She fills her eyes with the whiteness of her neighbor’s wall, and in that direction the blueness of the sky, and over there the greenness of the treetops. As she looks, she wonders at God’s creation and beauty and longs to stretch out like water on the ground underneath the sun, knowing that no one will see. But her elbows remain on the sill, eyes fixed on white then blue then green.

Looking toward the small hut where the chickens live, she smiles, for she will always see her daughter Shahira’s baby Mina on her hands and knees as though she too were a chicken with her nose going back and forth from ground to sky.

She does not think of Mina and her sad departure to the States with her sister, mother, and stepfather, because she has taught herself to look above the treetops and into the colors.

20 HALA Aqaba

20HALAAqaba

At night after we have eaten, and visited, and talked, I listen to music and remember. My mother loved the Lebanese singer Fairuz. She said that she never heard a voice that carried a person’s soul as much as hers.

Tonight I remember Sharif and the summer when I was five or six that my father took us all to Aqaba. Sharif, who was nineteen or twenty, came with us.

Everyone else is playing at the other end of the beach except Sharif, who is teaching me how to dive cleanly into the water. My ears shut to his words sometimes because the water is so clear that if I stand still and look down I can see my feet.

The sky is light blue and the water where it meets the sky is dark blue.

“Can we swim out there to where the two blues meet?” It doesn’t look so far and I think Sharif will like my idea.

He looks out to the sea and doesn’t say anything. Shading his eyes with his hand, he turns his head from left to right.

I see a small shell under the water but when I go to grab it, the water moves and it vanishes.

“Let’s swim home,” he says with his face still in the sun.

“Home? This beach won’t reach to Amman. How can we swim there if there is no water?” I try to stay still so my shell will come back.

“I mean to Palestine.” He turns to look at me.

“We can’t swim to Palestine.”

“Why not? She’s right there.” He points to the right, below the sun. We are so close that I can see the houses on the shore.

“That’s Palestine?”

He nods, still looking.

I feel funny inside. “We’re not allowed to go there. It’s not our home anymore.” The water is very blurry now.

“Says who?” He stares at me with his hands in fists at his waist.