Tasting the Sky by Ibtisam Barakat Read Free Book Online Page A

grief, the boy willed himself to get up. He wiped his tears on his sleeve and said that he was fine. He wanted to play again. But his mother pushed him in front of her, and they both walked home. One moment
the woman thanked God for his safety, the next she cursed and wished the boy dead.
    Hearing about this incident, Mother became apprehensive. She couldn’t keep us indoors, nor could she make certain we would be safe outside. When Father arrived that evening, she had made up her mind. One month in Hamameh’s kitchen was enough. We had to move.
    Gazing at each of us for a moment, Father said he, too, was worried for us. But he had not earned enough money to move us out of Hamameh’s kitchen. And there were few homes available. The city of Amman was flooded with refugees like us who had fled during the war and could not return to their homes.
    Mother said she had heard that, after the war, the government of Jordan had turned many schools into temporary housing for West Bank refugees. The students would not return till September. So she insisted that we move to a school. We would have playgrounds, and she would not be preoccupied with our safety, she argued. Father agreed.
    The next day, Mother and Hamameh talked about our leaving. “Perhaps it won’t be long before we see Ramallah again,” Mother said. “Suleiman has already registered our family with the International Red Cross.” She raised up her hands in the gesture of a prayer. “The names of those who are granted permits will be announced on the radio. I will keep the radio on all day.”
    â€œBut all the cities are occupied now. Don’t you know what that means?” Hamameh protested. She bit her anxious lips between the words. “Will it ever be safe to go back?”

    Mother seemed troubled. But she was certain about one thing: we would return to Ramallah no matter how long the wait.
    Now the war sisters held each other’s faces; they would never forget. In silence deep as the sea of their sorrow, they kissed twice on the cheeks, then parted.
    And so we moved to the school. Mother said she missed talking with Hamameh. She wanted to see her. But I felt that even if she never saw her again, Hamameh’s name, like its Arabic meaning, “dove,” would always fly, glowing across the sky of Mother’s memories, leaving feather prints of a kindness birthed from the cruelty of war.
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    The school playground was filled with boys who kicked balls hard, tackled and punched one another, and fought as though they themselves were engaged in war. They broke many windows. Nothing got fixed. Day and night, the hot air streamed in and out of the brokenness. I lay inside on the tile floor and cooled my skin.
    While my brothers played with the boys, I explored the classroom that had become our home. A band of children joined me. The shelves had been emptied before we arrived, the chairs and tables pushed to the edges of the room to create space for sleeping. Blankets were heaped in a corner. Shoes piled up by the door like beetles. People mostly walked barefoot in the building. A blackboard covered the front wall from one end to the other.
    I wanted the chalk resting on the board’s edge. Other children wanted the chalk, too. We all jumped up, gripped
the board’s edge, and hung from it trying to reach the chalk above us. The board shook. We ran away quickly and squatted in the farthest corner of the room as the board tore off the wall and fell.
    The noise brought Mother and the other women running. They set the board upright against the wall, but kept it on the ground. Children then flew to the chalk sticks like bees to flowers. Hands reached over heads as everyone wanted to draw something. When Mother saw me scribbling with all my energy, she drew the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. “His name is Alef,” she instructed, returning the chalk to my hand. She asked me to draw him.
    Alef was a long