Alia watched the war on the television in Widad and Ghazi’s living room. Unlike Umm Omar’s, their television was new, the screen slick and orb-like. Four knobs adorned the right side, the largest for sound. Ghazi set the volume, twisting it up high, and when the image quivered with static, he was the one who rose heavily from his armchair to fix it. Watching Ghazi swivel the antenna wands, it would occur to Alia that those fat hands had traversed her sister’s naked body.
Widad busied herself during the news reports. She clanked her knitting needles against each other, rose abruptly for cups of tea. Irritation scraped Alia as her sister asked repeatedly whether anyone wanted dinner or fruit. Even when Widad finally sat, her back never touched the sofa cushions, her feet remained arched over the floor, as though she might spring up at any second. Alia sat still as a stone. Whatever biscuits or oranges Widad brought languished untouched beside her. Tension clamped her jaw, congealed her muscles. Every few hours she willed her fingers over the telephone, dialing the numbers of Atef, of Mustafa, listening to awful, endless ringing.
Only Ghazi spoke. He seemed excited by the war; there was an edge to his thrill, almost a satisfaction. Alia gathered from his commentary that he’d predicted such an outcome, that these sentiments were well worn.
“I’ve said it and said it, this was a long time coming. Nasser and his men walking around with their chests puffed out, thinking they’re peacocks. Scattered men. What kind of leader promises victory with scattered men? An Arab republic. Ha! Look at this—some American money and here’s Israel’s shiny new toys. What do we have? Flags, songs, dreams. They’re going to obliterate us.” His enormous body trembled with the force of his words.
Fury rose in Alia’s throat each time Ghazi spoke. Swallowing was a measured task. Alia had grown up with angry men—Mustafa, his schoolmates, her uncles, all crowding for protests swathed with Palestinian flags, shouting at gatherings late into the night.
And now war had come, snatches of it harvested in Widad and Ghazi’s living room. But it was wrong, horribly wrong. The newscasters spoke of an Arab victory, but no crest of Arab military was approaching, no waving of the green, red, black, and white flags. Alia’s packed suitcase remained in Widad’s guest bedroom, upright, like an eager child. She would not be returning home. On the third day, tanks rolled into the Old City. Although none of them could have known it, Mustafa and Atef were arrested soon after, when the Israelis entered Nablus, during a sweep of young men affiliated with the mosque. As the fourth day came and went, the Sinai Peninsula fell to the wrong men. The tanks razing through Gaza, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights—even Nablus, even Nablus—and the jets screeching over the Mediterranean, they had not Arabic lettering on their sides but chalky six-tipped stars. The Israelis were winning. And for Alia, who had believed the Arabs would conquer, whose only concern was keeping the men she loved on the sidelines, the sweeping victory was inconceivable.
“It’s gone. Palestine is gone. The fools. They saved nothing,” Ghazi said on the sixth day as the sun rose to reveal bodies tossed in ditches. Alia listened dully now. When she dialed, the telephone lines still rang. By sunset that day, Alia no longer startled at the televised images of dropped bombs, the debris clouds swelling out into frothy edges, like something edible.
The same memory assaulted her while she watched the news reports:
When Alia was five or six, Mustafa found a chick in the schoolyard during a rainstorm. The creature was slick with rain, shivering. He fashioned a home from Salma’s old hatbox, patiently shredding paper to line it while the chick warmed in his shoe near the radiator. Alia sat by her brother’s side, both of them silent as he worked. Every few minutes she bent over the shoe, peering at the quivering bird. Her fingers itched to touch the matted feathers, but she restrained herself. It felt like an honor, sitting by her brave, handsome brother while wind battered the windows with rain.
The hatbox seemed to Alia resplendent, snug, with snowlike carpet and bits of lettuce Mustafa stole from the kitchen. Mustafa lifted the chick from his shoe, knelt beside Alia.
“Do you want to hold him?”
Alia nodded. Her throat caught, making it tricky to speak. She curved her hands, and Mustafa lowered the bird into them.
“Careful,” he breathed.
The bird shivered violently, his heart palpitating beneath Alia’s fingers. Tiny bead eyes, translucent beak. The claws dug pleasantly into Alia’s palm. Pale yellow stood out in tufts, the downy feathers frizzing as they dried. Alia held her breath, forced herself still. It seemed that if she moved she would break him.
“You can pet him,” Mustafa assured her. Alia looked up at her brother, her heart pounding. He nodded.
“It’s okay, birdie,” she said and stroked carefully, the skull solid beneath her forefinger. Mustafa smiled at her, his teeth straight and white and beautiful. Alia felt big, bigger than ever before, the chick’s heartbeat calming in her palm.
The bird, Mustafa, bombs, Atef, Nablus.
That almost-week jumbled everything as Alia sat before the television, images searing her hour after hour. Her mind raced. She was parched, but whatever she drank tasted sour. When Widad called them to dinner, Alia had to force her teeth over the meat, the spinach. When they returned to the living room, the images on the television seemed stolen from another time. The men’s faces, brown, dirty, the features so alike, they could’ve been photocopied.
She kept her body still. It had never occurred to her before how similar they looked, the two men. To each other, and to the men in uniforms. Once they were broken down into parts, she could see how those parts could be ignored or hated—grimy faces, dark eyes, beards.
On the fifth day of the war, President Nasser’s face was drawn and somber as he told Alia and the rest of the world it was over. The Arabs had lost. Reels of Israeli soldiers pointing their rifles at truckfuls of captured Arab soldiers played over and over. The prisoners held their hands up, looking childlike and absurd without their weapons, just sweaty men, the same men who had played war as children in neighborhoods just like Alia’s. Then, as now, the captured didn’t speak, kept their heads bowed; the victors ran around waving their guns, imaginary or real, heavenward, spraying celebratory bullets to the sky.
Widad peeled potatoes during Nasser’s resignation speech and the reels of captures. After the images of grinning Israelis looped around for the fourth time, Ghazi rose and clicked off the television.
“Well,” he said to the blackened screen, grimly. “Well.”
Nobody said Mustafa’s name, or Atef’s. It was clear there were more capture sites, dozens, maybe hundreds more. And the dead bodies, the piles of corpses feasted on by flies, stacked in the desert—the camera had whizzed by them, Alia’s eyes neither fast nor willing enough to scan for faces.
She sat in the yard for hours that evening. The June night was muggy and hot, but she didn’t move. Above her head the sky was clear, stars like salt tumbled onto a tablecloth. She tried to count them but finally gave up.