Tasting the Sky Read Online Free PDF

roadsides and begged for rides. Some walked in resignation or tried to wade through the shallow water under the trembling bridge.
    Word was that there were shelters in Zarqa, Amman, Al-Salt, and other Jordanian cities. Many families were opening their homes to receive West Bank refugees. Mother and the driver’s wife wept upon hearing this.
    â€œThere is still good in the world,” Mother exclaimed.
    â€œGod does not forget anyone,” Hamameh affirmed. It seemed that we were close to safety.
    â€œWe made it!” the driver announced the moment we crossed the bridge. He thanked God with a quick prayer. But even though we had entered Jordan, we could still hear warplanes right above us. Then they started to fire.
    Our truck rocketed forward at a dizzying speed, as though fear were its only fuel. Other vehicles raced parallel to us and formed many lanes on the narrow paved road. A giant dust cloud quickly enveloped all the vehicles and made it impossible for us to see what was happening to those behind us. But I knew that my father and the men on the back of our truck were holding on to its bars as though their arms were made of steel.
    It was afternoon when we arrived in Al-Salt City. At the
entrance of a shelter for women and children, Mother flung open the door of the truck and the nine of us, Hamameh and her three children, Mother and my sister, my brothers, and I, burst out, all sighing in relief. Our driver, Father, and the other men said they must leave us and go volunteer their help where it was needed. The driver asked his wife not to worry about him. And Father, who now sat beside the driver, told Mother he would come see us or find a way to send us word every chance he got. He held an arm out the window, and my brothers and I hung from it until the driver started up. Then we jumped off the truck step. But Father kept his arm out the window waving to us, and we waved back as long as we could—until the white water tanker finally disappeared into the distance.

Souma
    The shelter was a three-story stone house. Before we entered, Mother said that she was unsure whether Maha was still breathing. “She’s been silent for so long; I don’t have the courage to find out if she’s alive,” Mother confessed. Without saying a word, Hamameh reached down to my sister’s nose. She pinched and held it briefly. To our stunned surprise, Maha coughed and then cried.
    We fought our way into the shelter, which wasn’t much more than a box of strangers packed in like sardines. Every few minutes, sirens went off. “Khatar, khatar,” voices would shout. People would run up the stairs, then run down howling news about fires and bombings they’d seen from the second- and third-floor windows.
    The sirens were warnings before or after bombardment,
and they were always followed by a silent moment of nauseating anticipation of the destruction of our shelter. My brothers and my mother, Hamameh and her children all joined in the stair madness.
    I hung on to my brothers and hopped along until I could no longer tolerate the pain of being elbowed or shoved or having someone step on my injured feet. The cuts I had from running barefoot had begun to swell, making it more and more difficult for me to walk.
    I decided to sit in a corner of the basement. And there, standing almost invisibly in a cloud of dark and quietness, was a baby donkey. At first I could not believe my eyes. For one brief moment, the surprise made me forget everything else. I raised my arms and touched his face; he remained still. I spoke to him; he looked at me and listened. I knelt on the ground and pulled him toward me. He did not resist. I named him Souma and embraced him with my whole heart.
    I stayed with Souma until the air raids subsided. But then the howling of stray dogs began. The war had awakened their pack instinct. They came to the city searching for food and corners to hide in. They sniffed, clawed, grunted,