Im Musa stared over the side of the SS Argentina. She could feel the spray from the waves that shot up the sides of the vessel where she gripped the railing. Bodies moved in swift currents on the deck around her—each, it seemed, desperate for something to hold on to as the ship bobbed and rocked on the unsettled sea. Im Musa—Mother of Musa—kept her feet firmly planted on the deck, knees locked, thighs tensed. Between her body and the closed-in railing, she had placed the suitcase that was filled with the things she thought they would need: diapers, clothing, her wedding gold. On the ground between her feet sat the small woven basket in which she had bundled Musa that morning. He was two months old and sleeping soundly. A smile flickered across her lips. He sleeps! She thought. Through all this, he sleeps!
From her place on the deck, Im Musa could see the shore, where travelers embarked on small boats, hoping to board the SS Argentina before its departure. Porters carried some of the passengers from the beach, arms and legs tangled in a momentary embrace. Others had packages piled upon their backs. The smoke plumes that she had tallied on her fingers from her kitchen window these past weeks now spread out across the shore, too numerous to count. Even at this distance, with the crashing of waves and cacophony of voices, she could make out the dull booms that echoed through the city. Each thundering note sent a shudder of panic through the crowd. Im Musa watched the women in boats huddle close to their children, saw their lips praying in soft undertones.
As the small boats approached the ship, Im Musa strained to make out the figures. But there were too many: men, women, children, all carrying suitcases, packages, even a pram. Carefully, so as not to lose her footing, she turned her back to the shore, fingering the ticket in her pocket. Facing the openness of the wide deck, she searched for her husband. Grey wool suit, red fez, moustache, glasses. All the while, her feet stood planted like orange trees, the basket between them.
Soon, she thought. He’s sure to get here soon. They had parted only an hour earlier, fumbling with coats and gloves and bags as the distant gunshots and screaming intensified. The dark circles under her eyes and the slight shaking in her hands testified to the hours of lost sleep. The same hands that she had held over Musa’s head in the bedroom, scant protection from the dust and small bits of plaster that dropped down from the ceiling onto the bed. Those blasts that each night felt progressively closer.
On that last evening, a piece of plaster the size of a dinner plate had dropped onto the floor, scaring the cat. She cleaned it up with the old broom and then got into bed beside Said, fully clothed, with Musa between them. Im Musa ran through the list of things she had forgotten to do: pay the butcher, return Soraya’s copper pot, pick up the post. The list was long, but focusing on it allowed her to think of something other than the death throes of the city around her. By the time the sun peeked through the cracks in the wood that boarded the windows, Said was already downstairs, drinking coffee. The taxi was expected in half an hour. She lifted Musa from his cradle, changed his diaper, and nursed him, unable to suppress a smile when his hand floated up to grab her face, forcing herself to take deep breaths, remembering her mother’s advice: “Your anxiety will affect his nursing.”
When he finished, she placed him in the basket and carried him downstairs, then took her seat on the front step beside her husband. They sat there for a long silent moment, waiting for the taxi and watching the sea. Said passed her his cigarette and she took a long drag. In front of them, plumes of grey smoke clouded the sky, an eastern wind pushing them out towards the sea.
When the taxi arrived, Said helped her into her coat, kissed his son, and held her hand. “This is your ticket. Put it in your pocket and keep your coat on. Do not lose it, and don’t give it to anyone until you board the ship. Maashi?”
She nodded, asking: “When will you. . . .”
“I will be there as soon as I can, before the boat leaves, wahayat Allah.”And he put his hand on his heart, like a child swearing to tell the truth. “Remember,” he told her, lifting her chin and looking into her eyes. “It’s only for a few weeks, a month at most. Until things settle down here.”
This was a conversation they had had many times before. Once the Arab armies arrive, we will get our land back. Im Musa smiled for Said, pushed back the image of the wounded Iraqi soldier in the hospital where she volunteered, gone mad with pain at an amputated leg. “They aren’t coming!” he howled on the operating bed. “No one is coming!”
Im Musa tucked a stray curl behind her husband’s ear. “Time for a haircut.”
He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand.
The taxi driver honked his horn. Said put the cigarette back in his mouth, placed the suitcase in the trunk of the car, then lifted the basket with his only child inside. While Im Musa fumbled with her buttons, he leaned his head down into the basket and kissed his son three times, before whispering, “Allah ma’ak, ya rohi. Deera balak ala Immak.”
Abu Musa opened the car door for his wife, placed the basket on her lap, and shut the door, tapping on the roof twice. She waved weakly as the taxi pulled away, turning back only once to see Said watching them from the doorway, still smoking, two fingers raised in a V for victory.
A loud, piercing shriek cut through Im Musa’s recollections: the captain’s whistle. The ship is leaving, she thought, looking back over the Mediterranean towards the city. Her stomach lurched. Around her, the whistle had provoked agitation—several people yelled out in Arabic and English. Passengers gestured towards the boats that, even as the ship’s engine started, continued to make their way forward.
“Wait! Wait for them!”
“They are still coming!”
But the ship had begun to move. The deck shifted beneath Im Musa’s tree-rooted feet, the engine groaned, and thick gray smoke merged into the colorless sky. She looked toward the shore, to the boats whose passengers were still approaching, now rising out of their seats, yelling and waving wildly in her direction.
“Stop! Sir, stop! My wife is on that boat!” A small man wearing a white thobe approached a sailor and grabbed him desperately by the wrist. The sailor lurched away, trying to shake off the man’s hand. Others joined in.
“My wife, my children are on that boat! You must wait!”
Another sailor approached the gathering crowd. He brandished a truncheon, which he waved high above them. “We’re not stopping, understand?” he bellowed in rough English. “There is no more room! Your families will have to wait for the next ship.”
There was a loud outcry from the passengers: “What ship? When? What should my family do until then? Where are they to go?”Im Musa dug her feet into the deck and thought of Said. He will come. She flicked the edge of the ticket in her pocket. If not today, he will board the next ship and we will see him tomorrow, or the day after.
She stole another glance down at Musa, who slept on. From under the faded blanket, she could see only the shadow of the dark eyelashes that fanned out across his cheeks, trembling slightly in sleep. A brisk breeze ran across Im Musa’s back. Is he cold? Shame that I didn’t take the blue blanket Maryam wanted to give me. Her hand darted down, but she pulled it back quickly, remembering her mother’s advice to never wake a sleeping baby.
Around her, the yelling had quieted to a dull hum. A woman cried nearby, but the sailors had returned to their efficient European silence. Im Musa looked back at the shore that was shrinking before her eyes. The small carrier boats also grew smaller as the ship picked up speed. They moved north, in the direction of Beirut. Beirut, she sighed. And what shall we do in Beirut?
From the shore, there was an echoing boom and a plume of gray smoke rose up, mingling with the clouds. Im Musa remembered her last trip to the market. She had taken to tying a handkerchief around her mouth and nose those last few weeks because of the smell. As the enemy forces encroached on the city, often blocking the roads between it and the outlying villages, Said—Abu Musa, once Musa was born—became more anxious. Once he even tried to send her to his mother’s house in the mountains. Each time, she refused. What am I supposed to do there, with your mother, while you are here? But by spring, he was more focused, energetic, even hopeful. On the nights he was away, which were many, Im Musa would stay up until well after the last prayer to wait for him, drinking tea and smoking. Although she guessed what had caused the change, it was only when she went into the cellar looking for the last bag of sugar and found her husband unpacking a crate of rifles that she understood. After that, they were inseparable: acquiring and moving guns to the various defense outposts in the city, keeping track of enemy advances, intercepting messages from the north. Her friends and acquaintances provided invaluable information: an old schoolfriend who lived across from an abandoned military base had observed a back door to an ammunition shed that proved easily opened. Another had heard from an acquaintance of an attack on a neighboring village that was successfully deterred.
The ship was picking up speed. The small boats that had tried so desperately to reach it were now all but invisible, black dots bobbing between white crests. A strong wind picked up from the east, pushing against the passengers who stood at the railing, forcing them to tighten their grip. Im Musa looked down again at Musa, who slept.
What if Said is wounded? she wondered. What if he’s hurt, or . . . ? And she thought of the tea seller in the market, how she watched his white shirt blossoming into dark red flowers as she stood frozen in the street. Her ears rang for three days afterward. Or the street by the clocktower, where after the bombing she stepped through broken glass and twisted metal to pick up a small shoe with a foot still inside. Im Musa shook her head quickly: No. God forbid. Her fingers flipped over the ticket in her pocket once again.
Insha’Allah kheyr. She whispered to herself, under her breath. God willing, he will be fine. But Musa must have sensed the icy panic that sent his mother’s pale legs in their nylon stockings shivering, because he woke and began to cry. Habibi, she cooed as she lifted the basket into both arms and began to rock it, singing to him under her breath. After some time, his eyes closed again, and she felt the pressure in her chest release a little. Pressed close against him, she could hear his soft breathing. She held him for a while, cradling the basket in her arms, the heave of the sea under her feet causing her to stumble in her heels. She steadied herself, pressing her toes into the soft leather of the suitcase.
As she stood with the basket in her arms, looking out to sea, she felt a gradual slowing of movement. She looked around the deck: the others noticed it too. She saw their frowns, their low whispers as they huddled together against the wind. She saw one of the sailors run up to the bridge, where he spoke in hushed tones with the captain. Then, the stillness as the ship stopped. The passengers stood silently, looking at one another, questioning their own senses: What was happening? Was the ship stopping? Would they turn around and go back to the family members they had left behind?
Im Musa sensed movement near the bow where the sailors now gathered. Speaking quickly, their hands flew as they gestured toward the deck in wide, encompassing motions. She felt their agitation ripple through the crowd as the passengers craned their necks to make out what was happening. A low murmur spread across the ship while in her arms, Musa snored softly. Im Musa shifted in her spot. The hairs at the back of her neck were alive, electric. What now?
Several sailors began moving down the sides of the ship, speaking to the families gathered in small groups. They seemed to be arguing, and the sailors’ voices rose as they gestured in quick, frantic movements toward the bags spread out on the ground, mattresses tied with twine. When the sailors left, fanning out to their posts, the people dispersed, too, and began gathering their packages and separating them into piles. Im Musa saw a husband and wife arguing back and forth, the man holding a bundle of linens that the woman was trying to pry from his hands. Im Musa couldn’t make out what they were saying. She turned her head to the right, and a flash of red caught her eye. Someone wearing a fez, moving slowly through the crowd across the deck. Im Musa craned her neck to see better: the man in the fez was about the same size as her husband, but she was unable to tell at this distance for sure. She wanted desperately to wave to him, but it was impossible with the child in her arms. Quickly, she placed the sleeping Musa back on the ground beside her suitcase, covering his face lightly with the yellow blanket, and returned to the spot where she had last seen the red fez. Her hands now free, she began waving them madly when she again saw the flash of red.
“Said!” she yelled, but her voice was absorbed by the crowd and the wind.
“Said!”she yelled again, her voice cracking this time. “Abu Musa!”
The man slowed. Had he heard?
“Abu Musa!”She yelled again, as loud as her voice allowed her. He had to have heard that time.
Hope rose in her chest as she stared intently across the deck: she felt taller, lighter than she had all morning as she searched the crowd.
A quick tap on her arm pulled her attention away from the deck. She glanced back at the sailor who was gesturing towards the railing, his brow furrowed.
What? she snapped, looking back at the place where she had seen the blur of red.
“Your luggage, madam.”he yelled, struggling to be heard above the crowd. “I must have your luggage!” He was tall, fair, and his eyes bore into her.
She glared at him. “What do you want with my luggage?”
“The ship is too full, madam. There is too much weight. We must get rid of all the bags.”
She stared at him for a moment, not comprehending. But the diapers, she thought. The wedding gold.
“There.”She pointed to the place beside the railing where her suitcase rested, beside the basket, then turned back quickly toward the deck. At that moment, she saw movement and a flash of red again. A smile spread across her face. He saw me! He is coming!
When he was close enough that she could see him clearly across the deck, she held her breath for a moment. Apart from the fez, her husband was dressed completely in white. Wasn’t he wearing his suit this morning, when she left him? Im Musa strained her eyes to see him better. Abu Musa looked so bright in his white thobe that he seemed to be almost glowing, despite the grey of the sky over them. The paleness of his face reminded her of the tea seller when the shrapnel entered his body, but she saw no signs of injury on him. As he moved toward her, the crowd around him melted away. When he was several yards away, he stopped. Im Musa felt a rush of cold soak her spine. Looking straight at her, with eyes she didn’t remember, Abu Musa pointed behind her, toward the railing.
Im Musa turned in time to see the sailor lifting packages and dropping them into the sea. Her suitcase gone, he reached for the covered basket. Im Musa moved her body, tried to rush toward him, but the thickness of the crowd prevented it. She raised her voice, but no sound came out. As the sailor lifted the basket, Im Musa stretched out her hand toward him, waving it wildly. He caught her movement and looked at her. She gestured toward the basket, and a sound that felt like it was coming from outside of her rang out across the bridge. The sailor’s eye widened as he looked at the basket, and Im Musa caught the hint of movement within. Then, someone behind him bumped the sailor’s arm, and the basket fell into the sea. It touched down and floated for a moment among the abandoned packages.
The sailor stood leaning on the railing, grasping it with both hands, his eyes fixed on the waves. A small hand emerged from under the blanket and stirred before being swallowed into the waves.
***
Rumpus original art by Peter Witte
