Pomegranate Red
The something happyis Mama when she went to Damascus.
“Best days,” she said. “I made lifelong friends, and the city was beautifully historical. Oh, I pray you’ll see her one day, my girls. You can feel the souls of everyone who has ever lived there walking with you. She’s a blessed city. The bricks that made the Umayyad Mosque and the cracked pavements all over the city. The arabesque art that decorated the mosques. And you know, there are certain stalls in Souq Al-Hamidiye that were passed on from father to son for hundreds of years. You find that this family has always sold rugs. They’re able to trace their ancestors all the way to the Prophet SAW’s time. They’ve lived their entire lives in Damascus, in Syria, and know where their grandparents are buried.”
“What about us?” I asked. “Do we know our ancestors?”
Mama hesitated before smiling. “They’re all back in Syria.”
I understood then that we were the broken branch, snapped off from the mother tree. When Mama was buried here in New York in a small plot, I worried about whether the soil was too cold for her. Too uncomfortable so her body still couldn’t find rest after death.She lived such a difficult life away from her homeland, and her body yearns for that home.
“Anyway,” Mama then said cheerfully. “I stayed with my aunt. She had this wonderful Damascene house. Paradise from the inside. You know our homes are like pomegranates. Unassuming from the outside, but once you open it, you find rubies. A fountain with goldfish and cherry trees growing in the courtyard. The goldfish knew me well. They’d hear me coming out of the kitchen with their food, and they would swim toward me. They didn’t know much about the world except the sky above them. I’d wake up in the morning and pluck a cherry right from the window.”
Even though I was only thirteen, my heart ached for something I’d never known.
She told us we’d go one day. When Syria was back to the glory days, when we had enough money.
One day never came.
The mural shows the inside of a pomegranate where a whole universe exists. Ruby-red seeds glisten on Mama’s knuckles and arms and in her long raven-black hair. Her dress is teal, arabesque designs stitched right across it. She’s midlaugh, goldfish swimming around her ankles and a paintbrush in her fingers, dripping golden liquid that splashes all over. The background is a hazy skyline of Damascus. And I know I’m toeing the line with anonymity. The last murals were generalized with obscure Easter eggs.
But I don’t care. I don’t want to censor my culture and heritage.
And when I get a message from Jamie the next day saying I think this one might be my favorite, my heart smiles so wide, it aches.
Two weeks pass, and my time at this school doesn’t get any better, but it doesn’t get worse either. It’s a couple of boys, mostly ones I see with Mason, and though I can’t prove it yet, I know Nicole is in on someof it. Most of the students at school don’t care, and I think of them as passive watchers. Not that I expect anything.
One morning when I walk into class, passing two of Mason’s friends, one of them shouts, “Hey, jihadist, I have a question!”
His friend guffaws.
I clench my jaw, remembering how I didn’t walk away from that table during lunch when I should have.
I turn around to face them. Two blobs gape at me, and I refuse to let my vision give them any features. “Do you seriously want to use your very last brain cell to ask me something when you need it for the rest of the year?”
And without waiting for a reply, I turn on my heel and spot Jamie sitting at his desk in the corner with an empty seat beside him.
He heard everything, his expression ping-ponging from annoyed to amused.
I sit, taking out my notebooks, firmly ignoring all the eyes on the back of my neck.
“What are you looking at?” Jamie asks loudly in the direction of the blobs. They turn away, and Jamie focuses his attention on me. “You okay?”
I press a hand over my queasy stomach. “Yeah.”
I spoke up. I said something. It’s terrifying and it’s everything. But I feel like all my energy has drained away.
Alexis has stopped checking in on me. I gave up on my locker when I found a bunch of old, dirty socks shoved in there Monday morning. I have no idea who put them there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Nicole.
But today is Saturday, and it’s the day Amal is leaving for Qatar. I’ve been dreading it since she told me. I haven’t seen her since I was at her apartment.
It’s a bit jarring to see her now at JFK. Her pregnancy hasn’t started showing yet, but her cheeks are fuller, and she’s looking morelike Mama. Marwan is by baggage check-in, depositing their bags, while Baba, Amal, and I stand awkwardly beside one another.
“You’ll visit, right?” Amal asks suddenly.
I jump. She’s looking straight at me; her eyes are watery, but she’s not allowing herself to cry.
I nod, unable to say anything because the lump in my throat hurts.
