Young Writers Society

This is the first chapter of a novel I am working on about an eighteen-year-old Palestinian girl named Amalah, who travels to the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia (the town of Mayton) to find a wealthy uncle in 1948, the year of the birth of Israel. Please give honest feedback. Thanks!

A trunk grasped in my right hand. A satchel thrown over my shoulder. My pockets bulging with packets of crackers, dull pencils, and anything else I had managed to stow away before fleeing. This was how I entered Mayton, Georgia. This was all I had.

Horribly boring. I twirl the pen between my forefinger and thumb, allowing the ink to smear on my fingertips, painting my skin black. Just like my heart had been. Steady music pulses through me. The letter from Gunther peers up at me, untidy scrawl screeching for attention. I brush the letter away and chew on my eraser.

Deprived of sleep, and emotionally fatigued, my heavy heart set out in the small town of Mayton…

No, no, no, too melancholy. I tell myself to let it go, allow the words to spew out from my mind. Whatever I thought.

Moss dangled eerily from trees, dripping to the earth in heaps. Gazing up, I breathed in the ghosts of the coalition of buildings, chipped with years of moaning. Southern belles supported baskets on their arms, loafs of bread and jars peeking out at top. Stately businessmen lugging suitcases tipped their hats with ease, acknowledging the ladies. Coloureds in working clothes marched, their toolboxes and carpetbags swinging. I envied each of them, and diverted my vision to the ground. Only a few American dollars, freshly exchanged for my Palestinian pounds at the port, had been stuffed into my dress pocket with haste. I tugged at the strands of my ratted hair, concealing my severed ears behind the locks. A mosaic box of photographs and old letters and a silk veil rustled in my satchel.

Yes. This is where my story begins.

Chapter 1

Mere hours before, I had been sleeping in an alleyway, writhing amongst the rats on the coarse skin of the concrete. An old, tan dress blanketed my cold flesh. There were no inns I could submit to, as I only owned six dollars, and the cheapest inns were overladen with sailors and porters come straight off the harbour.

As dawn awoke, swapping the sky with night, I was trampled upon. Just like so many dawns ago.

“GET UP, VERMIN!” A shout grappled at the air. At first, I thought he was a Jew.

“DON’T KILL ME!” I screamed, shielding my face with my palms.

“I’m not going to kill you!” My attacker, a stocky, red man, spat at me, affronted. Reawakened by the image of the alley, I remembered that I was in Savannah. Not Palestine. “Get outta here! NO LAZY INJUNS ALLOWED!”

‘Injuns’ wasn’t part of my vocabulary, but the insult had no time to baffle me. I quickly gathered up all of my belongings in my arms and sprinted away.

********************

My feet ached with the short run, their old grievances tying them down. Panting, I skidded into a park. The grass, crinkling in autumn’s early breath, stood enclosed by a wall of trees. I leaned against the trunk of a tree with moss for hair. I fumbled around in my satchel for the mosaic box. My fingers recovered the smooth, refreshingly cool surface of the small box and I pulled it out. My vision blurred with untamed tears as I undid the latch. The haze of the water stirring between my lashes grabbed at the sun’s rays, pulling them into my eyes and casting the tarnished latch with an unearthly gleam.

My right fingers, trapped in a bandage as I broke them just a few weeks ago, grappled for the blur of the photograph tucked underneath the veil and herb sack.

Mirthful faces greeted me. My whole family, cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles, had gathered in Jerusalem for my cousin’s marriage. Positioned in the train station, greeting relatives from Lydda, the photo was taken from a higher balcony by a family friend. My family gazed up at the camera, eyes offering condolences. My tears threw the image of them into a void, where their faces were barely recognizable, smeared by…smeared by what? An element I had witnessed but not registered? What was it?

A ruthless series of emotions attacked me. I cursed myself for leaving my family. I cursed the Jews who ruined my lives, the ones I should have avenged. I cursed Allah for not helping me, and then I remembered that He had never been there, He’s only ever existed as a figure woven of thin air. But I still cursed His image, condemning his idol of gold and hope.

I buried my head in my scarred hands and sobbed, grief rippling quakes all over my body. Who do I go to now? Abandoned in a land I’ve never seen, strangers sweeping the streets. Just a year ago, exhilaration would have ruffled in my veins with the journey. How changed could one be?

I longed to pray, but Allah had failed. Could I pray to Falastin, or had my land failed me, too? Should I devote a prayer to the deceased? But they failed me too, leaving me in ruins.

This was why I needed to find my uncle. His wealth must bring my family back to the world that they deserved. Perhaps not one that I deserved, but that they did.

Lifting the photo to my lips, I inhaled the crisped air. I gripped my trunk. No succumbing to weakness. Resilience was the only answer to what I wanted.

This brings me to where I began. As I marched through Mayton, I would step into a puddle of sunlight woven of autumn rays, embroidered with lace of heat, and it would trickle warmth into my mind, pressing hope into my brain.

Passing through the park, veiled by the draping moss of trees. I watched them as tears dripped down their trunks, earrings of earthly fibers waving down to the earth in earrings. That’s where I was. And I set my foot into a pool of light, the water rippling as the trees swayed in the oncoming breath of the sky.

And I tripped.