My Eyes Are Still Brown

I look up from the dinner table and find my grandfather's gray eyes. I wonder if they have always served as colorless emblems of his passivity. My grandfather is visiting, which means we are having fish for dinner…again. I am growing frustrated by the monotony. I ask if he ever grows tired of seafood. He laughs nervously in a way that somehow induces a sense of guilt within me. He begins to speak slowly. He struggles to find words. His narration begins to intertwine our consumption of fish with the many transpositions of the map of Palestine. It starts to make sense.

He recalls a past in which his father, who was infamous for his insatiable appetite, would gluttonously finish all the available seafood in a restaurant in one sitting. My grandfather seems both embarrassed by and proud of this retelling. I wonder if the colorlessness in his eyes is the outcome of this persistent state of mixed emotions. He is conflicted by identifying with a father whom he both loved and resented. As he is speaking, he pauses with more frequency than usual, as if he is reflecting on what his legacy will be. After a particularly long pause, he begins to speak with more vigor. He begins to lament the quality of market fish in Palestine ever since Israel seized control of all borders. Now more animated, he mourns his painfully disrupted romance with the Mediterranean at the hands of the Occupation. He relays his feelings of frustration with being de facto landlocked. He tells me that eating fish with me is a temporary escape from that reality. In this moment, I see a tinge of blue, of life, in his eyes, as if they are capturing the moment in which the waves of the Mediterranean Sea begin to crash…

Crash… C-section. The monitors are ringing, and by the looks on the faces of the doctor and nurses, things are not going as anticipated. The fluorescent lights are blinding, somehow both amplifying and drowning out the confusion. My mother has been in labor for nearly one day. How inconsiderate, s