Read Online Tasting the Sky by Ibtisam Barakat - Free Book Online

The tiny dead fish inside the sardine cans seemed to be lying helpless, waiting for something, just as we were.
    My brothers and I were too worried to eat. We waited at the bridge for two days and kept looking in the direction where our dad had disappeared. We even refused the big chocolate bars a Red Cross worker secretly handed us after Mother told her that we had not eaten since we had arrived.
    The hours of waiting piled up like the flies that buzzed in the camp. Then someone shouted out a list of names that included ours. “And take off your shoes, for all shoes must be inspected,” the voice added. Barefoot and trembling, I stuck close to Mother. After a long wait, a man brought back a giant cart of mixed-up shoes and tossed them toward us. Everyone dove in to sort through the pile and find his own pair. I threw myself at mine and quickly put them on. When no shoes were left, the moment for us to cross the bridge finally arrived, and together my mother, brothers, sister, and I crossed over.
    We had been told not to wait for my father because it took longer to question the men. I wanted to wait for him no matter how long it took. But now that we had crossed the bridge, we were not allowed to cross back. I worried that he might be kept in Jordan. I tugged at Mother for answers. But she had none.
    On the other side of the bridge, Red Cross workers, wearing porcelain-smooth white helmets with red lines on them, looked like police as they offered us candy and said, “Welcome.” We walked past them silently, gazing at the older people who had crossed the bridge before us and now knelt and kissed the dust as though it were the cheek of
someone they loved. Then we walked to where lines of noisy buses in dust and smoke clouds awaited us.
    Drivers called out the names of many destination cities. We listened and waited. And when we heard someone call “Jerusalem-Ramallah,” my brothers and I charged onto the bus. We hurried to the backseat and stuck our faces against the glass, hoping to see across the bridge to where our father was. But the other side of the bridge had become hidden from us. Now we were in one country, our dad in another.
    The ride felt long, and the belly of the old bus growled and sputtered on the winding roads until we arrived in Jerusalem. We took a second bus to Ramallah. A third took us to the edge of the gravel road where every day I had waited for my father to return home from work.
    Now we would discover the answer to our most dreaded question: Had our house been destroyed? At first, we hesitated. We said the prayer of the desperate, “Ya rab!” asking God that He might be kind to our hopes. Then we raced toward the answer until it was before us. There, bathed in the setting October sun, was our house. Still standing.
    We dropped everything and rushed up to it. We touched it. We kissed the stones and threw open our arms and pressed our chests and cheeks to it. We were home.
    In the front yard, near the trench where we had hidden on the first day of the war, Mother picked up a large bullet, one that she believed had been aimed at her. And on the step in front of the green door, I found the shoe I had not
been able to put on. It had been lying there, waiting for me, for four months and thirteen days.
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    We walked around our house. Our summer garden had mostly dried up and died. Only the nana , spearmint, had survived. The birds had hollowed the tomatoes into shells. Ants trafficked in and out of the eggplants. The earth was dry and broken. The roofless room Father had built for water storage was open, its zinc sheet cover lying on the ground and the ladder thrown near it. The water supply had almost completely disappeared; what was left was covered with dust and dirt.
    The shutters and front window were open. Beyond the iron window bars, everything inside was quiet. A bird fluttered through the bars and flew out. We wondered whether snakes and scorpions had also nested in