She Remembered the Port Explosion
By Sandra Khalil
in bits and pieces, as if it were her mind, not just her beautiful city, that had been torn apart.
She remembered the spray of cutlery that covered the canteen floor. The ringing in her ears. The coffee on her blouse. The glass that covered the desk where she had sat only moments before, and how, when she pressed her phone against her ear and heard her babies coo, safe, from ten kilometers up the mountain, milk had risen in her breasts, as wasteful as a prayer.
She remembered how long it took for her to remember her mother. That when she did, she had taken the stairs, two by two, three by three, only to sit in deadlocked traffic and wring her hands against the wheel. That eventually, she had opened the car door, kicked off her heels, and run.
She remembered that the rubble had cut her feet and that the air, heavy with smoke, had choked her lungs. That all around her, people stumbled, covered in ash except for their gaping mouths and weeping eyes. That even the buildings, pockmarked with bullets, scars from another time, lay in piles of despair, or attrition. That even the destruction had been destroyed.
She remembered that the door to her mother’s apartment was unlocked. That the windows that overlooked the port were no longer windows at all but open spaces pressed with smoke. That the glass through which, together, they had watched a thousand sunsets color their beautiful sky, had broken into a thousand daggers that covered the pale pink walls, the worn upholstery, and the thin cotton of her mother’s housedress.
Ya Allah ya Mama, ya Allah ya Mama, she remembered hearing, only to realize that the words were her own.
She remembered lifting her like she did her own daughters, first slipping her hands under her arms, then pressing her against her shoulder. That her mother had always been small, but in her arms, she weighed nothing at all.
She remembered the smell of the man — tobacco and sulfur — who had made space for them on the narrow seat of his motorcycle, so that all the way to the hospital, she had held his jacket with one hand and the narrow frame of her mother with the other.
She remembered the cots lined up outside Al Roum and that, after her mother had been wheeled away, she had pulled out her phone and watched a blood red mushroom cloud rise in slow motion from the silos at the port and roll across her beautiful city. That she had watched it replay without prompt, over and over, until a nurse came and led her to the door.
She remembered that there had been talks of jets crossing the sky, but that this was no war, they said, but an accident. A simple fire in a silo —
“An accident,” she remembered telling the nurse, who only nodded and placed her palm against the small of her back, the way her mother used to, as if wanting her to guide her or to follow her, she never knew which one.
THE END
Author Bio: Sandra Carlson Khalil is from Minnesota, but has called the Middle East her home for over a decade. Her stories have appeared in Contrary Magazine, Gordon Square Review, and Camas Magazine. You can find her work at www.sandracarlsonkhalil.com.