Stones So Upset, They Turned Themselves Over
Winner of the 2025 Tobias Wolff Fiction Award
In the car, Chicken’s head thumps against the window every time the screws rattle, which is always. So it sounds like krrrCHrattle thHumpB and then the spitting of the car’s exhaust. It’s an old beast. It hurts to lay her head against the car’s window, but Chicken’s already committed to the act. She will keep her head here until they arrive at her uncle’s house. She forgot if she was pretending to be asleep or if she was acting mad, so she’s doing both. As soon as Chicken left her room, Chicken’s mom told her to go back in and change, that the outfit she was wearing to play in the dirt was not making it into the car all the way to Amo Silman’s house. They borrowed the car, they would return it cleaner than it came.
But Chicken didn’t wear these clothes to play in the dirt. Chicken didn’t play in the dirt at all today. It wasn’t her fault everything about her was always messy. She wished she could change it, but nothing ever worked. Her clothes will always have dirt and grass stains on them.
So she was mad at her mom. She’ll stop being mad when she sleeps. Or when she sees her cousins and they go out to play while her dad and his brother smoke argeela and her mom and her aunt cluck their tongues like that’ll stop them.
The car has been driving, stopping and starting, every few minutes. They’re installing new checkpoints on the route into Jerusalem. People have been saying—not to Chicken, just around her—that the thirty minute drive might start taking more than two hours after these are all installed. Maybe her uncle will get fed up by the militarization of Jerusalem and move back home. The fridge in the fish stall broke, so they can only store a small amount at a time to sell. He’s the only one who’s able to keep it fixed for a long time.
The car stops. The car starts. The car turns. Starts. Turns. Stops. Burps. Coughs. Starts. Turns. Spits. Stops.
At the checkpoint, the army personnel wave their guns around, stick their thumbs in their vests, behind their bandoliers. Yelling at them.
Here, Chicken does not pretend to be asleep. Her parents pass their papers through the window. The soldiers demand her father get out. Check the trunk. Pat him down. Yell at him. Wink at her mom. Make lewd gestures at Chicken.
They’re given the all clear.
Her mom says, “They act like that because they know nothing belongs to them.”
Chicken agrees, but she’s still mad at her mom, so she says nothing. She pretends to sleep again, this time her head stays on the cushion, away from the rattling window.
*
Finally in Jerusalem, her dad mutters how they changed the names of the streets again and finding his brother’s home is going to be a pain. But still, they drive. They drive and drive and Chicken pretends to be asleep so well that she actually sleeps.
When she wakes, she sees the same buildings she fell asleep to. They left the village just before dhuhr, but now it’s closer to maghrib than it is to asr and Chicken wonders if they’re lost. Her parents are arguing. Adults always argue around Chicken, not because they always argue, but because they think she can’t hear them. She breathes through her mouth so her perpetually stuffy nose doesn’t disturb them. Her parents discuss pulling over, what the streets used to be named, if her uncle still lives here at all. Her mother says they’ve been going in circles. Her father says the street is right here and he remembers the entrance to the alley because of the bright green shop sign but even Chicken knows shop signs can be painted. Just last week, the cobbler changed his sign to be black with white lettering, rather than piss yellow. It turned piss colored because it used to be white, he said. But the sea air and salt and sulfur from the new planes overhead changed its color. Chicken thinks it was just old.
Her mother is huffy.
Her father is bothered.
Chicken is tired.
She speaks, finally. “What if they moved the streets around?”
Her father breathes a very patient breath through his nose. Her mother says, “Yes, they moved the signs around, that’s why we’re having so much trouble. Half of them are in Hebrew now.”
That isn’t what Chicken meant. “I mean, what if they moved the streets around?”
This time her mother breathes that very patient breath. Her father, with his hand on the wheel, perpendicular like he wants to talk with them at the same time, says, “These streets,” he breathes again, “were renamed by the Israelis. We’re lost because of the Israelis.”
“I know,” Chicken says. Now she’s frustrated over how difficult it is for them to understand her. “What if the street changed?”
“Yes, ya rouhi, that’s the issue. Israelis changed the labels.” her father says.
“No, not the labels.” Chicken is adamant. What if the stones embedded in the dirt they came from got so offended over the tanks that drove over them with foreign materials and foreign soldiers speaking a foreign language to change the signs without asking that they got up and walked away? What if the earth rebelled, too?
Her mother puts a hand on her father’s shoulder and turns to the backseat. “I’m sure people would have noticed if something as big as a street left one day.”
Chicken remembers that she’s supposed to still be mad at her mom. She crosses her arms.
“Okay. What if the street never existed to begin with?”
“That’s not—” Chicken’s mom stops. Turns to her husband.
Chicken’s father says, “For the last time, I know he lives on Asucar Lane. He lives above his candy shop for God’s sake.”
Chicken looks outside at the rapidly darkening roads. “These shops are bakeries, Yaba.”
The car stops suddenly and jerkily. Her mother grabs the dashboard to prevent her face from flying into it.
Her father changes the gear. He’s got a clench in his jaw that Chicken knows means he’s trying not to curse because she’s in earshot, like when he cuts himself while descaling fish.
He puts his hand on the headrest of the passenger seat, turns all the way around to look out the back to reverse. It’s going smoothly. Until it’s not.
He stops again. This time, he does swear.
Flashlights appear in the back window. And then the driver’s. And then also the passenger’s. And then hers.
Then the yelling starts.
WHO ARE YOU WHERE ARE YOU GOING WHY ARE YOU OUT THIS LATE LET ME SEE YOUR PAPERS DO YOU HAVE ANY YOUNG BOYS WITH YOU DO YOU KNOW WHO THIS MAN IS and waving a paper in their faces and WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN THE TRUNK WHERE ARE YOU GOING WHO ARE YOU WHAT IS YOUR FAMILY’S NAME WHAT IS YOUR FATHER’S NAME NO YOUR FATHER’S NAME NO YOUR FATHER’S NAME NO YOUR FATHER’S NAME, I SAID YOUR FATHER’S NAME YOU SON OF A DOG I’LL SHOOT YOUR WIFE IF YOU DON’T COMPLY WHERE ARE YOUR PAPERS WHY ARE YOU HERE WHO IS THE GIRL IN THE BACK and Chicken’s door opens and she’s dragged out by the arm and it stings it burns like when her teacher grabs her too roughly after she’s been pulling at the boys’ hair in her class when they make fun of her but this time there’s a rifle swinging around her but she won’t cry and still more yelling about LITTLE GIRL WHO IS YOUR FATHER WHY ARE YOU HERE WHAT IS YOUR FAMILY’S NAME ARE YOU MUSLIM WHAT IS YOUR NAME DO YOU KNOW WHO THIS MAN IS WHERE DID YOU COME FROM HOW DID YOU GET HERE WHERE DID YOU COME FROM WHO IS YOUR FATHER DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR FATHER HAS DONE DO YOU KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU BECAUSE OF WHAT HE’S DONE THIS IS YOUR FATHER’S FAULT
There is more yelling from down the street. One of the bakery doors opens up with a slam and four men come out and she recognizes their noses, the shape of their brows, and so she sighs in relief a bit. But not all the way.
Chicken wishes she were still pretending to be asleep in the car.
The soldier lets go of her arm. Her mother grabs her and puts her face into the folds of her scarf, the embroidery on her dress scratching at her cheek. Her mother is yelling, too. “We have papers! We have the papers! They’re in the front seat, let me show you our papers!”
The young men from the bakery have their aprons on. She can see it out of the corner of her eye when one comes to comfort her mother and hold her back.
The other three get her father up from the back window of the car, arms free. She can hear them arguing. It’s broken Hebrew and Arabic. The yelling slows down as some of the boys have to translate her father’s words for the soldiers.
The slowness allows the bakery-boy next to her mother to get the paperwork from the car. He doesn’t move from in front of them, just shouts a name, Abdullah, and one of his friends or brothers or cousins turns around to bring them forward to the soldiers.
They spend a moment shuffling through the papers. Chicken knows how easily papers rip. She hopes the soldiers are more gentle than she is during arts and crafts. They only get one.
When they finally see their own stamp stating they drove through the checkpoint into Jerusalem, they say it’s been faked. That the checkpoint isn’t operational yet.
More yelling, this time from the bakers. They say “My cousin has the same stamp from yesterday,” and “My friend has one from last week,” and “The new school teacher came last month with that stamp because that’s the only entrance into the city from the coast.”
The soldiers don’t believe them. One of the boys runs back into the shop to get his cousin’s paperwork, and his cousin.
They all wait in silence.
Chicken really wants to move her head from her mother’s breast, but won’t dare to move. She can barely breathe.
The baker comes back with his cousin and the questioning begins again, quieter, but with as much anger, Who are you What is your name What is your family’s name What is your father’s name Where is your father Why are you here Who are you Who are you What is your father’s name Why are you here Where did you come from Where are these papers from Are you Muslim What is your family’s name Why are you not with your parents and on and on and on until they’ve had their fill of harassing them.
They leave.
Chicken is finally allowed to breathe.
They boys invite Chicken and her parents in for tea. Chicken’s father parks the car. It is now officially Maghrib. They pray with the baker family, have some tea. Chicken nibbles on the biscuits that they’re supposed to dip in the bitter red tea. It’s sweet, hard, sesame seeds pressed into the surface the same color as the dough. She is breathing through her mouth.
She learns that of the boys who helped them, only one of them was actually a man. The eldest son is twenty-two and the rest are nineteen, seventeen, and sixteen. The cousin they brought over to prove the stamp was real is twelve. His sister sits next to Chicken, eats biscuits along with her. She’s also twelve. Twins are rare, but a blessing. Her name is Asfura.
Chicken rocks a little on her heels back and forth while nibbling. Her mom stares at her and intentionally pats her own thighs as if to say You’re wearing a skirt, you dumb girl. You’ll flash everyone so stop moving. Chicken doesn’t stop rocking. She takes small bites of the biscuit so she can still breathe through her mouth.
Asfura leans close to her and says, “I have one Barbie doll if you wanna see it.”
Chicken very much wants to see Asfura’s one Barbie doll. She nods quick three times. Both she and Asfura put the remnants of their biscuits onto their plates, Asfura’s noticeably drier than Chicken’s. She does her best not to think about how hard it is to breathe, how much saliva she doesn’t know how to keep in her mouth.
As they scurry away, Chicken’s mother speaks up— “Don’t play for too long! Remember your uncle is still expecting us. We will leave soon.”
This gets her father going about how difficult it is to navigate the streets with their new signs. The adults talk politics now.
The two girls wind their way through the home to a shared bedroom. It’s got a pile of folded mats and blankets in one corner, pillows stacked precariously on top. In another, a modest bin of toys. Some fabric dolls, a fine selection of twigs and sticks, a slingshot, and the shining glory, the singular Barbie doll. She’s blond with a shiny dress.
Chicken and Asfura sit together by the bin. Asfura combs back the doll’s hair and generously hands her over. “I named her Maysam. I have a cousin with blue eyes. They scare me. Sometimes she sleeps with her eyes open.”
Chicken rubs her sticky palms over her skirt a few times. She doesn’t want Asfura to regret giving her the doll, even for a few minutes. Delicately, she takes Maysam.
“Sometimes,” she says while carefully moving Maysam’s arms up and down, “if I fall asleep while looking at the moon through my window, my eyes stay open.”
Asfura has picked up one of her fabric dolls and has started posing it. It must have wires inside because it holds its shape. “Does it hurt? To keep your eyes open like that.”
Chicken thinks for a minute, careful not to touch Maysam’s hair with her sticky fingers. The parents laugh down the hall. “The next day my eyes are always dry. But it’s hard to tell what’s itchy from being dry and what’s itchy because of the sea air.”
Asfura nods. She gestures to her fabric doll. “Her name is Aida.” Then she waits a moment before continuing. “Is the sea pretty?”
The house that is also a bakery is modest. The stone floor under them is cool. There isn’t much in the house to begin with. It’s clear that all the women and girls share this room to sleep on all the mats. The lack of fabric, art, pictures, and decor in the room and down the hall let them hear the adults discuss the streets with an impressive amount of clarity.
“Aida is a pretty girl.” Chicken walks Maysam over to Aida and says, “The sea is so pretty, but it makes my delicate blond hair turn fluffy.”
Asfura giggles before collecting herself and putting on a new voice for Aida, slightly lower pitched than her regular voice. She says, “Does the sand stay warm like the cobblestone streets after sunset?”
The adults talk about the soldiers now; it echoes down the hall like the shouts in Chicken’s mind.
“In winter,” she says, raising Maysam’s hands, “the sand stays cold all day. The sun is way up in the sky,” Maysam’s hands are high up, “but the sand stays cold.” Chicken slowly bends the arms down. “In summer, the sand stays warm until Isha’ sometimes.”
The car is borrowed, Chicken’s father says. He doesn’t know how he’d have explained any bloodstains on the seats if anything had happened.
Asfura says in Aida’s voice, “Who’s your uncle in Jerusalem?”
Lifting the doll for a moment to stare in her face, Chicken is silent. She twists her head all the way around and puts her to face Aida, back to Aida, face to Aida. She says, “He left our village because he didn’t like the smell of fish. He makes candy now.”
Asfura picks up her doll, too. Combs through her hair and presses her between her knees to hold her in place while braiding. She says in her normal voice, “This street used to be candymakers.”
Chicken very carefully puts the doll down. In the living room, she can hear her parents getting up, getting ready to leave. She says, “Where did they go?”
Frustrated with the braid, Asfura undoes it, gestures to Chicken to hold Aida still while she braids it again. Chicken does, so she keeps talking. “The street got sad. So the candymakers did, too.”
Her mother calls for Chicken.
“Where did the street go?”
Asfura doesn’t shrug, but it seems like she wants to. She’s so focused on making sure the braid is even. She says, “The stones got so upset at their new names that they turned themselves over.”
“So then where did the candymakers go?” Chicken held her breath to make sure she heard everything.
“They went into the dirt, with the stone’s faces. I saw them. One night I was awake really late because I had sweet bread and couldn’t sleep. I went to get a glass of milk and I heard noises like the boys were throwing stones across the street. They were turning over. I saw the candymakers’ shops return to earth, too.”
Chicken’s mother is walking down the hall. Chicken asks, “Why not your bakery?”
Asfura finishes the braid with a smile. It’s to her satisfaction. “We moved in after they changed the street names. The stones here made peace with it.”
Chicken’s and Asfura’s mothers come into the room. “Let’s go, girls! Say goodbye! They have to go! Say thank you for letting you play with her toys!”
The shuffle out of the house is too quick. Asfura shyly waves to Chicken. Chicken wants to give her a hug but her mother drags her out from the same place the soldier grabbed her arm.
It still hurts. Chicken waves back.
Rema Ghassan Shbaita was acknowledged by The Atlanta Review as the Dan Veach Young Poet of 2019, does not consider dandelions weeds, and is allergic to grass. You can find some of Rema’s work in PacificREVIEW, the Mosaic Art & Lit Journal, with the Inlandia Institute, and in Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry distributed by Haymarket Books.
