“I think my mom put them away somewhere. Maybe in the kitchen cupboards.”
But the cupboards are filled with cans and coffee tins, stale boxes of crackers. The sparklers aren’t under the bathroom sinks or in the cluttered bedrooms. They open every last drawer. Now that they finally have an idea, they both seem spurred by it. Suddenly, Zain snaps.
“The storage room. It’s where she puts anything she doesn’t know what to do with.”
Linah wrinkles her nose. “It stinks.”
“So hold your breath.”
She follows Zain down the hallway to the little room next to the living room. It is the size of a closet, strewn with crates and boxes and a half-filled bookshelf. The mess is glorious, sprawling across the floor like an animal whose limbs they have to step around. The room is a museum of their old lives.
“It’s like Narnia,” Linah breathes.
The sparklers are soon forgotten as the two of them dig through the boxes, finding stuffed animals and broken jump ropes, toys they couldn’t remember ever having. For the first time since the war, Linah feels buzzing, alive as she plucks through the mess. One basket is filled with old scarves of Souad’s, and Linah tries one on, tossing it over one shoulder. I’ll call you sometime, she says silently to a young man.
“My Game Boy!” Zain leans down to pick up a weathered console. An entire shoebox is devoted to old Beanie Babies, and Linah pulls the plush bodies out, the fabric smelling of dust.
The electricity comes on; the sounds of the movie float in from the living room. But neither of them move. Zain is taking books from a cardboard box.
“God, these are so old they’re falling apart. Look at this.” He lifts a purple-spined one, the cover in Arabic calligraphy. A lone page falls out and drifts to Zain’s lap.
“Do you think your mom ever comes in here?” Linah likes the image of Souad sneaking in after everyone falls asleep, lining up the Beanie Babies and wearing her colorful scarves. “To look at this stuff?”
There is no reply. When Linah turns to Zain, she sees that he is frowning down at a book in his hands. “This one has something in it,” he says.
Linah cranes her neck. The cover of the book is a dull brown, an image of a plant turning toward a painted sun. From inside the cover, Zain pulls out a bundle held together with an old, tawny rubber band. They both huddle around it. There is page after page of ancient-looking paper, lined with someone’s neat handwriting. Some of the handwriting is in blue ink, some in black. The paper is creamy, thin with age.
“It’s in Arabic,” Zain says, disappointed. Neither he nor Linah can read Arabic well. “There’s, like, a hundred pages.”
“I think it’s someone’s journal.” Linah sits upright. The prospect is dizzying—access to secrets; a thousand times better than being a detective. “We found someone’s journal!”
“No.” Zain squints at the writing. “They’re letters. Look, there’s the heading, and a signature at the end of each one.”
Linah’s mind whirls. Letters from her parents to each other? From Elie to Souad? From old friends?
“And dates at the top. This is from 1998,” Zain says.
“That’s a seven, idiot.”
“Okay, from 1978.” The moment is broken by the front door opening. Voices call out for them.
“Linah! Zain!”
“Where are they?”
They freeze. Footsteps. Zain mouths the words Oh no, and Linah thinks instantly of the natour, the adults finding out about their excursion. They rise, dusting themselves off. Zain slips the bundle of papers under his shirt.
But when they walk back into the living room, the adults—Khalto Riham, Linah’s father, Souad—are talking about the news. They barely glance at them. Even Manar looks concerned. Karam opens the curtains, letting in the last of the dusky light.
“Hey!”
“Where’d you guys go?” Souad says.
Zain glances at Linah. “The electricity went out.”
“Well, it’s back. The TV reception froze downstairs; the channels aren’t working. We need to try this one.”
“Sorry, kids, you’ll finish your movie later.”
“Put those cushions back. What is this, laundry?”
They reluctantly stack the cushions. Zain moves carefully, bending awkwardly at the waist. He holds a cushion in front of him.
“This is laundry. Jesus, Souad, when’s the last time you—”
“I keep telling her!”
“Not now, Manar! Karam, I’m sorry, there’s been a full-fledged war going on outside, I’ve put household chores on hold.”
“Apparently.” Linah’s father speaks under his breath, but Souad glares at him.
“Channel eight,” Khalto Riham says and Manar flips through channels.
The newscaster looks frazzled, headlines in Arabic whizzing by on the bottom of the screen. Linah catches only a handful of the newscaster’s words: military, shelling, security. Linah tries to read the sentences, but they glide by too quickly. Whenever she goes to Amman, her grandmother scolds her father and Souad: You’ve raised these children as Americans. They barely understand what their grandmother is saying to them. Linah likes her grandmother but is slightly afraid of her, her razor-sharp nails and the way she glances over whatever room she is in, like she is bored.
The newscaster says something about an announcement, and the camera shifts to a wall with green banners. A bearded man walks to a podium and begins to talk. Linah thinks of the wiry-haired woman, the way she had said Only the bread. The man says something about justice. His eyes snap when he speaks.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Souad scoots to the edge of the sofa and slides the living-room balcony door open. She lights a cigarette, holding up the other hand, palm first, toward Khalto Riham and Karam. “Not a word, I’m serious. My living room. Not a word.”
“So what have you kids been doing?” Linah’s father asks her distractedly.
“Watching a movie,” she says. Her voice sounds strange to her ears; she wonders if the adults can hear it. Perhaps her father does because he doesn’t say anything else, nothing about their lungs or going to the other apartment.
“Monkey,” Linah’s mother says over Souad’s head. “I was thinking we should order that pizza tonight. What do you think? If I have another bite of chicken, I’m going to cluck.” She laughs again.
Suddenly Linah cannot bear to hear the newscaster’s voice, her mother’s laugh. It is wrong, all of it. She stands, Zain’s worried face blurring at her side.
“I’m taking a shower,” she announces.
“Linah, the hot water.”
Linah turns to her father. He looks so sad, so ordinary, all of a sudden, his eyeglasses smudged. I’m getting old, he’d joked the day he got them, and Linah shivered at the thought.
“I’ll only use the cold,” she says to him gently. “Promise.”