The Blue Between Sky and Water

The novel spans four generations of the Baraka family, Palestinian refugees whose story begins in the village of Beit Daras before the founding of Israel and extends into the besieged Gaza Strip of the early 2010s. The narrative is framed by Khaled, a young boy who narrates from a mysterious dissociative state he calls "the quiet blue," a timeless space from which he perceives the past, present, and lives of his ancestors.

In Beit Daras during the 1930s and 1940s, the Baraka family lives in the Masriyeen neighborhood, a poor quarter inhabited by families without social standing. Mariam, a young girl with distinctive mismatched eyes, one green and one brown, can see colored auras around people that reflect their emotional states. Though barred from school, she teaches herself to read through sessions with an imaginary friend named Khaled by the village river. The village women give her a carved wooden box filled with pencils and notebooks, which becomes her most treasured possession. Mariam's older sister, Nazmiyeh, is fiercely protective of her. Their mother, Um Mamdouh, communicates with Sulayman, a djinni, an entity from the unseen realm in Islamic cosmology. After Sulayman manifests publicly, the village regards Um Mamdouh as a blessed seer. A boy named Atiyeh is struck mute by the encounter; Um Mamdouh heals him, and a glance between Atiyeh and Nazmiyeh sparks a lifelong love. Their brother, Mamdouh, works for an old beekeeper and secretly loves the beekeeper's daughter, Yasmine.

In February 1948, Um Mamdouh prophesies that Jewish forces will attack, but adds that if Beit Daras does not surrender, "this land will rise again" (29). When Zionist forces strike repeatedly, the men order families to flee to Gaza. Nazmiyeh departs with Atiyeh's family, but Mariam stays behind to see her imaginary friend one more time. Guided by a dream, Nazmiyeh walks back through the night and finds Mariam in their home. Before they can escape, soldiers discover them and sexually assault Nazmiyeh. When she refuses to scream, one soldier shoots Mariam in the head. Afterward, Mariam's spirit appears, cups Nazmiyeh's face, and tells her to have a daughter named Alwan. Nazmiyeh gathers Mariam's wooden box and walks toward Gaza, finding Um Mamdouh dead along the road.

In the refugee camps, Nazmiyeh's first child, Mazen, is born with gray eyes that remind her of her rapist. She initially rejects him, but Atiyeh forces her to nurse the infant, and maternal love gradually takes hold. Nazmiyeh bears eleven sons total, speaking constantly to Mariam's unseen spirit and praying each time for the daughter she promised to name Alwan. Mamdouh eventually marries Yasmine and moves to Kuwait, then the United States. Their son Mhammad rejects his Palestinian heritage. When Yasmine and Mhammad both die, Mamdouh is left with his granddaughter Nur, born with Mariam's mismatched eyes. Mazen grows up haunted by rumors about his parentage, which fuel a fierce impulse toward resistance. At twenty, Israeli agents arrest him, and he is sentenced to life in prison on secret evidence. Nazmiyeh's twelfth and final pregnancy delivers the promised daughter, Alwan.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, young Nur lives with Mamdouh, who tells her stories of Beit Daras and insists they speak Arabic. Like Mariam, Nur can see colored auras, though the ability fades as she grows older. When Mamdouh dies, Nzinga, a South African social worker assigned to Nur's case, becomes her steadfast advocate. Nur is placed in foster care, then returned to her biological mother, a woman interested primarily in Nur's trust fund who neglects her emotionally. The mother's boyfriend, Sam, wins Nur's trust before beginning to sexually abuse her. After Nur falls severely ill from infection, Nzinga rescues her with a court order, and Nur discloses the abuse. She spends the rest of her childhood in the foster system, excelling academically while developing bulimia and hiding her mismatched eyes behind brown contact lenses. Nzinga visits faithfully for years, becoming the closest thing Nur has to a mother. Throughout her youth, Nur dreams of a river where a boy named Khaled teaches a girl named Mariam to read.

In Gaza, Alwan marries Abdel Qader, a quiet fisherman, and after years of miscarriages gives birth to Khaled on December 27, 1998. Nazmiyeh names him upon seeing a tuft of white hair in his black mane. The family endures the intensifying siege: Abdel Qader loses his boat to an Israeli naval attack that kills two of his comrades. Their second child, Rhet Shel, is named after Rachel Corrie, the American activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza. Khaled begins experiencing dissociative episodes in which his eyes roll and he becomes unresponsive. On his tenth birthday, December 27, 2008, Israel launches a devastating bombing campaign. Khaled enters a permanent dissociative state, perceiving the carnage as a celebration, while Abdel Qader is crushed beneath a collapsing building.

Nur, now a psychotherapist, sees a documentary about Khaled that Nzinga sends her. She meets Dr. Jamal Musmar, a psychologist from Gaza, at a fundraiser, and they begin corresponding. He offers her a yearlong position at his clinic, and Nur accepts, drawn by hope of finding her family and by her growing feelings for Jamal. Upon arrival in Gaza, she discovers he is married. She focuses on Khaled's care, establishing that he can communicate through blinking, and enlists his sister Rhet Shel as her helper, drawing the withdrawn girl out of her shell. When Nur removes her brown contacts, revealing her mismatched eyes, Nazmiyeh recognizes Mariam's eyes. Nur reveals her identity as Mamdouh's granddaughter, and the family is reunited. Nazmiyeh opens the wooden box she has kept for decades, containing Mariam's papers and Jiddo and Me, a book Nur and Mamdouh created together.

Nur and Jamal begin a secret affair. Alwan discovers it and stops speaking to Nur, not from moral judgment but because the recklessness could shame the family. Nazmiyeh forbids further contact unless Jamal comes honorably to ask for Nur's hand. Meanwhile, the beekeeper's widow treats Alwan's newly diagnosed breast cancer with cannabis oil from marijuana plants she has secretly cultivated. When Khaled's friends take him to a restricted zone to collect scrap metal, Israeli snipers open fire, killing one boy and leaving Khaled stranded; he loses sight in one eye.

Jamal sends Nur a letter ending their relationship and her employment, then emigrates to Canada. Nur discovers she is pregnant. In Cairo, she confides in Nzinga, saying she wants to keep the baby because she wants "someone to love who will love me back" (269). Nzinga observes that Nur has stopped purging since arriving in Gaza, a sign that feeling loved has healed something in her. The family schemes to conceal the pregnancy's circumstances, while Alwan's X-rays reveal her tumors have dramatically shrunk from the cannabis oil treatment.

Khaled dictates a final message through Rhet Shel's letter chart, telling Nazmiyeh that Mariam never left and is in Beit Daras. Nazmiyeh interprets this as a sign that her own death is near and organizes a farewell celebration. That night, Khaled dies quietly. Alwan discovers his body the next morning, and the family buries him.

Nur returns to Gaza through the smuggling tunnels, bringing Kinder Eggs, the chocolate treats whose disappearance Khaled used to measure the siege's severity. News arrives that Hamas has negotiated a prisoner exchange: one Israeli soldier for one thousand Palestinian political prisoners. Mazen's name is on the list. Nazmiyeh whispers to the beekeeper's widow that perhaps Mazen and Nur could marry, solving Nur's predicament. The family gathers on the beach. As the sun sets, Nazmiyeh murmurs, "My mother once said this land will rise again" (291), echoing Um Mamdouh's prophecy from 1948. The family sings Mariam's song, and Khaled's voice returns one final time to say he was there, "in the blue between sky and water," and that he "stayed as long as I could" (292).