thought of,” he said. “It’s a little spot that you tickle and then you feel it all over your body.”
“No, you don’t! Where?”
“It’s a secret. Do you know how to keep a secret? Or are you the kind of little girl that tattles?”
“No way. I never tattle. I’m the best secret keeper.” She remembered her list. Keeper of Seekrets.
TWENTY-FOUR
Teta Nazmiyeh woke up one morning in the smog of the previous night, the specters of a terrible dream still clinging to her. In the caverns of sleep, she had walked back to Beit Daras, this time in search of Nur. She found Mariam as before, maneuvered the walls to hide them completely as she could only do in a dream, and said, “This time, we will outsmart them.” Then Mariam pointed to an open field hemmed with smoke rising from burning life. A small child stood in the center. “It’s Nur,” Mariam said. A woman appeared next to her, seated with a phone receiver at her ear, and a man came to undress Nur, fondling her indecently. In the dream Nazmiyeh instinctively leapt across the distance from wall to field, to save Nur. But the soldiers hidden in memory entered, reenacting an old trauma. She sat up in bed when the gun rang out and Mariam fell. My jiddo Atiyeh held her in their bed. “I couldn’t outsmart them. Mariam is dead again and Nur is alone and frightened,” she sobbed, pursued by the dream.
Nur’s Third-grade report card arrived studded with gold stars. Sam read it aloud. “It says, ‘Nur is a remarkably bright little girl. I am impressed by her reading and writing skills, which exceed her grade level. I would like to propose that she move into the fourth-grade reading class.”
Pride danced on Nur’s face, but then something else immobilized it when her mother reacted. “That’s nice. I was a good student in school, too. So you must get that from me. You don’t need that fancy school anyway. I went to public school and so can you. Won’t that be nice? You can be just like me.”
The thing that lived in Nur’s belly moved.
“Now that the tuition from the trust is coming to me, we can put that money to better use, for things we really need,” her mother added.
Tears rose up and Nur went to her room so no one would call her a crybaby. She remained in her room for hours, listening to the house beyond her door. Her mother’s chatter on the phone. The big-ass television. Sam. The two of them doing what they did in their bedroom. She put her hands over her ears. She thought about the fourth-grade reading class. Of an old man’s voice in her head, Words are so important, Nur. She looked around her room, attentive to irregularities in the paint, slight layers of dust settling on the surfaces of furniture, wrinkles in the curtain, smudges on the door, and details in the fabric of her dress. And a while later, she heard her mother leave.
Then, there was quiet. The quiet of a spooned-out hole in the heart. She pulled out her secret book, untied the blue ribbon, and stared at her list. Stared hard. A void meandered and grew in her belly until two large, bold words rose up, and she added them to her list. There, just under “Never Tattle” and “Never Squeal,” Nur wrote “Dirty” and “Bad.”
She put her book away, walked out of her room, and went into her mother’s bedroom, where she knew Sam was waiting for her.
TWENTY-FIVE
History took us away from our rightful destiny. But with Nur, life hurled her so far that nothing around her resembled anything Palestinian, not even the dislocated lives of exiles. So it was ironic that her life reflected the most basic truth of what it means to be Palestinian, dispossessed, disinherited, and exiled. That to be alone in the world without a family or a clan or land or country means that one must live at the mercy of others. There are those who might take pity and those who will exploit and harm. One lives by the whims of the host, rarely treated with the dignity of a person, nearly always
“No, you don’t! Where?”
“It’s a secret. Do you know how to keep a secret? Or are you the kind of little girl that tattles?”
“No way. I never tattle. I’m the best secret keeper.” She remembered her list. Keeper of Seekrets.
TWENTY-FOUR
Teta Nazmiyeh woke up one morning in the smog of the previous night, the specters of a terrible dream still clinging to her. In the caverns of sleep, she had walked back to Beit Daras, this time in search of Nur. She found Mariam as before, maneuvered the walls to hide them completely as she could only do in a dream, and said, “This time, we will outsmart them.” Then Mariam pointed to an open field hemmed with smoke rising from burning life. A small child stood in the center. “It’s Nur,” Mariam said. A woman appeared next to her, seated with a phone receiver at her ear, and a man came to undress Nur, fondling her indecently. In the dream Nazmiyeh instinctively leapt across the distance from wall to field, to save Nur. But the soldiers hidden in memory entered, reenacting an old trauma. She sat up in bed when the gun rang out and Mariam fell. My jiddo Atiyeh held her in their bed. “I couldn’t outsmart them. Mariam is dead again and Nur is alone and frightened,” she sobbed, pursued by the dream.
Nur’s Third-grade report card arrived studded with gold stars. Sam read it aloud. “It says, ‘Nur is a remarkably bright little girl. I am impressed by her reading and writing skills, which exceed her grade level. I would like to propose that she move into the fourth-grade reading class.”
Pride danced on Nur’s face, but then something else immobilized it when her mother reacted. “That’s nice. I was a good student in school, too. So you must get that from me. You don’t need that fancy school anyway. I went to public school and so can you. Won’t that be nice? You can be just like me.”
The thing that lived in Nur’s belly moved.
“Now that the tuition from the trust is coming to me, we can put that money to better use, for things we really need,” her mother added.
Tears rose up and Nur went to her room so no one would call her a crybaby. She remained in her room for hours, listening to the house beyond her door. Her mother’s chatter on the phone. The big-ass television. Sam. The two of them doing what they did in their bedroom. She put her hands over her ears. She thought about the fourth-grade reading class. Of an old man’s voice in her head, Words are so important, Nur. She looked around her room, attentive to irregularities in the paint, slight layers of dust settling on the surfaces of furniture, wrinkles in the curtain, smudges on the door, and details in the fabric of her dress. And a while later, she heard her mother leave.
Then, there was quiet. The quiet of a spooned-out hole in the heart. She pulled out her secret book, untied the blue ribbon, and stared at her list. Stared hard. A void meandered and grew in her belly until two large, bold words rose up, and she added them to her list. There, just under “Never Tattle” and “Never Squeal,” Nur wrote “Dirty” and “Bad.”
She put her book away, walked out of her room, and went into her mother’s bedroom, where she knew Sam was waiting for her.
TWENTY-FIVE
History took us away from our rightful destiny. But with Nur, life hurled her so far that nothing around her resembled anything Palestinian, not even the dislocated lives of exiles. So it was ironic that her life reflected the most basic truth of what it means to be Palestinian, dispossessed, disinherited, and exiled. That to be alone in the world without a family or a clan or land or country means that one must live at the mercy of others. There are those who might take pity and those who will exploit and harm. One lives by the whims of the host, rarely treated with the dignity of a person, nearly always
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