“I’ve come here for no reason.” The starkness of the words strikes her as hilarious. She begins to laugh. “No . . . reason . . . at . . . all.” The laughter takes on an edge of hysteria and it occurs to her that she might cry. Sobering, she walks along the shoreline, the water icy against her ankles.
It is beautiful, all of it—the hastening of the waves, how the water gathers itself as though spilling white petals onto the sand. The sky has the colorlessness of moistened paper; it looks like it might tear. And the sunlight touches everything, spinning it into gold. Her tired mind alights on myths—Midas, Icarus, the stories she spent years memorizing. Everything she has forgotten.
She sits, the water lapping her skirt. A testimony, she decides. On the wet sand, she writes letters with her finger.
Alia, she traces. Alia Yacoub. She pauses, considering. Atef Yacoub. The sand is soft beneath her toes, ticklish. She draws a line between the two names and another one below. A family tree. Riham, Karam, Souad, she traces. Next to her mother’s name, Manar writes Elie. She draws an X between them. A handful of stars, like white freckles, are still visible in the sky. Abdullah, Manar, Linah, Zain.
Looking at the names, she speaks again. “We were all here.” She speaks slowly. She holds her wet palm to her cheek, then runs it through her hair. She imagines her whole family standing on this shoreline, in a row. Oddly cheered by the image, she pulls her knees to her chin and muses to the waves, “Even you, Teta.”
She draws a final line from her own name. Gabriel. Below, an arrow that leads to a small question mark. Leah? June? Dara? There is a human, she realizes, that she will have to name.
Shutting her eyes, Manar tips her face toward the sky. When she opens them, a man and his young boy are walking along the sand, watching her. The man has a fishing net hoisted around his shoulder, dirty, gray knots. He is frowning, a mixture of disapproval and concern on his face as they walk closer to her. The boy’s face is beautiful, a fawnlike docility about his eyes. He stares at Manar, openly curious.
“Yalla.” The father nudges his son. He eyes Manar warily.
Manar is shaken with the desire to protest, to speak with the man in Arabic. But she can see herself through the fisherman’s eyes: drenched, squatting in seawater. Not a woman in the throes of revelation, but something peripheral, another unnecessary foreigner. Ajnabiyeh, she can hear him thinking.
This is what makes her drop her eyes. It is what pulls her up, rising unsteadily, the wet skirt clinging to her legs as she bows her head in apology. A large wave washes over the sand, the water eating her words, her family come and gone in this sea that belongs to none of them.
“I’m leaving,” she says to the man in Arabic.
As she walks past them, she glances up only once. The man is still watching her, but his expression has changed. She nods, and the man nods back.
Epilogue
* * *
Beirut
The television is always on. Always there is the sound of war, elsewhere. In certain moments the sounds buzz together into incoherence, a language she neither recognizes nor trusts. At these times, Alia tries to keep her eyes on the long, Z-shaped scratch on the coffee table. Or a chip in her coral nail polish; the slight fray of the curtains. Whatever is undone. Alia finds the flaws when the blankness comes and she clutches them as though for life.
The comforting sound of the washing machine, Umm Najwa’s feet pattering down the hallway, and Alia wakes. She likes this bedroom, the greens soothing, sunlight streaming through the thin curtains. Still, she misses her bedroom in Amman. The almond tree outside her window.
The pain is worst in the morning.
“Umm Najwa,” she calls, and within seconds the woman appears at the door.
“Good morning.” Umm Najwa has a coarse Palestinian accent. “Are we getting up?” Fists on her hips, she eyes Alia. “It’s a special day,” she continues cheerfully, “do you know why?”
Alia turns away from her. She breathes in the cotton of her pillow.
“Go away.”
There is a baby in this house. Or perhaps it is the other house, loud with voices and slamming doors. The rooms seem interchangeable, everyone appearing and vanishing, and at the center is the baby. Everyone is smitten with her. Cooing and singing lullabies, applauding when she gurgles. Once Alia asked about the mother, and the girl with frizzy hair walked over and kissed her cheek. When the baby cries the girl bounces her on her hip. Sometimes the mother—the name, Manar, arrives simply, fluently, to Alia at times—gives the baby to Alia and she holds her.
In those moments Alia freezes. She smells the baby, her scent of milk and sugar. When she looks up, everyone is watching with shining eyes.
They are wrong. She knows something is different. Amiss. When she remembers what it is, there is a sorrow that scalds her throat, as though she has eaten a handful of chili peppers and cannot remember to swallow. This is why—though how to put to words that silken rope of remembering, of weaving through days, then losing what is lost again—she answers with such gruffness when they ask questions. Faces lit with hope, their voices small as children’s, even Atef’s. Alia, do you remember Zain? Mama, do you know where we are?
“Yes, yes,” she answers caustically at such times, transforming their expressions into hurt. “What do you think I am, an idiot?”
One of the kindest people in the house is a skinny girl. Young, eighteen or nineteen. Her body is girlish with sharp elbows and knees, but there is something womanly about her face, even aged. Such sad eyes, Alia thinks, wants to ask her what has broken her heart. She imagines some tragedy, perhaps a dead lover—so young—or illness.
But whenever the girl catches sight of Alia, her face turns luminous.
“How’s the lovely?” she teases. “Shall we go see the plants?” And slowly the girl helps her up, taking most of Alia’s weight. Despite her frame, the girl is strong. Alia suspects a sturdiness about her bones. The girl likes to take her to the balcony, a view of telephone wires and people and water.
Once outside, the girl pulls back leaves of tall, tangled plants, dozens of pots dotting the balcony, some with tomatoes on the vine, others sprouting flowers in shades of white and blue and purple. Alia likes to watch her pluck the dead, browned leaves, water the soil. They sit for what feels like hours, until the sun sets over the water. Aside from talking to the plants, the girl doesn’t speak much. Sometimes Alia catches the girl lost in thought. The sadness seems pronounced then, etched into the downturned mouth, the long, dark eyelashes.
Once she asked her, “Do you want to go outside with me? We can find a nice café, get some tea.”
For a moment, it seemed possible. Walking on the street, people and cars around her. She would go with her. This girl with sturdy bones. But then she was afraid again.
“I want to stay here,” Alia said in a small voice. “I want to stay here.”
“Okay,” the girl—Linah—said, “okay. We’ll stay here. Let’s sit for a little longer. Look, this one’s starting to bloom.”
The girl pulled up a blossom, her hand spilling purple and gold.