Tasting the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

and Muhammad sliced through everybody until they ended up spread across the tanker’s windshield. I took myself to the door handle. People pushed me away repeatedly, but I kept climbing until I had my hand on it. I pressed my face fiercely against the window and waited for Mother to reach me with her voice. When she called my name, I could see that she had been right behind me all the time and, to keep me on the step, had been supporting my weight with her body.
    Looking inside, I saw the driver, his wife, and three children. They were piled up on one another, staring at all the mad faces that surrounded them. I could see my father’s face
pressed against the opposite window. He was unleashing a stream of curses, asking the driver to let us inside with his family, and to let as many people as possible hang on to the tanker for the journey to Jordan. Then pointing to a man who was aiming a gun at the truck’s front tires, Father warned that if the driver did not consent, the man would shoot.
    How could he open the door? the driver pleaded. People would force him and his family out, take the tanker, and leave. My father promised this would not happen. The driver hesitated—until we all heard the thundering of renewed bombardment.
    Then the driver beckoned to his wife. The door opened a crack—and Mother, my brothers, and I instantly swirled around and shoved ourselves into the seat. The driver’s wife, now with three children crying in her lap, looked into Mother’s face and cursed. Trembling, she reached over to the door and locked it.
    Reciting a short prayer, the driver pressed his hands against his face as though to comfort himself, then hit the horn until everyone in front of the truck moved aside. He announced that we would be moving nonstop until we reached Jordan. I did not know how long the drive to Jordan would take, but I hoped our time in the tanker would be short. My feet pulsed madly. As everyone pushed and tugged against one another, I ended up with my head pressed to the glass of the tiny window behind the seat.
    My father was on the other side of the glass. But now he was holding a metal peg, which he used to knock on the water
tank. He called to the driver that two knocks would be the signal to slow down so the men wouldn’t fall off, and three knocks the signal to stop. The driver nodded.
    The scattered sounds of bombardment made me jump each time I heard them. They also made the driver increase his speed. But whenever he did, Father slowed him down by knocking twice. Other men joined in, knocking twice with their hands to make sure the driver heard. The driver alternated his responses to them—first curses, then prayers for the time when he would be rid of us.
    The men also burst into a clamor each time a plane zoomed above us. I could feel their voices washing over us like a giant wave that left me soaked in anxiety. But I kept my eyes on my father, who had become the solid center of my world.
    The teeming tanker now rattled as it struggled to move as quickly as it could away from war. The driver reminded us over and over not to press too hard against the windows and doors. In no time Mother and the driver’s wife, who said her name was Hamameh, began to speak as though they were friends. Hamameh invited Mother to visit her when the war was over and we all returned home. “Bring your children and come spend a day,” she said.
    Now, surrounded by the warm, womanly voices and calmed by the tanker’s rocking motion, I fell asleep.
    I jumped awake with the noises of many vehicles beeping, children crying, people shouting across a huge crowd, all swirled in dust and chaos. We were approaching the
bridge over the Jordan River. Once we crossed it, we would be leaving the West Bank behind us.
    Countless vehicles, bursting with people like ours, were trying to cross this bridge. Groups of fleeing people, carrying their belongings in knotted blankets, waited on the