sighing again, as if the entire weight of the world leans on his shoulders, the realtor heads into the other room. A sudden wave of dizziness overtakes Haifa and she puts a hand against the wall to steady herself. Her breathing comes in shallow inhales. Her grip against the wall loosens.

The realtor—and everything—disappears as she loses consciousness, sliding down the wall silently and helplessly.

Sleep. Sleep now.

She does not need to see.

This man, with the false smile and bared teeth, is still here—when will it be enough?—still slithering inside to prepare for the next settler who will wade in the blood apparent on the floor, pointing and walking over the bodies. I watch him, and bare my stones in a smile. He does not know.

My family is here—I promised to stay empty—

He walks into the kitchen, where my skin is begging to be bared to the light—yellow, finally—and reaches for a glass on the top shelf. The liquid from his stolen drink rouses the water in Death’s perch and She rises slowly in shadow before he slams the glass against the table—my bones, my flesh. I watch him. Plastic. Death’s cold fingers nudge, they ask, they beg in wonder at this cruelty: he should have fallen into the wall and been sucked into the damp spot—smothered, like the rest—but no. He is still here. Still—breathing.

He walks to the bodies—to the blood he has shed. Not me. They are not my bodies.

Death’s long fingers reach for him and stroke him—gently,

and he whirls around.

There is nothing there. His eyebrows are raised in confusion and fear—noticing for the first time that Death lives in these walls. Hello, he calls, but only the water drip drip dripping answers him and he turns, slowly, to return to his bodies. Death follows at his shaking heels, consuming his shadow with Her own deep, vicious being; the screams and cries of those dead echo down below in Her dark cloak but he does not hear. They clamor for him. They await him.

Beneath the cover of the plastic body bag—he has forgotten—the woman gripped a knife, prepared to cut their way out of the walls as the water grew around their throats. The blade is still erect in her stiff hand, the point just tearing through the thick plastic; fear is still carved forevermore into her frozen face. Death’s fingers grip tighter, colder; the man walks, and She reaches out—

tilting a tile up.

He trips over his own feet and falls into the bags, the plastic absorbing his shocked face and the instant rush of his blood as he lands on the erect knife—torn by the flesh he sold—and the metal slices through his skin easily, but stops just before his heart—no, no, no!—and a stone falls from my ceiling, then a second and a third and a fourth and a fifth. They land on his back heavily and he gasps, one hand reaching back to tear them off of his body, but the weight is too much—We push, We press more deeply,

into the knife.

He gags on his own blood and the taste drips to my floor and it is delicious, it is so righteous; he cries for help but his own words are drowned by his choking throat—now, yes, yes—as he gasps and swallows but there is no air, not anymore, there is only blood left—he swallows, he swallows, and the stones slowly lift back up into my ceiling as he breathes his last, desperate for more but the hunger is forever—

The floorboards can see his face and his expression is frozen, the falseness of his smile long gone as the blood rises like the water did, pooling slowly and viscously around all three of their bodies in a scarlet well—I promised, I promised to stay empty—and Death rises above slowly, Her shadowy figure reaching for them—cold, cold—and slowly dragging them down, their bodies receding into the damp floor until there is nothing left. All that remains is the disturbed tile; slowly, purposefully, I creak it back down to its place. Haifa Nuhad did not see. She is safe.

And I—I am home.

Haifa grips at what is real: the wall, her arms, the floor. She stands slowly and peeks out of the crack in the door. The bodies are gone. Everything is silent, too, as if the realtor has also left. Relief runs through her briefly before she reaches for her head, panicking. She passed out—there is no pain when she presses against her skull, but she must have lost some time. The darkness swallows her watch face as she tilts it up.

She reaches for the walls, searching for a light. Fear keeps her from leaving the closet entirely, in case the realtor is still in the house somewhere. Soft fur strokes her arms and she turns toward the sensation, facing a row of coats lining the back. Coats in the closet—how ridiculous to have in a city like Haifa. She turns and runs her hands along them. They’re heavy, as if this were Sweden and not Palestine.

A light glow shimmers, brightening the very edges so that Haifa can see the fine hairs. Her fingers trace the soft lining up to the hangers. She pushes them aside, creating an opening and expecting to see the back edge of the closet lit by a small light.

But it’s a room. The light comes from the room itself, washing everything in a soft yellow glow, like feathered sunshine over a bookshelf on a summer afternoon. The entire room is empty, save for one chair in the middle where a girl sits.

She has the same face as Haifa’s ghost.

“Mama?” Haifa’s voice comes out in a trembling whisper. She looks at her palms, wondering if it’s a dream, then back up to the girl. She has two long, obsidian braids tied up neatly. They fall in cascades over her shoulders. A tiny bit of lipstick is smudged against lips lacking in lines of age and stress. The girl smiles at Haifa—openly, as if to welcome her—as she walks closer.

“Haifa.” There’s a crooked tooth slightly overlapping another when she speaks, the same one that her mother had. “I’m so happy you’ve come to join me.”

“Is it you?” As her trembling legs finally reach the girl, she drops to the ground at her mother’s knees. She looks up. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m waiting for Tariq.” The girl says it with a strained little laugh, as if this is perfectly obvious. “What else?”

There’s a lightness in this girl who will become her mother—the familiar anxieties are here, but she is yet unscarred. This is not the same ghost that haunts Haifa. Twinkles shine in her eyes and she looks at Haifa with humor, but a bit of pity also pulls her lips down. Haifa’s hand reaches for her mother’s knee—hesitatingly, slowly—and against the wrinkled, tendoned skin of her knuckles, she looks real.

“Why?”

“So we can be together again.”

“How?” Haifa asks, but she can feel it. This piece of Nuhad is part of the very bones of the house. “You’re…”

“However you came to be here.” Her essence flickers a little, in and out, and her face darkens for a moment. “I’m waiting for him. Not like last time.”

Last time.

“I’ll keep him safe when he comes back,” she continues. “I’ll keep you safe, too. Don’t worry.”

“Keep me safe from what?” Haifa’s mouth is dry.

“Anything. Everything.” Suddenly her mother’s face breaks and tears squeeze through the corners of her eyes. She cradles her cheeks in her hands. “I’m so scared. I’m so scared. Everything was so hard. I didn’t know what to do.” Her voice increases in volume and she grabs at Haifa’s hands, taking them in her own. Her eyes plead. “Please believe me. You have to believe me.”

“Mama.” Haifa stands, taking her mother into a hug. She’s smaller, but she hugs the same. One thing the war didn’t take from her. “Mama, it’s okay—I believe you. Hey, we’ll be safe in here. This is our house, right?” She gives what she hopes is a reassuring smile as she brushes the scant tears from the girl’s delicate skin.

“Yes. Safe.” She nods, swallowing the tears. “We’re safe here. We’re safe in the house. My house. Our home.”

Seeing her mother so vulnerable and raw breaks something in Haifa. There are no years of history pulling them apart and making it impossible to talk. Nuhad is not her mother here—she is just a young girl. The familiar frustration and worthlessness and never-being-enough Haifa holds around Nuhad melts from her chest; all that is left between them is a simple, beating heart. All that is left is Haifa—and in this moment, that is enough.

“See? Everything will be okay.”

“I won’t abandon the home again,” young Nuhad says. Her face is firm. “This … this is the only place.”

“The only place for what?”

“Where I can wait for Tariq.” Her mother crosses her legs. “And he’ll come back. I know he will.”

“Your brother. Tariq.”

“I—I tried to tell you,” she says, and her voice is as small as she is. “I tried. I couldn’t, but I tried. Can’t that be enough?”

Her eyes well with fresh tears and as Haifa opens her mouth to respond and comfort this girl that becomes her mother, she flickers even more.

“Mama, yes. Of course.” She clutches her knee. “You tried your best—listen, no one blames you. Okay?” Nuhad wails and Haifa has to raise her voice over it. She gives her mother the words that she wishes could have been given to her. “You tried your best, and that’s enough.”

“No, no.” Nuhad sobs, her tiny shoulders shaking. “No, it wasn’t. I’m still here. Stuck.”

“No, you’re not. Come, let me help you.” Haifa stands and extends a hand. “Let’s get out of here together. You’re not stuck.”

“We can’t leave.” A cry rips out of Nuhad’s throat as if with claws through flesh and she grabs on to Haifa’s hand, not to pull herself up, but rather to yank Haifa back down. “This is our home!” The room spins and darkens into a blood red.

The house is protected. This is the protector.

Haifa spins and scrambles up to her feet, looking for the door to the closet. The sounds of the storm outside are entirely gone. She runs, the force of the ground vibrating up through her knees with each slamming footstep. The crimson laps against her heels and the door is so far, so far—

Haifa tastes salt on her tongue.

Tariq is no longer a burden of her grandmother’s soul; he is no longer a secret buried beneath the earth and tar; he is no longer an unattainable memory. He is here. He is real. He is in Marina’s arms as she scales the steps up to her grandmother’s house.

The stairs are covered in a water that does not come from the sky. Tiny droplets drip down the street in miniature rivers and reflect against the night sky like clear metal; they shine against the regular rain. As she rises, with each step, Marina feels her stomach ascend, like it does as a roller coaster climbs. She is waiting for the drop. She is waiting to see her home again.

The strange water is pouring from the house, leaking from below the front door and pulled by gravity down, down, down the steps all the way to the port. There it is: the drop. Butterflies. Marina looks up at the house that was her grandmother’s and should have been her mother’s and should have been hers and feels grief with love, hate with hope. The small stone dwelling stands solidly, weathering the storm. A FOR SALE sign is plastered against the window.

The house is like a magnet to Marina, pulling her inexplicably to its core. Whispers flutter in the air, caressing her ears and prickling her skin despite the rain. It is the same voice as the one that drew her to the sea:

Come closer.

Come to me.

Come.

The door is edged with grooves from ancient wood that sits heavily in its frame. The age is undeniable—it’s older even than Nuhad would have been—and the deep wood grain is hypnotic. Marina’s hand floats up without her realizing, and she takes a deep breath, filling her lungs fully with air as she touches the wood—

come inside.

Her finger slips into the grooves, and for a moment, it dips below the wood itself, disappearing into the flesh of the house. Marina yanks her hand back. Around her, the wind screams.

Tariq is still at Marina’s side; he looks up at her and points to the home. She nods despite the fear that racks her body from limb to limb. She can sense that her mother is here too.

She gingerly shifts Tariq’s body into the pouch of her shirt. From her pocket, she takes the keffiyeh headband and wraps her knuckles inside the soaked cloth, hoping that she won’t bloody it too much to return to Hassan. Marina braces herself as she clenches her teeth, and she punches toward the glass of the storefront door—but it swings open. She stumbles into the open door with the forward momentum of her fist and hardly has a moment to gather her bearings before she realizes: she is inside her grandmother’s home again. She stands, panting, in the dark storefront.

Breathe.

In.

Out.

Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Ba-bum.

The house is breathing with her, its heart beating in time to hers. They are one. They have been running toward each other for generations now, attempting to make up for the lost time by melting into each other’s skins.

Marina, taking care to not move Tariq’s bones too much, walks blindly through the darkness, still breathing heavily. Rain batters against the glass. Tariq is no longer by her side and instead stands, half flickering, in the storm as he watches her. In here, it’s quiet. A small light glows from beneath the crack of a door upstairs. She knew it. Her mother is here.

alive, alive, alive, alive alive alive alive . alive

life

They’re back!

They’re back!

They’re back. and they will never leave

“Mama?” Marina opens the door gently, quietly, and her stomach clenches at the possibility that she was wrong and an Israeli family waits on the other side, ready to call the police. But it’s empty.

A warmth settles over her shoulders and she relaxes involuntarily. The embrace extends to the physical space itself. The storm quiets, dimming the rainfall to a soft pitter-patter outside of the window. The air itself calms, as if the house has been holding its breath and just released a great sigh. A ghostly scent of hariseh wafts from the oven. Marina follows it and looks up at the small bit of yellow wallpaper in the corner of the room. Her fingers graze the paper gently. It’s the same color as the kitchen wall at home. Home—both places.

As Marina walks, the bones clink softly in her shirt pouch with every step. With every movement, a reminder that she holds Tariq.

“Mama?” she ventures. Her mother’s presence lingers in the air, but the living room and the light pink hallway and everywhere in between are empty. “Mama?”

Circling back to the kitchen, her eyes search for a container and land on an empty shoebox sitting over the refrigerator. She pulls it down and places Tariq’s bones as gently as she can inside. Salt still clings to him like a dusting from the heavens. Tears blur her vision.

“I’ll bury you properly tomorrow. Somewhere beside your parents. In Nazareth, maybe. Or by the sea,” she whispers, caressing the side of the box—

No no no no no—no. No! No! Please … please.

—and without warning, a scream shatters this awed silence.

It smashes through the comfort, leaving shards of pain in its wake. Marina’s heart pounds as she ducks, her head spinning as she searches the room. No one is here, but the sudden deathly silence makes it feel as if something surrounds her. Something—

“Hello? Mama?” Marina yells, but her voice warps in the space around her and bounces back against her, as if she’s screaming underwater.

Haifa is here—she knows she’s here, the scent of her perfume lingers in the air. The only other proof of her existence is the phantom scream, like Khaled said he had heard before. The warnings about the house suddenly ring against her memory, raising alarm bells that dawn a harrowing realization:

The house has swallowed Haifa.

She walks to the door quickly, her hands stiff by her sides. Her breath is irregular; the rocks feel like they’re back, tumbling down her alveoli as she gasps through her nostrils. She reaches for the handle—

It’s locked. Marina cannot open the door.

Sweat now beads on her forehead despite the water that still lingers there. Her fingers fumble against the lock but it has been melded shut against its bolt. From behind, Marina hears the soft swish of shutters slowly closing over windows. They snap into place with a final click. A shiver rolls down her spine, from neck to base.

She runs to the back door hidden at the other end of the house, and though her shoes tap against the linoleum floor, the house keeps its silence held in suspension, waiting for the drop, too. Marina’s breath stalls as fear grips her with an unbreakable iron vise. She reaches for the doorknob, but it also remains unyielding beneath her hand.

Thrusting her shoulder against the door, Marina pushes her body weight against the wood. But nothing moves. Everything remains still for a single, precious moment longer until a door slams open to Marina’s right. She whirls around.

Haifa tumbles out of the closet, panting hard, her glasses askew. She’s here. It was her scream. Haifa looks to Marina, and for a split second she doesn’t recognize her, but then—

“We have to leave. Now.”

Marina turns back to the kitchen, where the shoebox still sits on the counter.

“Tariq,” she says, and it is with this single sentence, this single expulsion of breath—

HE. STAYS. HERE.

—that the tightly wound pleading of the house finally shatters.

A rush of wind tears through the house, bringing with it the rage of the storm from outside. Rain pours from the ceiling and wraps them both in small cyclones; Marina’s hair whips back and forth, painting her mother in black, billowing streaks. All of the air from the room is sucked out—can’t, breathe—but then gets spat back with items that hurl through the raging winds: the old painting, real estate paperwork, the marbled pink vase that tips and rolls, slamming into the wall. Lightning flashes above, as if the ceiling were the sky. As if the house were the city.

My family.

A long, gray shadow seeps from the cracks in the stone; it hovers on the ground for a moment before rising in full. Water flies off of its ethereal form and lands in sharp, stabbing droplets against Marina’s lips: it is salty, rotten. It beads against her skin and falls to the ground, where it forms the same thick, warm puddles of blood that collect unseen in Haifa’s gutters. Crimson liquid drips down her legs in viscous, heavy droplets, mooring her in a sickening understanding. Marina knows this shadow.

It’s the same one that has followed close behind her heels in the city, the same one that curled its slate fingers around Rania’s memories. It reached for her from below the sea, weighting the house of her grandmother, and the city, and its people, in a reality they never should have known.

It is Death.

It stretches over the city for it lives here—it has seeped into the pores of each stone and formed the whispers of every recollection of murder. It has been fired from every Israeli military rifle. It has pooled around the body of every Bilal Khalidi as they bled out. And with every bullet, every real estate signing and tar pouring, Death’s home was cemented.

“No. No, no,” Marina cries with the realization. Despite the desperation in her mother’s eyes, there is a horrified comprehension in her face—Haifa senses what this shadow is. It expands, growing in size and depth, and covers the stormy ceiling. Flickers of light tear through the darkness and thunder roils in heart-shattering booms.

Marina pushes against the storm but the wind resists, holding her in a wild, breathless column; it grows stronger and stronger, and the overpowering force whisks the vase to the opposite side of the room. The sheer power of the gusts slams it against the living room pillar. Diamond-glinted shards of ceramic fly in every direction and both Marina and Haifa hold their arms up by their faces instinctively.

Small, superficial cuts appear on Haifa’s skin, visible only by the faint red lines that bead to the surface. She gasps and jerks her head toward her arms. The storm calms slightly and the vase pieces crash to the floor, though the wind still howls. As Haifa holds her arms out to examine them, fine grains of salt fall from the ceiling and land in the cuts. She flinches and immediately pulls them back in, gripping them close to her body.

“What the fuck,” Haifa yells, but the salt keeps falling, digging itself into her skin, as if it could stem the bleeding as Haifa once did on the lake for Marina a lifetime ago.

I’m sorry … I’m … sorry.

“Mom—”

But you can’t leave.

“We have to go. We have to go.”

Not ever.

The fear overtaking her completely now, Haifa starts to walk toward Marina, but in the instant that one foot steps in front of the other, the stone tiles ripple inward, as if made of liquid, and wrap around Haifa’s feet and legs. No—they don’t wrap. They disappear.

Haifa sinks into the floor.

In a matter of moments, her lower half is encased in the tiles; she is a woman attempting to escape from a tombstone.

“Oh, my god,” Marina cries, and it’s as if the expression on her face causes her mother to look down, unaware of what’s just happened. Haifa’s eyebrows lift and her mouth draws down at the corners in the picture of pure terror. No sound comes out of her mouth for a moment, then it finally escapes.

Haifa screams.

In the splitting echoes of her fear, the house takes over. Beneath its pulsating fury is a thinly veiled desperation. The house wants them to stay as badly as Marina once wanted to understand her entire history, but she can’t. Not like this.

“Marina!” Haifa’s piercing voice cracks through the ice that Marina finds her limbs frozen by. She meets her mother’s gaze. “Go!” Her hands wave wildly at the windows. “Go!”

Her mother’s painful, wretched yells electrify Marina’s legs to pick themselves up and run. As she leaps over the stone, droplets of blood flicking from her skin, the shadow hovers above her and the storm’s winds push against her. The window in the living room, the one that looks out to sea, is still clear.

She skids to a stop in front and reaches for the lock, hands trembling as they fumble with the plastic. It flips, and her nails scrape against the bottom of the wood as she tries to heft it open; she manages an inch, but it comes crashing down against her hands as the house slams it shut.

Now Marina screams.

She pulls her hands out from beneath the window and turns wildly, fingers swelling with painful pressure and hair flying. All around her, the house groans—horrifying, awful lamentations that come from the depths of its soul, from the city beneath the sea. Before Marina can run to the window in the kitchen, or search for windows in the bedrooms, she feels herself being pulled backward.

Unseen hands grab her shoulders and yank her to the wall beside the painting. She catches a glimpse out of the corner of her eye—they are white, pale limbs that come from the fabric of the walls themselves. Marina attempts to pry their grip from her shoulders—she grits her teeth from the pain in her fingertips—but even more hands grasp her legs, her hips, her neck.

Marina is being pulled into the wall.

From where Haifa is slowly sinking into the floor, she reaches toward Marina with her free hands, but Marina is already being taken. Past the wall feels airy and spacious, but ice-cold, as if her body is suspended in a wintry forest at night. The unseen hands scrape at her back and legs as they pull harder, and her skin is torn asunder as if by the knifepoint of icicles. Her back half is in the wall now. It burns with cold. Haifa’s mouth opens, but Marina can’t hear her—her ears are in the wall now.

Stay. Please.

Marina gasps, but her breath is shallow—the wind steals the air—and her torso is leaning diagonally into the wall. There is no space to inhale. The walls are enclosing her face inch by inch, and she blinks furiously, as if that would keep them at bay. Her lips purse outward in an attempt to extend the air into her body. It feels like drowning. She’s drowning here, in her grandmother’s home.

“Why?!” she screams. “Why are you doing this?” Her voice sounds loud in her muffled ears. The hands stop scraping at her back, and Marina takes this as hesitation. “We are your family!” she yells, and in her desperation, tears begin falling down her cheeks, absorbing into the wall. In the ceiling above, the shadow of Death looms.

“We are your family! We are your family!” She sobs. “We are your family.”

The walls and floors expand for a brief moment, as if the house takes a breath; the hands at her back retreat slowly, sadly. The window shutters open halfway and for a second, Marina has a shred of hope that they will be released.

But in the absence of anger, in the truest hollow that it leaves behind, is sadness.

Slowly, water leaks from the edges and corners of the house. The salt that the house has protected itself with starts to dissolve and form saltwater. It bleeds through the walls and stones, darkening them as it drip drip drips.

Haifa, still sinking into the floor, looks at Marina. Without even being able to hear what she says, Marina understands:

We’re going to drown.

Water leaks in greater quantities as the house releases its grief—Marina can feel that it misses its family, but they are gone. They’re all gone, and the house has nothing left besides this gasping, intimate heartache.

The shadow descends, seeping into the cracks of the house and back into the stones of the city. As it passes, Marina can see the bodies inside: crying, hungering, their mouths gasping. Death takes its weight with it as it falls back below the sea, where the city still lies. It returns to its home. The storm abates in its absence and the ceiling clears. Only the salt of grief remains.

The water is at Marina’s ankles. At Haifa’s chest.

She can see Haifa’s lips moving, pleading with the house. Her face is red; sweat and tears cover her skin in a thin sheen. Marina joins: “Please,” she sobs. “Please. We’re your family too.” But this realization only sinks the house more deeply into its mourning, and the saltwater pours in greater amounts.

The water is at Marina’s calves. At Haifa’s neck.

Haifa is looking directly at Marina; she has given up on attempting to convince the house and is now trying to say her last words to Marina. She can’t hear them, but she sees her lips move with one phrase spoken over and over again: I love you. Marina cries, nodding with what little movement she can, and says, “I love you, too.”

The water is at Marina’s knees. Haifa has been submerged. Her hair floats above, on the surface.

Stripped of the fables and the lore of haunting, the house is sad. It’s lonely. Marina should’ve known that it would never let them leave. It misses its family, and everything she’s seen has pointed to that: from the journal that it revealed beneath the tiles, to the sea that it led her to, to the various rooms that Tariq showed her.

Always—always, it has been grief.

A rumble begins to heave against Marina’s bones; something feels like it’s hitting against the structure of the house, again and again and again. The suspended skin of Marina’s face shakes with each hit, and after the third charge—

A young girl emerges from the closet. She floats over the water and past Haifa and Marina, her gaze locked on to something beyond them. As she turns in to the kitchen, Marina gets a glimpse of her face and she chokes on her shock. In its familiar contours is

Nuhad

stands in front of the door of her childhood home. She has followed her daughter all the way here, back to the place of her birth. In its embrace, she should feel happy and content. She should feel enveloped by the sunset-colored, salt-flavored, smiling-peopled Haifa and her sea. But she doesn’t.

It almost feels good to return and see that the city has felt the same rage for all of these years. And why shouldn’t there be a storm? There should be that and more, over the entire city of Haifa, over all of Palestine. There is more than enough grief for it. Tears from the sky pour on Nuhad, washing her in their salt. She stares at her home and weeps with her city.

Her skin is as pale as the night is dark—but no one sees the ghosts that linger here, not even when they stand in the sun. Slowly, slowly, she allows herself to hobble up the small stone steps to her childhood home. These memories—of Haifa’s port, of the fresh fish, of her father’s store—are all she has left, and still they, too, are ghosts.

The stout stone dwelling opens up for her as it always has. A sob presses against her throat; the house is now something else entirely, something other, but if she blurs her eyes a bit and just pretends—the dream is better than the reality under occupation—she can still see her childhood home.

It is dark inside, but she knows her way. She walks up the staircase and the door opens for her, but the storm outside has poured its tears in here. Water crashes against the sides of the walls and the salt is so saturated that little white grains float on the surface. It leaks out and splashes against her legs, then falls down the steps.

Nuhad stares at the floor of the entrance.

A little girl stands in the water of the kitchen with a box floating in front of her. Decayed bones—as small as a child’s—are all that is inside. She holds one in her palm and holds it up to Nuhad, looking at her with shiny brown eyes.

“He came back.” Her voice cracks and softens a little. She places it back inside gingerly, taking care not to disturb any other bones. “And you.”

“He came back,” Nuhad echoes. She takes a couple of cautious footsteps toward the girl, the water lapping against her waist. “We came back.”

“Everyone left.”

“Yes.”

“Why did everyone leave?”

“We had to. But we’re back. We’re back.”

“You’re going to leave again.” The girl’s eyes fill with tears.

“No. I’ll stay here with you.” Nuhad kneels, and as she does so, the water lowers with her, to her ankles. From the other room comes a gasp. “I never wanted to leave.”

“And Tariq?”

“We’re both here now. I promise.” Nuhad reaches her arms out. The girl stares for a second before throwing herself into Nuhad’s embrace. She squeezes. “I’m sorry I left you,” Nuhad whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

The girl pulls back and her face is shiny with water. “You’re not going to leave?”

“I never … ever wanted to.” Nuhad grants her a soft smile, eliciting the same in return. “We’re together now.”

“Okay.” The girl shyly raises one hand and holds it up to Nuhad. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

Reaching out, her own hand trembling, Nuhad meets her palm. As they touch, the girl brightens and becomes a shining beacon of light; she glows, and then disappears.

Nuhad looks down to her heart, which illuminates in a small circle and then fades. She stands and reaches for the wall. As she touches it, the house shudders a last gasp. The water disappears, as if the stone absorbed every single drop. Movement catches her eye and as she walks into the living room she finds

Haifa

soars from the ground as she is pushed upward suddenly. Her hands fly out in front of her to find balance as she lands. From the other end of the room, Marina is thrust from the wall and as she hits solid ground, she scrambles, rushing over to Haifa.

“Mama, oh, Mama,” she cries. Her daughter’s tears soak into Haifa’s shirt as she embraces her entirely in her grasp.

“Shh,” Haifa soothes. “We’re okay. We’re okay.”

A woman hovers at the edge of the living room; she is no longer ethereal but stands solid, fully rooted in the stone. Pink colors her weathered cheeks and there is a hint of a smile playing at her lips. This is not the ghost that haunted Haifa nor the mother that she knew. This is … someone else entirely.

“Mama?” she asks. Fear shakes her voice. Though she still looks like the mother who never made Haifa feel like she was enough, Nuhad no longer stares through her, wishing she were more. No, this woman meets her gaze. The heavy air, covering them both like a wet blanket, suddenly lifts a bit. “Mama?”

Nuhad comes closer, and almost on instinct Haifa moves back, scared of her ghost and the burdens she carries. Marina shifts beside her, and Haifa winces—she doesn’t want her daughter to see this side of Haifa and Nuhad’s relationship. She doesn’t want her to see this instinctive reaction to her personal haunting.

“Haifa.” Nuhad stands in front of her and offers a hand. Blinking furiously, as if it will disappear, Haifa assures herself that it’s real. She reaches for it and lets her mother help her up.

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.”

“What do we do now?” Rania asks. She sits on the couch, her face lit with awe as she takes in the living room. “There.” She points to a bookshelf. “Nuhad’s father built that. It used to have little items from her mother. Tiny little souvenirs in between books.”

Haifa laughs again, filled with the joy and wonder of it all.

“Amazing,” she breathes.

“Let’s move in,” Marina says suddenly. “Really, I mean, why not? It’s ours.”

“Even with everything—” Haifa shakes her head. “I want to. Somehow, I want to live here. But can we? Legally?”

“Legally? Are you serious?” Marina asks. Khaled laughs under his breath.

Haifa doesn’t speak for a moment. She leans against the door of the closet and stares through the window, her thumb rubbing absentmindedly over the healed skin of her arm.

“It tried to kill us. Both of us.” She shakes her head. “But somehow, I understand. It was lonely. Grieving. When we returned, it just—it wanted us to stay. And honestly, now that we’re here, I do want to stay. I feel at home here. I can feel Tata here. I can feel my own grandparents. I can’t explain it.”

“Whatever was here is gone. I’ve known this home long enough—it’s empty,” Rania says. “So it’s yours. If you want it.”

“It’s ours,” Marina repeats gently, but whether it is this revelation or the kindness in her voice, Haifa slides against the door to sit on the floor. She pulls her knees in. Silent tears fall, pooling on her face and dripping into her still-wet hair.

“It does feel like home. It does,” Haifa repeats.

“We’ll help however you need,” Khaled says softly. He kneels beside her.

“We can stay here,” Marina urges. She sits beside her mother, nudging her shoulder with her own. “Tariq told us to take care of it. It’s our job to protect the house now. It’s our responsibility.”

“Maybe. Maybe,” Haifa says, but she’s nodding. “Yes. Yes. Maybe.”

“We’ll change the locks. Barricade the doors.” Marina doesn’t know where this voice is coming from, but it is full-throated in its seriousness. Heat flushes her cheeks and she breathes heavily, an abundance of air flowing into her lungs with the idea. “What can they do?”

Haifa finally smiles. “Why not?”

“Yes,” Marina says, leaning her head against Haifa’s shoulder.

“Use your American passports,” Rania says. “Tell them you’re American.”

“But we have to bury Tariq first. Before we can say it’s ours. We’ll bury him next to your grandparents. His parents.” Marina holds her breath, but the house doesn’t move. She exhales. “I don’t care if they don’t let us. I don’t care if they need permits and paperwork first. We’ll just show up with shovels and they can try and stop us.”

“And I’ll change the locks.”

Marina sits back up and smiles at her mother. Haifa, for the first time in her life, doesn’t appear to be frazzled. Her cheeks are red and her eyes are still wet, but she looks surer about this than she ever has been about anything. Haifa pats her cheek.

“I need to take a bath. Get out of these wet clothes,” Marina says, standing. The weight of the storm leans heavily against her bones; there are sure to be robes in one of these closets.

“We need to get home,” Rania says, motioning to Khaled. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay with me?”

“We have to be here. There’s already a For Sale sign up in the window. We’ll rip it down, but they’re going to come back.” Marina shrugs. The plan is half formed, but the stones feel solid beneath her feet. “We’ll be prepared for whatever. We can buy it. We can squat here. Whatever.”

Haifa stands beside her. “I don’t think it’ll be that easy.”

“Yes, but you have us now. You have a home here.” Rania reaches for her hand. “We’ll figure it out together.”

“Do you want me to stay here tonight? Just in case?” Khaled looks between them, concern etched into his features.

“No. No, I think we’re safe here now.”

Marina and Haifa walk together to the door and bid Khaled and Rania good night. Though Marina knows she should feel some fear about staying in the house, she doesn’t. It really, truly is finally quiet. The haunted house of Haifa is no more.

“Good night,” Rania says over her shoulder. She takes Khaled’s arm as they descend the staircase, and in this departure, her lungs are finally weightless. There is no need to hold her breath as she walks from the house.

“Good night,” Marina says. “And … thank you.”

Haifa comes to stand beside Marina and through the open door streams the first light of dawn.

It’s a new day.

She watches as Rania and Khaled leave, and soon the taillights of their car sink into the soft blue. As they turn at the intersection, the car illuminates a man leaning on his cane. He brightens, then fades as the car disappears around the bend. Haifa is still haunted, but their home remains. For now, the storm has passed. The door clicks shut.

“I’m going to take a bath, okay?”

Haifa nods and lets go of her daughter. She walks to the kitchen and stands before the wallpaper. One hand reaches up and she pulls the thin material down, revealing the yellow underneath.

“I’ll be here,” she says.

Without knowing what she is looking for—but she does know, she does, it’s the same as when she went into the sea—Marina walks to the cupboard at the far end of the kitchen.

On the empty shelves stands a single item: an industrial-sized container of salt. Marina hoists it down into her arms, and tiny flakes come off on her fingertips. She carries it to the bathroom, and in the hallway shines the small glow of ghosts. Nuhad and Tariq, Basel and Victoria. They breathe, and fade. The walls are finally quiet.

As warm water fills the tub, she watches the salt fall like snow into the basin. It clouds the water at first and then clears as it dissipates.

She strips, examining herself in the mirror. She doesn’t recognize the girl in the mirror anymore. Her skin is still flushed with warmth; her face is more gaunt, with lines chiseling the angles of her chin and cheeks. But she doesn’t just look different. Marina feels different.

Her wavy hair is still partially weighed down by water and the drying streaks have left chalky imprints against her complexion. Everything looks heavy and yet feels light—her reflection melts before her eyes. She locks eyes with this person, rubbing a thumb over her lips, feeling familiarity and yet seeing strangeness.

In this mirror, looking at her most raw and vulnerable self, Marina feels complete. She takes a deep breath and lets her shoulders fall, satisfied with the amount. The dyspnea is gone, for now.

Marina steps into the tub. The water is still hot; steam rises from its surface and her skin reddens further as she submerges herself fully. Beneath the surface, everything is quiet. She opens her eyes in this cocoon, allowing the saltwater to consume her from the inside out.

Author’s Note

At the time I am writing this, we do not know how many have been murdered in Gaza. The numbers froze at about 60,000 after Israel killed the bookkeepers—and have updated to more than 71,000 in the time since then—but some estimates place the count around 300,000–680,000 between those outright murdered, those trapped under rubble, those killed by disease, those who were forcibly starved, and the many, many more whose lives should have been full had it not been for this genocide. None of us, truly, will ever be able to grasp the magnitude of this loss, but we will feel it like a gaping hollow left in the universe forever.

A part of my soul dies each time I see the statistics. Not a single one of these people was a number.

This book was a musing on what gets passed down amidst horrors, and how it echoes through time. And as the genocide continues in Gaza today, I think of what their future generations will carry. An inexplicable heaviness, an insurmountable loss. Genes to protect future bodies from learned starvation. My own family has lived through the long-standing history of Palestinian genocide, displacement, and occupation since 1948—my mother inherited her parents’ displacement and I inherited hers. I will never know my tata’s childhood home but I do know my mother’s stories from the 1967 war when she was only a child. And what will our children and grandchildren inherit from us?

We cannot begin to imagine what a future will look like when we collectively allow the present to continue as it has.

The land and people of Palestine are the most beautiful things in the world to me, but they are haunted by the past and violated by the present realities of occupation and genocide. If you go today, you will see the bullet holes in the old buildings. You will see the Israeli soldiers with automatic rifles strapped to their chests harassing Palestinian kids. You will enter the occupied cities and feel the wrongness everywhere. After a lifetime of visiting Palestine, horror was the only real vehicle to write through all of my anger and grief: it’s the most honest and true reflection of reality.

Thank you for reading my book. Oppression is linked everywhere: whether you are disabled, trans, Black, Latine, Palestinian, queer, an immigrant, a woman, a victim of ICE, neurodiverse, poor … and the list will go on forever and ever through time. For our parts, may we all do everything in our power to resist genocide and deepen our commitment to liberation for all.

Free Palestine.

Acknowledgments

Let me begin from a place of honesty: This was a difficult, emotional book to write, and I am so grateful to so many for their countless contributions. That the novel even made it to this point is something I will always be thankful for.

To Kristin, my US editor—thank you for feeling the heart and soul of this book and helping shape it with so much gentle care. To Nadia, my UK editor—thank you for seeing this book and for your endless passion to make it be seen in the same way by others. I honestly could not have asked for better editors, and I am endlessly grateful to both of you.

To the Nightfire coven, thank you for your immediate love for the book. Libby Collins, Saraciea Fennell, Jennifer McClelland-Smith, Michael Dudding, Valeria Castorena, Rafal Gibek, Jim Kapp, Sam Dauer, Shreya Gupta, Heather Saunders, and Greg Collins, thank you so much for your hard work on the novel. To the team at Orbit UK, thank you so much for the caring determination you all put into making this book become a reality. Massive thanks to Aimee Kitson, Nazia Khatun, Sophie Ellis, Serena Savini, Dominic Gilmour, and Anna Jackson.

To my powerhouse of an agent and an incredible human being, Alex Land, thank you for your endless faith in me and this book, and for all the trust you place in me.

This book would not have made it this far had it not been for Quillers SWANA, led by the incredible Alaa Al-Barkawi and Ahmad Addam. To my mentor, Trang Thanh Tran, thank you for wading through the absolute mess this book was and giving me the very sage advice of not revealing every single secret within the first three chapters.

To Zaena, my creative mirror who holds a piece of my heart in hers, thank you for reading every single sloppy first draft. To my dad, for having pride in me even before I ever earned it, and for being the most patient teacher.

I owe much of this book to my tata—you may never have known a free Palestine, but I hope your dreams can be made real for your descendants. I miss you. Thank you for guiding me through this book. To my family in Palestine, who have always infused fun and joy into every visit despite everything. Thank you for every meal, for every mini tour, for traveling across checkpoints for beach trips. To my mom, for sharing pieces of her Palestine with me and whose spirit is in this book just as much as mine.

To Youssef, thank you for being my endless light in the dark. Thank you for holding me as I wrote this book and through every day since 2023. Thank you for your love, and your passion, and every whispered belief. I love you.

And finally, to the readers. Thank you for picking this book up. Thank you for giving this story life.

About the Author

DEENA HELM is a mixed Palestinian American author, and Our Cut of Salt is her debut novel. Her other works can be found in Fikra and So to Speak. She asks that you, the reader, do everything in your power to resist genocide and deepen your commitment to liberation for all. You can sign up email updates here.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in this work are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

OUR CUT OF SALT

Copyright © 2026 by Deena Helm

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Cover design by Claire Sullivan

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First Edition: 2026