No Land to Light On

Longlisted for the 2022 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize

Yara Zgheib

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781838954888
• eBook ISBN:
  9781838954871
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

*** 'Tense, lyrical, intelligent' - The Big Issue *** *** A heart-wrenching human story - Saga *** Exit West meets An American Marriage in this breathtaking and evocative novel about a young Syrian couple in the throes of new love, on the cusp of their bright future...when a travel ban rips them apart on the eve of their son's birth. Boston, 2017: When Hadi returns to his heavily pregnant partner Sama after a trip to Jordan to bury his father, he is stopped at border control - a hostile new immigration law has just been enacted - while she awaits him on the other side. Worlds apart, suspended between hope and disillusion as hours become days become weeks, Sama and Hadi yearn for a way back to each other, and to the life they'd dreamed up together. But does that life exist any more, or was it only an illusion? Achingly intimate yet poignantly universal, No Land to Light On is the story of a family caught up in forces beyond their control, fighting for the freedom and home they found in one another.

January 30, 2017

SAMA

I saw you, Hadi. I dreamt you were drowning. I watched you, like you were in an aquarium, being flogged by giant waves, banging against the glass. I banged from the other side. You opened your mouth to scream and, somehow, salt water filled my lungs. I woke up gasping and you weren’t there, and I was gripping the bed’s bars. It was salt water; my thrashing had yanked out the saline drip.

Something liquid trickles down my arm. Six a.m., green and fluorescent on the bedside table. Six a.m. Boston dark is not molten, Damascus dark; it glitters. Outside Room 1508, the glass skyline, the Charles. One white, flashing light crowns the Hancock like a star. Beacon Hill, burgundy Beacon Hill, is still deep mauve.

A knock.

“May I come in?”

Dr. Farber. Wet hair, clean scrubs; she went home last night. My heart sinks and sees a kitchenette, blue Ikea plates on a sail-white counter, a dinner I will have to throw out when—

“I hope you slept well. I just saw your son.”

My heart leaps.

“You saw Naseem? How is he?”

She hesitates, not long, just long enough to stop my next breath.

“Ms. Zayat, your—Naseem was stable overnight. No sign of jaundice, which is good.”

She pauses, as do I, midair.

“But his blood pressure is still too low, and his temperature keeps dropping, even in the heated incubator.”

She seems to be dispensing the information piecemeal, like bits of bread to a bird.

“There could be many reasons for hypotension: blood loss during delivery, an infection, a cardiac complication . . . It could also be because it took so long for him to breathe when he came out.”

Break. Maybe she hears the frenzied flapping in my ears.

“I must remind you, Ms. Zayat, that the chances for babies born this early . . .”

Boston, this early, still glittery.

“. . . started him on pressors and will be monitoring closely for new symptoms—”

Dr. Farber stops midsentence and looks at me. I don’t know what she sees, but she says, “Why don’t we go see him?”

Too many, too many wires and tubes, too soon for a child. Too dark in this room for a child. I used to be scared of the dark.

Babies should be laid on their backs to reduce the risk of suffocation. I used to sleep on my stomach, hands and feet and covers tucked in, every crevice sealed, cocooned, so the dark of the room wouldn’t enter.

I would wait for the soft swish of Mama’s slippers, reassuring me that the floor still existed. Wait for her hand on my back, through the covers, then she would sing . . .

Tiri ya tiyara, tiri . . .

The words I did not know I remembered flow into my head. It has been years since that lullaby, years since I sang in Arabic, since I thought in Arabic; the words sounded wrong in my head. Like they didn’t belong to the Sama who came to the US. They sound perfect now, in this room. I lean over the incubator. Through the plastic wall:

Tiri ya tiyara, tiri, ya warek wa khitan

Fly off, fly, paper plane and string,

I want to be a child, on the neighbors’ roof, again,

and have time forget me there.

He does not stir.

“That’s lovely. Is that Arabic you’re singing?” Dr. Farber asks.

“Yes, I’m from Syria.”

“I’ve been there.”

I look at her in surprise. She smiles and her cheeks turn a soft pink.

“Damascus, Aleppo, beautiful cities. I went there just before the war began. The music, the spices . . . I remember this one souk, even the air tasted of spices there.”

I watch her return there with an ease I envy.

“I suppose it’s quite different now.”

I nod. Different.

“Do you have family there?”

“My parents live in Damascus.”

“Is that where your husband is?”

The answer sticks in my throat, dry as the sumac in Souk al-Hal, not the souk she would have visited. Foreigners visit Al-Hamidiyah. For the second time today, I am envious of Dr. Farber, this woman who can go places like Damascus, Aleppo, return home to a place in Boston . . .

I turn to Naseem and continue to sing:

‘Alli fo’ stouh b’aad, ‘a nasmeh el khajouleh,

Akhadouni ma’ahom el welad wa raddouli el toufouleh

Over distant roofs, on a timid breeze,

The children took me off with them . . .

The notes trill and flit. There is music inside the words.

If only we could run away, fly off on that paper plane,

It is too soon to grow up still.

Let the pomegranate blossoms sway in the orchards,

That the children may play . . .

We should go now. Dr. Scott will want to examine you before going over your discharge papers.”

My heart bolts and beats, too loud. I choose not to understand.

“But Naseem can’t leave yet.”

Dr. Farber does not speak. The beat loudens. I should have left my heart outside. I should have known better than to let it in yesterday.

“I’m not leaving without my son!”

My son. The words are real, searingly real. Now look at this mess.

“Ms. Zayat,” Dr. Farber says, cautiously choosing her words. “Naseem will probably be here awhile—”

“How long?” I interrupt.

She does not reply.

“A few days? A week? A month? How long until he can come home?”

She gives me a strange look. The word home ricochets. A doctor should never leave a mother’s question in the air.

“I’m not leaving him alone!”

“He won’t be alone. His monitors are on, and the nurses check in every hour—”

“Every hour?!”

Horrifying possibilities rise and swell: What if something happens and no one is there? What if he cries? What if he’s afraid? What if I am? Paralyzed. My heart seals itself to the incubator wall, my feet to the floor. I could no sooner leave than fly, than the earth break out of orbit.

“Ms. Zayat, he’s in good hands, I promise. He’ll be fine.”

I shake my head. I cannot shake the ton of steely fear off my chest. Dr. Farber does not understand.

“You can visit Naseem every day, then go—”

“Where?”

Where do I go?

“Go home! Sleep in your own bed.”

Again, I shake my head. She doesn’t understand.

“It’s empty.”

The bed, the home, and dark. And how do I tell Naseem, how do I tell my heart I’ll be back, so they can hear me? I hide my face to cry. I used to believe that if I closed my eyes, the dark would not see me either.

Something touches my shoulder. A silver wedding ring. A smell of soap, unscented, just clean. I breathe it in and think just a feeling, just a feeling. You used to say that when you woke up from your dreams. The terror does not disappear, but ebbs. I look up and am in the neonatal ICU again. Dr. Farber removes her hand.

“Sama, I can’t order you to go home, but you’ve got . . . a long road ahead of you. You must rest. I know you’re scared—”

“He’s all alone!”

“He’s not, and neither are you. Rest. We’ll take care of him so that when he’s ready to leave, you can take over.”

She said when. She said when. A slip of the tongue, probably, but oh, how fragile, fleeting, sudden, and powerful, that thing with feathers. It fills my lungs like a skyful of mountain wind and calms my heart. Dr. Farber sees and nods.

“Do you want to say goodbye to your son? Tell him you’ll be back?”

I look at the boy who has my heart and contemplate the universe of words, in Arabic, English, French, all the languages I know and don’t. They swirl and melt on my tongue. Cotton candy, strands of clouds. White and blue. Powder blue, like his eyes, which I have never seen open. Like the eyes of all children when they are born, regardless of their citizenship.

“I love you,” I mouth, in English, in Arabic, in every language and with every atom in me.

“Ready?” Dr. Farber asks.

I follow her out anyway.

August 2010

The sliding doors shut behind her. Silently. Thunderously. Even as the plane had been landing, it had not seemed possible. Even as, eyes to the window, in that hazy state between sle...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• January 27, 2017
• January 28, 2017: Sama
• January 29, 2017: Hadi
• January 30, 2017: Sama
• February 3, 2017: Sama
• February 3, 2017
• February 11, 2017
• February 16, 2017
• February 17, 2017: Sama
• February 28, 2017: Sama
• A Note from the Author
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author