Copper-Dusted Vows

I scratch the edge of the pendant 
and admire the copper rust collecting under my nail beds.
A testimony – 
that the dustings of our ancestral home 
are now embedded in the fibers of my existence.
Even after I wash my hands for wudu,
I imagine
the copper flakes swirling inside me like fairy dust.

Someone in the tent next to ours is coughing a scary cough.
I wonder how many angels spread their wings over us in our floppy tents.
When the fire drops around us and words become sobs and everyone is
searching-searching-searching,
I wonder how many angels are here today, and for whom.

My stomach feels as if it is folding within itself.
I wonder if Baba will be able to get the flour from the aid truck this time.
Last time he was only able to muster a few cans of beans, 
that were past their expiration date.
I clench the pendant tighter in my palm.

It was just a few summers ago when I spent a week in my grandparents’ home: 
our ancestral Home by the sea.
I would sit on Sitti’s lap,
careful not to spill the tea Giddo made for her.
It was infused with honey made by the bees from the lavender fields behind their Home.
They lived by the fields and the sea, away from the city.
“Too much noise” they would say.
“The city drains the songs of the birds.” 
Giddo picked up a single piece of grass and placed it in my palm.

“This is Home.”

Home. 

It is olive trees and honey and sheep my grandparents tended to and stories,
sea-lavenders that grew along the shoreline. 
I know everyone knows us by our vibrant poppies,
but the sweet lavender flowers behind my grandfather’s home
planted by his father
and his father’s father
were full of wonder.
The purple bells burned a deep hue 
when it was time to pray maghrib.

If poppies were a symphony,
the lavenders of my ancestors were a sweet whisper.

A year later, the darkness seeped into our town in hushes one morning. 
One of Sitti and Giddo’s neighbors pulled up in his cart and knocked on our door with solemn eyes.
Sitti was sitting on the cart, eyes downcast.
Baba ran out to lead her inside our home.
I heard words full of sadness that hung in the air, ripe and ready for plucking. 

“Is Sitti staying with us forever and beyond?” I asked Mama with hopeful eyes.
Mama smiled a sad sort of smile.
“Let’s see habibti. 
We must be Home to Sitti for a while.”
That summer was the first time I saw the pendant dangle on Sitti’s neck, a thick copper key.
“What is this key, Sitti?” I asked her.
It was the first time I truly grasped what people on the other side of the land can do.
I heard stories, everyone had a story. Now I have one. 
A branding. 
The Home of my grandfather,
of his father, and his father’s father
is still there, still standing, but another woman is decorating the walls. 
Another man is tending to the sheep.
Another child is running in the hallways, full of laughter.
Knowing that the floors they stand on hold memories of our family for years.
Knowing they broke my grandmother’s heart and made my grandfather weep.

Sitti tells me stories about the then-nakba
(our nakba never ended). 
They tried to break my Giddo’s back,
but he was a man of strong spine and each strike made him stand taller. 
Until they beat him until he could no longer stand, and dragged him to a place far, far away. 
I know wherever he is, wherever the men in green took him, he is still thumbing dhikr on his knuckles, eyes unyielding. 

Sitti told me that summer she came to live with us that Giddo draped the key around her neck.
Before the picture-perfect-family 
stood on the doorstep of their house waiting for the men in green to
“clean up the mess.”
Sitti cried as she told me the men and green took her beautiful painted plates and hand-woven clothing being thrown out.
Before the men in green took him he whispered, “Sana’oud.” 
We will return.

The coughing in the tent next to ours belongs to Khalto Salma.
Her daughter was ripped from her arms from the men in green and tucked away in their vehicles. 
A baby is a symbol of a beating heart, of life, of a new generation.
They are trying to stifle that spark.
But they can’t, I smile. 
The family across our tent has a little boy who is playing with sticks.
Building a tall building engineered in a magnificent way, angled to create a fortified base.
Our nation is a nation of builders.
You cannot break us. 

The night of the first fire was dreadful.
It was the night we lost our home in the city.
This was Sitti’s second time leaving.
It didn’t make it easier, but she was ready.
To be Palestinian means you know how to run.
The bombs and the fires were enveloping our street and we had to 
run-run-run before the fire captured us as well.
Mama carried me.
Baba carried Sitti when she could no longer walk.
I saw so many fearful images as we were running, so much sadness and fear and loss around me.
So many bloody faces, so much torn flesh. 
I couldn’t recognize anyone and kept shivering. 
Mama tried to bury my face in her shoulders as she ran,
but I could still hear the screams.

I tried to distract myself by thinking of the Before.
I miss my room.
I miss my toys, my friends, the smell of the scratch-and-sniff stickers I left on my dresser, the ones that Baba got for me when I had gotten first place in our school spelling bee.
When we arrived to the home of my uncle’s, a safe place,
Sitti told Baba not to get comfortable.
“No, no inshAllah this will be safe,” he said, tugging on my braid playfully.
Then the leaflets from the sky fell,
telling us to leave-now-or-else.
“But we were told it was safe, Baba!” I pleaded. 
Baba smiled weakly. “You always wanted to explore the city, habibti. Let’s explore. Yalla.”

But when it was time to move again, Sitti sat still. Thumbing her prayer beads. 
“There will be a car coming soon, for the elderly,” she told us. “My legs are still swollen.”
The edges of Baba’s eyes were red. 
He tried reasoning with her, pleading with her, but she did the hardest thing a mother can do – she let go. 
“Leave now,” she commanded him. 
“Please, Sitti,” I begged her.
“I’m tired habibti. It is time for these legs to rest.”

She smiled sadly and placed her pendant around my neck.
“Home is where you are.
We will meet again inshAllah.”
But her eyes had the same haunting look,
that calm, somber acceptance of the sheep before slaughter that Giddo prepared before Eid. 
She knew. 

This time I told Mama I didn’t want to be carried – 
I wanted to run.

When we arrived at the valley of tents I tried to find her.
Sitti wasn’t there.
Not that day, not the day after.
Mama and Baba wept with a thousand tears but they knew as well as I did the moment we left the house – Sitti decided to stay.
Neighbors and those we now call family helped us set up the bedding of our now-home.

She comes to me often in my dreams.
She’s full of light and open arms, sitting among the sea-lavender.
I can even smell the sea.
I thank Allah for the dreams to help me escape the nightmares when I wake up.

There are many nights full of fire and loss in surrounding areas.
Baba makes sure we all hold hands so if we are to meet our Rabb, we go together.
We hold each other close and recite Qur’an until the fires stop.
Baba then runs to help families 
search-search-search.
Mama helps the mothers and children
heal, stop the bleeding, mend the wounds, envelop the orphans in hugs, comfort the widows, weep with the mothers whose babies are no more. 

This night as we hear the fire falling from the skies, I hear Mama and Baba’s rhythmic recitation as I drift to sleep.
In my dream, Sitti points to my neck, at the pendant dangling there.
She gently holds it and turns me around.
I see our Home. It is brimming with light.
I see Giddo in the fields, waving at me. 
She tells me to come, to open the door.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “You’re tired now habibti. Come Home.” 

With tears running down my cheeks I tell her not yet, not here.
I make her a promise.
I tell her the war will subside inshallah,
and when the fires stop falling from the skies,
I will run 
and run
and run.
Towards the sea. 
Until finally I see her Home,
our Home.
I will march to the front and 
use my copper key to 
open the door and bear witness to
the flowers that bloomed on soil seeped with blood and tears.
Our blood. Our tears. 
I will hold the key and tell all others to leave. 

She smiles and hugs me.
“Sana’oud.”
We will return.

When I wake up, the fires have subsided.
And my bedding smells of lavender.