Read Online The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa - Free Book Online
Authors: Susan Abulhawa
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beg her mother’s forgiveness. Nazmiyeh smiled, inviting them in for tea.
“Um Mazen, my son told me what he said, and I came here to tell you two things. First, to finish beating my son if you want. Second, that he heard no such thing from my home. It was the old midwife. She said in front of my son that when she delivered Mazen, you screamed he was the son of the devil,” the woman said.
“ Tfadalo , sisters.” Nazmiyeh served the tea. “I will deal with the midwife when my husband and sons are back.”
The homecoming Atiyeh and his sons had come to expect was replaced this time with business urgency. The mukhtar of the town had been summoned to settle the matter of the midwife’s terrible gossip and Atiyeh’s arrival was eagerly awaited.
The men convened. Atiyeh, the mukhtar, the midwife’s husband, and several elders. The meeting began with coffee and an expression of repentance from the midwife’s husband. He assured Atiyeh that he had put his wife in her place and regretted her tongue that had dishonored them both. To rectify, he offered Atiyeh one of his wife’s gold bangles. They hadn’t much else to give. The mukhtar recommended that Atiyeh accept the offering, which would end the dispute, and he did. They shook hands, embraced, and greeted each cheek of the other in brotherhood, and the meeting ended with tea and sweets. The next day, Nazmiyeh went to the market, her wrist exposed with a new gold bangle, which she flaunted for a week to teach the old midwife a lesson before giving it back, a magnanimous gesture that earned Nazmiyeh the respect and eternal loyalty of the midwife.
No one dared utter a word on the matter again, and the midwife denied ever having had an ill thought about Nazmiyeh. People quickly forgot about it, but doubt was planted in young Mazen’s heart and it would germinate in him a deep sense of solitude and a quiet but fierce impulse of national resistance. He stopped going on the fishing trips and became his mother’s protector.
SEVENTEEN
Teta Nazmiyeh’s legs would sometimes buckle and she’d have to stop whatever she was doing until movement returned to them. This sudden paralysis usually lasted only a few minutes, sometimes a few days. A traditional medicine woman told her not to worry. She said angels were watching over her, that arresting her legs was their way of protecting her from walking into harm. My teta believed it, sure that Mariam was her angel, and proof came during the Six-Day War.
When Nazmiyeh was carrying her tenth son, in 1967, Israel attacked Egypt, igniting a war that would last only six days and would bring a new generation of Zionist soldiers parading triumphantly into her life. The first one she saw up close wore thick-rimmed black glasses, an irrelevant innocence misplaced in malevolent militarism. His young face was infected with power and coated with the filth of invasion as he pointed his rifle with forbidding authority. Atiyeh and their older sons had been rounded up and taken away in a truck with other men. So, Nazmiyeh was alone with her terrified small children clinging to her caftan when her eyes set upon the soldier and he barked orders at her to walk along. Seized by a dormant rage that provoked her to rush in attack, her legs went limp and she fell to the ground before the soldier could fire at her. Her legs simply folded beneath her. It would be three years before she could walk again. Now forty years old, Nazmiyeh was certain that Mariam had intervened to save her, for she surely would have been shot. Neighbors lifted and carried her to a designated zone while helmeted soldiers in ominous uniforms and tall boots, identical sons of a Zionist bitch, ransacked and looted their homes, raped and killed, burned the land, and renewed the glory of Arab degradation.
The humiliation of that war soaked into their skins. Everyone staggered about drenched in another loss, new rage, and revived fear. People watched on their televisions as this
“Um Mazen, my son told me what he said, and I came here to tell you two things. First, to finish beating my son if you want. Second, that he heard no such thing from my home. It was the old midwife. She said in front of my son that when she delivered Mazen, you screamed he was the son of the devil,” the woman said.
“ Tfadalo , sisters.” Nazmiyeh served the tea. “I will deal with the midwife when my husband and sons are back.”
The homecoming Atiyeh and his sons had come to expect was replaced this time with business urgency. The mukhtar of the town had been summoned to settle the matter of the midwife’s terrible gossip and Atiyeh’s arrival was eagerly awaited.
The men convened. Atiyeh, the mukhtar, the midwife’s husband, and several elders. The meeting began with coffee and an expression of repentance from the midwife’s husband. He assured Atiyeh that he had put his wife in her place and regretted her tongue that had dishonored them both. To rectify, he offered Atiyeh one of his wife’s gold bangles. They hadn’t much else to give. The mukhtar recommended that Atiyeh accept the offering, which would end the dispute, and he did. They shook hands, embraced, and greeted each cheek of the other in brotherhood, and the meeting ended with tea and sweets. The next day, Nazmiyeh went to the market, her wrist exposed with a new gold bangle, which she flaunted for a week to teach the old midwife a lesson before giving it back, a magnanimous gesture that earned Nazmiyeh the respect and eternal loyalty of the midwife.
No one dared utter a word on the matter again, and the midwife denied ever having had an ill thought about Nazmiyeh. People quickly forgot about it, but doubt was planted in young Mazen’s heart and it would germinate in him a deep sense of solitude and a quiet but fierce impulse of national resistance. He stopped going on the fishing trips and became his mother’s protector.
SEVENTEEN
Teta Nazmiyeh’s legs would sometimes buckle and she’d have to stop whatever she was doing until movement returned to them. This sudden paralysis usually lasted only a few minutes, sometimes a few days. A traditional medicine woman told her not to worry. She said angels were watching over her, that arresting her legs was their way of protecting her from walking into harm. My teta believed it, sure that Mariam was her angel, and proof came during the Six-Day War.
When Nazmiyeh was carrying her tenth son, in 1967, Israel attacked Egypt, igniting a war that would last only six days and would bring a new generation of Zionist soldiers parading triumphantly into her life. The first one she saw up close wore thick-rimmed black glasses, an irrelevant innocence misplaced in malevolent militarism. His young face was infected with power and coated with the filth of invasion as he pointed his rifle with forbidding authority. Atiyeh and their older sons had been rounded up and taken away in a truck with other men. So, Nazmiyeh was alone with her terrified small children clinging to her caftan when her eyes set upon the soldier and he barked orders at her to walk along. Seized by a dormant rage that provoked her to rush in attack, her legs went limp and she fell to the ground before the soldier could fire at her. Her legs simply folded beneath her. It would be three years before she could walk again. Now forty years old, Nazmiyeh was certain that Mariam had intervened to save her, for she surely would have been shot. Neighbors lifted and carried her to a designated zone while helmeted soldiers in ominous uniforms and tall boots, identical sons of a Zionist bitch, ransacked and looted their homes, raped and killed, burned the land, and renewed the glory of Arab degradation.
The humiliation of that war soaked into their skins. Everyone staggered about drenched in another loss, new rage, and revived fear. People watched on their televisions as this
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