When I told my parents how the colors whispered their stories to me, how they pulsed and breathed, I was worried they wouldn’t believe me. That this was a figment of a hyperactive imagination. But Mama said the blessing was awakening in my blood.
There are stories in my family. Blessings that brush the line between reality and magic. Passed down through the generations of women in my family like a gift. My great-grandmother’s house in Syria was the only one with sunflowers blooming all year. Through snow and hail, they had their petals stretched out toward the sun just becauseshegrew them. Her daughter, my grandmother, could catch clouds with her bare hands and squeeze the moisture from them for the freshest, coldest water you’d ever drink. The village never went thirsty. Her sister could talk to the trees. They told her of battles never written in books and lost love stories never known. She knew how Arwad and Tartus came to be and when the lemon trees would release one final bountiful crop before passing away.
Mama was the one who could speak to everything that lived in the sea. She knew how to swim before she could walk. The jellyfish were her childhood friends and the Mediterranean her confidant. And even though Baba had never seen her speak to the jellyfish—she’d told him they were shy—he believed every word.
AndIcould see the colors.
The ones that make up a person, how the character of the person influenced the shades. I could sense sorrow on a stranger’s gray jacket. Taste the joy on a tree’s brilliant green leaves. A song on a daffodil’s yellow petals. Forgotten promises on a faded pink jewelry box. Every shade of every object danced and flared like musical notes, bleeding into one another. I could see people’s cores, the colors that made up their souls and if they were dimmed or bright.
Amal and I grew up with stories from our village. Of vast endless fields and a horizon that stretched on forever. We tried to visualize it in our small two-bedroom Queens apartment. Peaches so sweetyou can still taste them hours after you’ve had one. Sun so warm in autumn that a light jacket is the only thing needed. Mountains that rumbled, joining the Athan prayer from centuries-old mosques.
It’s these stories that shaped me, that kept the pain away.
Now it’s these stories that bring the pain.
Now the colors are leeched, stripped forcefully from my sight. All I see are shades of gray. It happened after Mama was gone more than a year ago. I thought I was still stuck in a nightmare. I was too shocked to say anything, praying and hoping the colors would come back. It took me a whole week before I brought it up to Baba. The guilt gnawed at me when he took me to the optometrist because our co-pay is horrible. Even more when the optometrist couldn’t find anything wrong with me and declared it was probably all in my head. I don’t think he believed that.
So this is the world I see.
Baba gets into the car while I close up the gas station. He’s been spending more time at the gas station than at home these days.
I put on my headphones and press play on my playlist before jogging to the car. As soon as I get in the passenger seat, Baba puts the car in reverse and drives out into the road, taking us back into the belly of New York City.
I used to love my town. I was born here, grew up here. This place is all I’ve known. Our neighborhood promised the American dream. A mesh of cultures all coming together from different parts of the world to find opportunity in this land of the free. While everyone spoke English, it wasn’t the most prevalent language. It was a symphony of Arabic, Portuguese, Chinese, and Romanian. And I loved it. I loved how I knew where each creaking stone in the pavement outside my apartment building was. I knew the stray ginger cat in the alley who has given birth to a litter of kittens every single year for the past five years. One that I wanted to adopt but Mama—
I turn up the volume on my headphones until it’s over therecommended range. I don’t listen to the words. They’re a garble against my ears as I lose my thoughts to the drumbeats and guitar strings.
We’re caught in the evening traffic for a solid hour. If there was no traffic, it would have been ten minutes.
The whole ride is silent aside from the buzz of the music I’m listening to.
Finally,finally, we’re home.
I get out, slamming the door, and hurry up the steps of our six-story building. I don’t even look back to see if Baba is following. We’ve become our own islands.
This has been my parents’ home ever since they came to the United States. The building is crammed between others like they are scared children, leaving no room to breathe. It might seem like the building is about to fall, knees wobbling, but I realized long ago this building will be here years after I die. The illusion of weakness doesn’t extend to its insides.
The salon run by our neighbor, Mrs. Gomez, and her daughters, is still open, and the sounds of rapid Portuguese flit out the open windows. My heart hurts, and I push back more memories threatening to play in front of my eyes.
The elevator isn’t working, which isn’t a surprise. I climb up the five flights of stairs, reaching our front door.
Stepping inside, praying I hear her voice. A prayer, a hope bursting in my heart unbidden every time I come home.
Praying the past year was just a nightmare.
But it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t.
Dusty Yellow
Our apartment isits own island of Syria in the middle of Queens. A two bedroom with a tiny kitchen that never stopped Mama from cooking the most delicious recipes. A wooden cabinet sits in the hallway, protecting the delicate crystal glassware inside. We’ve never used it, not even when we had guests over. We still don’t. The cabinet is draped with embroidered tablecloths Mama got as wedding gifts. She loved them so much; she bought more from Souq Al-Hamidiye when she visited Syria during the summer years ago. They were to be put over the sofa and the TV. And over the arabesque wooden table that sits in the living room. Her art adorns the walls, portraits of me and Amal, the jellyfish in the Mediterranean, and the collections of stone-built homes in Arwad. There are pictures of me and Amal from when we were babies all the way up to Amal’s wedding. Our family photo hangs in the middle. Mama and Baba standing behind the photographer’s couch, which Amal and I were sitting on. I was twelve then and Amal was nineteen.
I hate that picture.
If I look too closely, I can see the red rimming my eyes and the scrunch of my nose as I try not to scowl. The huge pink bow in myhair distracts from all of that. Mama had put me in a black-and-white polka-dot dress with white stockings. Amal plasters a wry smile onto her face. She’s in a long black pencil skirt and a white shirt, her two-piece hijab tucked under the shirt so the bejeweled collar shows. Mama is in her signature gray manto, and Baba is in a suit he probably bought twenty years prior.
I was angry that day for a reason I can’t remember. I do, however, remember I didn’t want to wear that bow. It was too tight on my head, and I wanted it off.
That family photo was supposed to mark the beginning of our new life. One where cancer no longer had a grip on our fears and hopes. Mama was four months into remission. Her lungs were strong enough to breathe air.
