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

line that stood vertically and ended with a round circle. It looked like a Popsicle, a dandelion, a sunflower, a streetlamp, or a man with a hat on his head, like my dad in winter. I thought Alef lived inside chalk sticks. Because I wanted to be friends with Alef, I took a piece of chalk with me wherever I went.
    In no time, I loved Alef with all my heart and also blamed him for anything I did not like or understand. When I wet my bed at night, I blamed him for not waking me up. When I dropped my plate, scattering food everywhere, it was Alef who had tripped me. When I got mad at Alef, I drew him on the board and left him there screaming for me to forgive him and come back. He put his fingers across his lips, indicating that he wouldn’t do again whatever he’d done. I left him but quickly returned. I could not stay away from Alef long, but he did not know that.
    I introduced Alef to my father when he came to see us after
days of absence. At Mother’s urging, Father had taken additional work at night to save up money. He had also found a new home for us in an area called Marka. That very day we left the school. But unlike the baby donkey, Souma, whom I loved but had never seen after we left the shelter, Alef, my chalk pet, could come with me—tucked into my pocket.
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    A man in a red-and-white headdress met us outside our new home. He led us in and gave us the key. Mother smiled at Father, who in turn reminded the man that, if we were allowed to return to Ramallah, we would leave with only a day’s notice. The man agreed.
    Our new home was only a single room. Mother set up a kitchen in one corner and marked it with my chalk. We were to stay out of the kitchen.
    The paint on the walls and ceiling was peeling, paint chips tumbling to the floor like dried-up petals, resembling the leaves falling from the September trees outside. I helped Mother by collecting the paint flakes, keeping them in my pockets, then tossing them to the wind.
    Our room’s window overlooked the shops at the center of Marka. We watched people come and go. In only a few days we could recognize the recurring faces. The coffee shop, with its two tiny tables and many chairs, drew the men who played card games, chess, and backgammon, and threw dice. When their games were done, they leaned back and smoked water pipes called nargilehs.
    They breathed in and out of the long pipes that came out of bubble-filled glass jars sitting on the ground before
them. The pipes were decorated with gold, red, yellow, and green threads and beaded like holiday clothes. We stuck straws in water cups to imitate water-pipe smoking. But Father chastised us. He did not want us ever to smoke.
    The grocery store that shared a wall with the coffee shop was too packed for any shopper to enter. Cases of lentils, chickpeas, rice, beans, and dried foods obstructed the entrance. Shoppers stood outside and asked for what they needed. Two balanced brass plates made up the scales. Iron pieces a kilogram or half a kilogram on one plate indicated the weight of the food on the other.
    We purchased flour from this store. But when we opened the sack, a gray mouse ran out of it. The shopkeeper said he could not guarantee the absence of mice. We kept the flour.
    Early mornings, Mother prepared the dough for our bread. She sifted flour, mixed it with water, salt, and yeast, and pounded it together. When she let it rest, we would poke our fingers into the dough to draw faces. Father then took the flat loaves to be baked in the community oven. But the bread he brought home had none of the faces we’d drawn. I wondered what had happened to them.
    Daily we ate lentils, the only meal we could afford. My brothers and I hated lentils. They sat on our aluminum plates like mouse eyes, and we wished they would scamper off like the mouse that ran out of the flour sack.
    Mother warned of illnesses that befell children who did not eat their lentils and of ghosts that stalked them in