Ajit drives past the city center, past the roads where the royals live. The globes of palace turrets rise into the night sky, lit from within, grotesquely beautiful. Inside, Alia imagines, servants are clearing massive tables, silver bowls of rice and camel meat and fruit, the princes and princesses lounging in airy, gilded rooms.
When Alia first arrived, Widad told her stories about the Bedouin, how a mere thirty, forty years ago, none of this had existed, none of the villa compounds or courtyards or even the pearl-hued mosques. Men, women, children—all had traveled from dune to dune, enveloped in linen cloth as armor against the sun, walked the scalding sand for days. Some royals had servants who carried their dwellings on aching backs until they arrived at an oasis—lustrous fabrics swelling into tents beneath the trees. The miraculous trees. When they prayed, Widad said, they did so by the slant of the sun, no muezzin audible for miles. If there was no spare water, they did their ablutions with sand, rubbing their wrists and feet with handfuls of the clear, rough grains.
As the car moves to the city outskirts, Alia thinks of the palaces. For the younger generation, nothing is lost. But the elders—Alia feels a pang of sorrow for the older generation, the men and women who still remember the desert before all the construction. It reminds her of the aunts and uncles in Nablus who spoke of a Palestine before the big war, before soldiers and exodus. Easier, she thinks, to remember nothing, to enter a world already changed, than have it transform before your eyes. In the palaces, the grandparents must sit in their extravagant rooms, remembering sand.
Nostalgia is an affliction. Someone said that once in front of Alia, and the words reach her now, years later. Like a fever or a cancer, the longing for what had vanished wasting a person away. Not just the unbearable losses, but the small things as well. Alia thinks of her bedroom in Nablus. The seashells she filled with bobby pins. The tangerine dress she’d bought right before her trip to Kuwait and never worn. Photographs, necklaces, the glasses and silver ibrik her mother had given her.
You cannot forget them in your grief.
The lot in front of the beach is empty and dark, eerily lit by two streetlamps. The smell of the sea gusts into the open window. Ajit pulls in across from a boarded-up shack with a sign shaped like an ice cream cone. A metal chain is woven across the service window. Rows of rocks rise like hills at the edge of the parking lot, blocking the view of the water.
Ajit turns the key and the engine hushes. The sound of the sea moves around them and Alia feels shy for a moment, alone with this kind man. It occurs to her that Atef and the others must have noticed her absence by now. She imagines Atef’s stricken face, then pushes it out of her mind. For moments there is no sound aside from the thundering sea. Finally, Ajit speaks.
“Would you like to go down?”
Alia is grateful for his asking. “Yes.”
“I will come.”
“You don’t have to,” Alia says, but Ajit is already opening his door. She is glad. Beyond the light of the streetlamps, the parking lot dissolves into darkness. Alia shivers in the cold air.
They walk wordlessly to the rocks, Ajit behind her. Alia’s heels click as she steps. At the rocks, she moves carefully, her shoes snagging in the crevices as they climb down. She nearly trips, and Ajit’s arm shoots out; his fingers wrap around her wrist.
“Perhaps it would be easier without the heels?” Ajit says. When she looks up at him, his eyes are mirthful. The mood of their trip seems to lighten, an audacious air about it. They are having an adventure, Alia thinks.
“Ajit, you are correct,” Alia says merrily and slips the shoes off, dangles them from her fingers. Her feet are clammy, and once she makes her way down the rocks, the sand is surprisingly velvety. She tosses her shoes near a clump of dried seaweed. For a moment, the two of them are still, facing the sea, which is suddenly everywhere, a living, snarling, barreling thing. Waves foam against the lip of the shore.
“It will be cold,” Ajit calls above the sound of water.
“Oh God, please let it be,” Alia says. She laughs bitterly. There is a desire to start talking, to tell Ajit about her hatred of the summer, the heat, how breathing had been like drinking steam. She wants to talk about the unremitting dampness of her skin, the loamy odor everywhere.
But it would be betrayal, she recognizes, betrayal to speak those words, though she is uncertain whom she would be betraying. To keep herself silent, she walks toward the waves. At the water’s edge, she pauses before stepping forward.
Ice. The water felt like ice—needles of it. Alia gasps and turns to Ajit, who stands watching her. “It’s freezing,” she marvels.
Ajit smiles, nods. He joins her, holding his robe bunched in his fists; the two of them move until the water reaches their calves. The ocean rocks around them, the sand shifting beneath Alia’s feet, a vertiginous sensation. Suddenly, a wave breaks, unexpected, sending them both stumbling backward. Water sprays, drenching Alia’s dress, neck, hair. She can hear Ajit laughing beside her, and she begins to laugh as well. She tips her head back, the moon above them a bonfire in the sky. She remembers, for the first time since standing in the kitchen, her body, the rustling within it; she laughs harder.
Alia turns to Ajit, standing with his soaked robe, droplets of water beading his bald head. She places both hands over her belly, her laughter tapering. She speaks not to Ajit but to the sky, eyes lifted to the moon.
“So this is the beginning.”
Atef
* * *
Kuwait City
May 1977
The soldiers call to one another in Hebrew. There are seven or eight of them, loosely forming a circle around Abu Zahi, who is on his knees, a line of blood trailing from his nostrils.
“Let go of me!” Mustafa tries to move toward Abu Zahi, but Atef tightens his grip. “Are you blind? It’s Abu Zahi,” Mustafa says.
“It’s a trap,” Atef whispers. His voice shakes.
“Have you lost your mind?” Mustafa is furious. “They’re taking him.”
“Mustafa.” Atef swallows, trying to steady his voice. “Mustafa, they’re arresting him at dusk. Minutes before prayer. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would they do it in front of everyone, out in the open?”
Mustafa frowns, gazing in the direction of the soldiers. A look of comprehension dawns upon his face.
“They want to see who steps forward.”
Suddenly Atef is in a dim room, his wrists in handcuffs. Across the table sits a soldier with a scar above his lip.
“You camel-fucker,” the soldier snarls at Atef. “He’s dead.”
“I don’t believe you,” Atef says. He tenses his shoulders, preparing to flinch. But the soldier’s hands remain flat on the table. Something gutters in the soldier’s face—malice, humor—and he leans back, lazily crosses his arms over his torso.
“Believe what you want.” The soldier shrugs.