Normally, when I love a book, I zip through it at something approximating the speed of light, aching to know what happens next and next and next till it ends.
Normally, when I love a book, I zip through it at something approximating the speed of light, aching to know what happens next and next and next till it ends. And then I wish I hadn’t read it, so I could read it for the first time again.
Normally, when I hate a book, I c-r-a-w-l through its pages, hoping that at some point the story makes sense, or the characters pull themselves together, or the author settles into the writing so that the writing actually has style. Hoping for something, anything, to redeem the time I’m spending on the book when there’s a potentially better book at hand.
Now that you know that about me, how will you react when I tell you that I loved a book, really, truly loved it. But I took a week to read it, even though it is less than 300 pages
I took that time deliberately. Because the moment I read the first two-and-a-quarter pages of The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa, I knew this book was precious. I felt a little like those children in juvenile fantasy books who open a door and walk into magic.
So, I decided to go against my own grain and read this book I loved already, slowly. V-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, picking it up at odd moments to read a chapter at a time, so I could savour what I had already read and think about reading some more in an excruciating, but somehow appropriate, anticipation.
When I finished the book, as eventually I had to, I spent some time wondering why I’d reacted to it like this. Because there’s nothing very amazing about the story — there are a zillion stories like this published in a zillion languages around the world. But the way the story is told is haunting. It pulls you in and you want to never emerge. You would definitely want to emerge however — not just emerge, but run like hell — if you were where The Blue Between Sky and Water is set: Gaza. Gaza, where Israel has trapped the Palestinians they’ve driven out of their homes. Gaza, where thousands of people, generations of people, inhabit what is in effect a gigantic prison camp, with all the dignity they can muster.
The Blue Between Sky and Water is about the Barakas, a family that lives in Beit Daras, consisting of siblings Nazmiyeh, Mamdouh and Miriam, and their mother, Um Mamdouh, who is inhabited by a djinn called Suleyman.
Nazmiyeh is the oldest: strong, outspoken and with a bawdy sense of humour. She needs those qualities. The family name Baraka is, in Beit Daras, “nothing to brag about.” She’s also fiercely protective of her family, especially her little sister Miriam who is an unusual child. Miriam has mismatched eyes, one green and one hazel.
But more than that, Miriam, longing to go to school, but denied the privilege because girls are not educated, manages to read and write thanks to an apparently imaginary friend called Khaled who happens to be Nazmiyeh’s very real grandson from the future.
(Yes, there is an element of magic realism in The Blue Between Sky and Water; a very light touch of magic that in no way takes away from the reality of what the Barakas and their fellow Palestinians go through. No, I’m not giving anything away by telling you about Khaled. You know who he is right from the start.)
They’re very happy at Beit Daras. Nazmiyeh even meets a young man who can stand up to her, and they fall in love. But then Israel takes over the village and all the surrounding villages, and the Barakas wind up in Gaza. Not all the Barakas, unfortunately. Miriam, seeking Khaled, stays behind. And when Nazmiyeh, crazy with anxiety, returns to find her, Miriam is shot by Israeli soldiers and
At first they live in refugee camps, but slowly the people make lives for themselves as best they can. However, Mamdouh must leave Gaza or stay unemployed, and he and his wife Yasmine go to America. Where eventually, they have a granddaughter they name Nur, who has mismatched eyes: one green, one hazel.
Much happens to Nazmiyeh, Mamdouh and Nur before Nur is born and while she grows up. Lives are lived as fully as is possible for people in exile. And as the Israelis bomb, block and obstruct Gaza as much as they can, with the Palestinians fighting back in a reversed David and Goliath situation, all Nazmiyeh wants is her family to be whole again.
To be in Gaza with her. And eventually to be back in Beit Daras where they began. But Mamdouh dies just days before he and little Nur are to return to Gaza, and Nur seems lost to the family
I cannot really explain why this book is so magical, even though the family it’s centred on goes through terrible things. I even think at times (because this book is now stuck in my mind) that the gentleness of the writing makes the situation in Gaza appear less horrific than it really is — though every time the Palestinians struck back at their situation with ingenious schemes, I cheered.
But basically this is a book I want to thrust into your hands with a heart-felt, “Read it. Now.”And I wish I hadn’t read it so I could read it for the first time again. Kushalrani Gulab is a freelance editor and writer who dreams of being a sanyasi by the sea
