The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa Read Free Book Online Page A

tears. She reached out her arms, slowly taking her crying child to her breast, and he latched on with a ferocity that first repulsed Nazmiyeh. But soon, her son’s suckling created a rhythm that spilled through her until she was a river, fluid and calm. She rocked herself in a languid cadence of maternity, mesmerized by the attachment of his mouth to her breast. Her body continued swaying, mother and son becoming one, and quiet tears dampened her cheeks. Atiyeh took her hand, and his fingers danced with hers, as they had done in an irretrievable time and place on the first Thursday of each month.
    Later, she spoke to Mariam. “Please stay with me, sister.”

    Sometimes Nazmiyeh would ask Mariam to give her a sign that she was still there. “I will never doubt it, sister,” she said, nine months pregnant with her fourth child as she crouched bathing the first three, each separated by ten months in age. They were all boys and with every new pregnancy, Nazmiyeh prayed for the girl she was destined to name Alwan. “Maybe give me a sign, sister.” Occasionally she would open Mariam’s wooden box and leaf through the papers, which bore writing she could not understand. These were times when Nazmiyeh wished she could read. She would put them back gingerly, careful not to tear anything, and place the box on her highest shelf, out of her children’s reach, protected between rows of folded clothing.
    By the time she delivered her fifth boy, the pain of childbirth had become akin to the chill of winter or the sweat of summer, sometimes difficult to bear, but well known and dealt with. She paced, squatted, and pushed repeatedly until the child was ready and the midwife could pull it out. Nazmiyeh held her breath. “What is it?” she asked. Another boy. She inhaled the room’s stale air and closed her face, eyes tight, forehead furrowed, thinking of the next preganancy she’d have to endure soon, until her daughter, Alwan, could be born. She slowly exhaled her disappointment and asked Allah that the next one be a girl.

FOURTEEN
    The beekeeper’s widow was related to us only by love. This childless woman was happy anywhere, as long as she could dig her hands into a fertile earth, let life-giving dirt live under her nails, and talk to the plants she grew.

    Mamdouh stared at his ration booklet, issued by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which indicated he was the head of household. But there was no house and there was nothing to hold. He lived in a tent he shared with his sister Nazmiyeh, her husband, Atiyeh, their children, and Atiyeh’s parents. But Mamdouh was rarely there. For much of the first two years after they were forced from Beit Daras, he slept on the sand of Gaza’s shore under a canopy of stars. He found work as an assistant to a local blacksmith and gave one third of his earnings to Nazmiyeh and one third to the old beekeeper’s widow. He thought it was the right thing to do to honor the man who had been a surrogate father. There was another reason. During the years he had spent as the apprentice, Mamdouh and the beekeeper’s youngest daughter, Yasmine, had fallen in love. They had never spoken of it, and certainly never acted on it, for she had been betrothed and then married. Even after her husband had been killed by the Jews, she and Mamdouh had communicated their feelings only in rare glances, when he would arrive to give money to her stepmother.
    The beekeeper’s widow was a cheerful woman who loved to cook, and that remained unchanged despite war, dispossession, widowhood, and poverty. She was the beekeeper’s third wife, not much older than Yasmine herself. And though the two young women had not cared for one another in better times, they became bound by their past as the only two survivors of their family after the war, and they made a tender home together from shared wounds, loss, and the widow’s love of food. Her days were spent cooking and securing the best ingredients for