The Sea Cloak Read online

  ‘I saw that, asshole,’ Rima mutters under her breath. Ziad has clearly seen it too. ‘Screw your friend, he’s backwards!’

  ‘Rima, I don’t comment on your friends so grant me the same courtesy.’

  Rima stays quite for the next few blocks until she sees a man on the other side of the road dressed in court attire. ‘I have a lot of respect for that kind of uniform,’ she says. ‘Black is especially fetching in that cloak.’ Then she catches Ziad off guard: ‘Why did you study law?’

  He carries on driving.

  ‘Ziad, I’m waiting for your answer.’

  Sighing and without taking his eyes off the road, he says: ‘I don’t know, it was the wrong choice, I should have studied Sharia. I have no respect for man’s law.’

  ‘Knowledge is accumulative and the law takes from everything. Don’t you have any respect for the mind God gave you? You are so strange.’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ he snaps. ‘You just focus on your journalism exams… Stick to writing degenerate articles about me and my friends in your student newspaper.’

  ‘You can’t see beyond the end of your nose, Ziad.’

  ‘Just stay out of my business will you!’

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ she says, changing the subject. ‘Talking to you has that effect. Can you pull over and buy me a bottle of water?’

  As he gets out of the car, she mumbles to herself: ‘The more backward he gets the fonder I am of him.’

  ‘Here,’ he says handing her a bottle when he returns. ‘Drink it and try not to talk so much if you have a dry throat.’

  ‘They both smile and Rima seizes her opportunity: ‘Hey why don’t we go to the photography studio? I want to have a picture taken with you: one of those vintage, black and white ones.’ Ziad obediently takes a left and heads towards the city centre. Fifteen minutes later they are in the photography studio on Salah A-Deen Street, standing in front of an old-fashioned camera, giggling like a couple in the first blush of romance. ‘You look good together.’ The old photographer says.

  A few flashes and laughs later and they are climbing back into the car. Suddenly a worried look appears on Ziad’s face. ‘Rima, I want to talk to you about something.’

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘It’s not safe in Gaza anymore. I need to leave, Rima. And soon. I’m going to find a way for you to leave too.’

  Rima doesn’t even pause for breath. ‘But I don’t even have a passport, Ziad! How am I meant to get a permit or a coordination without a damn passport? You know I’ve been waiting for confirmation of my citizenship ever since we were ‘returned’ to Gaza.’ Then she stops and realises what he means by ‘not safe anymore’.

  ‘Oh god, Ziad, what did you do?’

  ‘I know you don’t have travel papers but my friends will help you.’

  ‘I don’t want to, Ziad. We’re not even married yet. My parents would never let us leave.’

  ‘But we’re engaged.’

  ‘Are you new to this place or something?’ Rima mocks him. ‘Do you not know the scandal that would cause for my parents?’

  A fresh silence fills the car.

  ‘Rima, sing to me.’

  ‘What?’ He is still capable of surprising her, she thinks. ‘But you don’t like songs anymore!’

  ‘I love everything you do, you’re the only link to who I was.’

  ‘Your father had a beautiful voice, Ziad!’

  ‘Forget about him. He made his mistakes.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Your father was a great fighter.’

  ‘But he didn’t pray, and he smoked too much; drank alcohol. He believed in a freedom that wasn’t his to believe in.’

  ‘So? We all believe in our own salvation. We need to. All I know is that your father was honest, and patient, and he made sacrifices. He was a believer in the cause. Where do you get these distorted ideas from, Ziad? This isn’t you speaking.’

  ‘You’ve started to resemble Gaza,’ he responded.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘It’s like the sea washes everything away with you,’ he bangs on the steering wheel. ‘Why should you forgive what God doesn’t?’

  ‘Because I am not God. How should I know what God forgives and what God doesn’t forgive? How do you know? All I have is the courage of my own convictions.’

  Ziad’s driving becomes erratic, cutting in and out of lanes, thoughtlessly. He floors the gas pedal and flexes his grip on the steering wheel. When he launches into his next rant, the wheel slips, and the car verges one way then the other, as he lets go to gesticulate every point.

  ‘Tell me Rima: I believed in communism. I inherited Marx’s doctrines from my father. I smoked cigars, wore a chain around my neck, let my shirt be unbuttoned down to the chest. I made a spectacle of my youth and masculinity. I even got myself arrested by the Israelis, and spent a few unforgettable months being tortured and freezing half to death in the prisons. I stood up for my principles and for my liberty. So tell me: where is the land my father promised would be mine again? It’s getting further and further away. Peace has escaped. Hope has fled. All we can to do is return to God’s teachings.’

  Ziad pushes the car even faster.

  ‘Stop,’ Rima screams, ‘please Ziad.’

  At which point they do, crashing into a signpost indicating the direction to a nearby mosque.

  Ziad sits in the drivers’ seat crying into his beard. ‘Rima, I feel totally alone. I’ve been so afraid since my father died. There is nothing left for me in this country.’

  ‘What about me? I’m here.’ He lets her embrace him, and they hold each other for a moment. Then he tries to start the car. As the car reverses off the pavement, the front bumper drops into the road. When Ziad returns from packing it into the boot, Rima has a twinkle in her eye.

  ‘Ziad, let’s go to Samarland Beach where we sat that night, all those years ago. Before your father died. I’ve missed the moonlight we sat under that night. We need that back in our lives.’ Ziad smiles and takes her hand in his, steering the car back onto the road with the other one. Despite its new hissing, and the steam coming from the bonnet, the car feels normal again as they turn into a dark side street.

  But then it is all over, and Ziad knows it. Above them is blinding light and the thunderous noise of an Apache. Before Rima can even process what’s going on, Ziad has disengaged the engine, leapt out, and thrown himself under a pile of crates. The car carries on moving a few yards and she is still fiddling with her seatbelt when she hears his words, over the thunder of the blades.

  ‘Rima get out!’

  ‘I can’t,’ she cries, realising fear is what’s making her so slow.

  ‘They’re going to fire!’

  Somehow she manages to get far enough out of the car to be blown clear when it eventually explodes, scattering flames onto the tarmac on all sides.

  For a moment they lie still in the street, on opposite sides of the car, gazing across at each other through its burning undercarriage. The helicopter’s searchlight lights up Rima’s face for what seems like an age, until she starts to move, at which point it crosses back to the car, still on fire, then back to Rima. Once it finally sets off, taking the blades’ cacophony with it, Ziad slowly gets to his feet and staggers across to help Rima up. They steady themselves for a moment, and realise the streets are empty, just as that beach at the end of the road will be empty.

  They reach Samarland Beach just as the sun is setting. They sit down on the sea wall, in their old spot, and draw each other closer, to contain their warmth. No gap can be seen between them this time as they watch the moon taking its cue from the sun, rising and trailing its glistening tails over the surface of a sea that won’t sleep.

  ‘You know, you’re like the first day of spring,’ he says.

  ‘My face is all bloody and scratched.’

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he laughs, taking her into his own scratched and bloodstained arms.

  ‘Ziad, my love. Let’s not leave.’

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sp; About the Author

  Nayrouz Qarmout is a Palestinian author and women’s rights campaigner. Born in Damascus in 1984, she returned to the Gaza Strip as part of the 1994 Israeli-Palestinian Peace Agreement. Her short story ‘The Sea Cloak’ was first published in The Book of Gaza (2014), and she has written screenplays for several short films dealing with women’s rights. Her political, social and literary articles have also appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines