The Blue Between Sky and Water Read Online Free PDF Page A

overcome the firepower of the highly trained Haganah, with their mechanized weaponry and fighter planes, which they had smuggled under British noses from Czechoslovakia in preparation for conquest. During the last attack in April, fifty women and children from Beit Daras were slaughtered in a single day, after which the men ordered their families to flee to Gaza, while they remained to fight. “Just until the hostilities subside,” they said. “Take enough things for a week or two.”
    Nazmiyeh hastily packed a bundle of food and belongings to last two weeks and set off toward the river to fetch Mariam. She made her way in the village, walking through walls of fear. The air was heavy, almost unbreathable, and people moved in fitful motions, as if unsure that one leg should follow the other. Women hurried with bundles balanced on heads and children hoisted on hips, pausing occasionally to adjust each. Children struggled to keep pace with their elders, who pulled them by the arms. Bewilderment carved lines in every face that Nazmiyeh passed, and despite the noise and chaos around her, she thought she could hear heartbeats pounding on chest walls.
    Near the river, the air became lighter and lifted off the ground, winding into tree branches and rustling leaves. The sky was a soft clear blue with lazy, idling clouds. Mariam sat against her rock, a boulder by the river she had carved her name into the day she learned to write it. Her wooden box of dreams lay next to her and her notebook was open in her lap. Nazmiyeh could see her lips moving, as if she were conversing with herself, even laughing, a pencil in hand.
    “There you are. Come, Mariam. We must go,” Nazmiyeh said. But Mariam continued in her conversation, as if she had not heard her sister.
    Nazmiyeh moved closer. “Who are you talking to, Mariam?”
    Mariam leapt to hug her sister. “Khaled,” Mariam answered, but Nazmiyeh, seeing no one, despaired that her sister was afflicted with the same madness that jumbled their mother’s world.
    “Mariam, is Khaled a djinni?”
    “No. He’s your grandson,” Mariam said.
    An explosive blast cracked the air.
    “We must go, Mariam. Did you hear that explosion? Get up now and come with me.” Nazmiyeh pulled her sister’s arm. Mariam gathered her things into her wooden box, as she sang the strange song Nazmiyeh had heard her sing before.

    O find me
    I’ll be in that blue
    Between sky and water
    Where all time is now
    And we are the forever
    Flowing like a river

    “Enough! It’s time to leave!” Nazmiyeh yelled. “The men will stay to fight and we will return as soon as the Jews are gone.”
    Enshallah . By Allah’s will.
    Back in the village, Mariam begged her sister to allow her to flee the following day with their neighbors who were also going to Gaza. “ Minshan Allah , please, Nazmiyeh,” she pleaded, adding that she wanted more time with her mother and Mamdouh and Atiyeh, who were staying to defend the village if the Jews came back. Unsure and confused as everyone was, Nazmiyeh reluctantly agreed. The neighbors were leaving early the next morning and promised to take Mariam with them, enshallah.
    So Nazmiyeh set off with her husband’s family, her sister to follow her with the neighbors, her brother and husband staying to fight, and her mother also remaining so Sulayman would be in Beit Daras to help. Without her family to watch over, Nazmiyeh walked with others in the trek toward Gaza, deafened by the screams of her heart wanting to go back and get Mariam.
    The next morning, when the neighbor family awoke, Mariam had already left. She had told their daughter in the middle of the night that she was leaving with Nazmiyeh after all. Instead, she had gone to the outskirts of the village to hide in her best hide-and-seek spot, the small shelf inside the water well, just big enough to fit a small crouching child with her wooden box of dreams, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and a small bag of bread and cheese.