AN UNSAFE HAVEN
Nada Awar Jarrar

Copyright

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Nada Awar Jarrar asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cover layout design: Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016. Cover photography © Mario Ramadan/EyeEm/Getty Images (steps) and Shutterstock.com (texture)

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008165017

Ebook Edition ©July 2016 ISBN: 9780008165031

Version: 2016-06-01

Dedication

For Bassem,

With all my love.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

About the Author

Also by Nada Awar Jarrar

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

They are still on daylight saving and the light, soft and hesitant, comes early, through the gap in the curtains and on to the bed, shaping itself to the contours of their bodies, gently waking her.

Peter does not stir when she sits up. She looks at him, his features in repose beautiful to her, fair skin unblemished, his greying hair fine as silk, an implied calmness to his demeanour even in sleep that still moves her after so many years.

She gets out of bed carefully, puts on her dressing gown and looks back to make sure she has not disturbed him. In the kitchen, Anas is already sitting at the breakfast bar, hair ruffled, his eyes, when he looks up from behind his glasses, uncharacte‌ristically flat.

—Anas, Hannah says quietly. You’re up early.

He does not respond.

She places her hand over his and feels a slight tremor in it.

—Is everything all right?

He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. She puts an arm around his shoulder and, feeling him shudder, realizes that he is crying.

—Anas, please tell me what’s the matter. You’re scaring me.

He finally looks up at her.

—It’s Brigitte, he says in a whisper. She’s left Damascus and taken the children with her.

She lifts both hands to her mouth.

—I don’t understand, she exclaims. Where did they go? What happened?

There is a pause before he can reply.

—I telephoned them several times yesterday but no one was in. I’d been worried since that car bomb exploded in our neighbourhood after I left. I wanted to make sure they were all right, but when I called my mother late last night, thinking they might have gone there, she said they were gone.

—Gone?

A thought occurs to Hannah though she does not say it out loud. Please God they haven’t been kidnapped, she thinks. It is not unusual for people to go missing in Syria. Since the revolution and consequent civil war began, there have been tens of thousands of abductions.

—It’s not what you think. Anas has read her thoughts. Our neighbour downstairs saw the taxi we always use parked outside for them. They had lots of luggage. When my mother asked the driver later, he said he’d taken them to the airport.

—Thank God. She breathes a sigh of relief. Where do you think they went?

—I’m sure she went to her parents in Berlin. Where else would she go?

—So you’re going to call them?

He shakes his head.

—My in-laws moved recently and I don’t have their number. I didn’t think I’d ever need to get in touch with them without Brigitte there.

—At least you know they’re safe, Anas. Hannah is not sure what else she can say in the way of comfort.

—She waited until she knew I’d be coming here for the exhibition and left without saying anything about it. There is bitterness in his reply. She knows I would never have agreed to it.

—Brigitte has talked about leaving before?

He shrugs.

—Since the fighting began, whenever the subject came up. I always told her Damascus is home and I would not abandon it no matter what happened.

He waits for a moment until Hannah begins to feel a hint of his anguish.

—I also said I would never allow the children to leave. I reminded her that they would always be Arab.

—But, Anas, you can’t be surprised that she would want to get the children out of a country at war? Surely, you can’t.

—She doesn’t feel the way I do about Syria, he says. Why should she? After all, it’s not her country.

Hannah begins to ask him if he really believes any mother, regardless of her nationality, would not choose to remove her children from danger, no matter the cause, but decides to remain silent.

She sits down and feels a now familiar hopelessness rising through her chest, gloom that comes from her many years as a journalist writing about the affairs of a region constantly in turmoil. Silently, she gathers together the thoughts that she will later write down to use in the stories she is always working on.

In the past five years, the Arab world has swelled and raged as dictators have fallen and people in their hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions of others displaced. In Syria and in Iraq, in Egypt and Libya, and in the farther reaches of the Arab Gulf, we have looked on in horror while humanity appears to stumble over itself; and Lebanon, in the wake of all this turmoil, teeters on the brink. There are moments when it seems too big, too unfathomable and overwhelming a reality to take on, when I feel as if I – along with the region I once believed in – am moving through mud, fearful and hesitant, unable to take that next step towards release.

Living in Beirut can be deceptive; it offers a false impression of safety and permanence in the midst of all the upheaval. We feel the direct consequences of the tragic events in Syria, but it is hardly by choice. Is Brigitte wrong in distancing herself from what is going on? And are we, all of us, mistaken in standing by, believing ourselves helpless like this?

There is something else to be learned from the experience of this situation, something to do with the conflict’s essential incongruity, even to those of us who are closest to it. Nothing about brutal battles is acceptable, nor are they a normal function of human interaction. This is how people diverge in their perceptions. For the suicide bombers who have been striking in the heart of Beirut or Baghdad, in Benghazi or Sanaa, in heavily populated areas and at times of day when ordinary people are getting on with their lives and the highest number of casualties is likely to occur, for these extremists, there is no such thing as everyday life, nothing in their psyche that points to normality and recognition of the other as legitimate and worthy.

She sighs and places a hand on Anas’s arm.

—You’re in despair, I know, habibi, she says quietly. You have the sensitive soul of the artist that you are and are feeling overwhelmed right now. But things will work themselves out, you’ll see. We’ll find your family. I know we will.

*

During those foggy moments before complete wakefulness, Peter hears murmurings, imagines himself going outside in search of them, feet bare and his eyes, unbelieving, squinting in the breaking sunlight that bathes the furniture and floors.

It is only Hannah and Anas talking, he realizes.

Getting out of bed slowly, he stands still for a moment and listens further, the voices beyond gently rising and falling. He smiles to himself. It pleases him that his wife and good friend should get on so well.

When he joins the others in the kitchen a short time later, he is already showered and dressed.

—Morning, hayati, says Hannah. Sit down and let me pour you some coffee.

Peter looks at Anas but he has a hand over his eyes.

—Is everything all right? Peter asks. Anas, are you OK?

Hannah hands him his coffee and tells him what has happened.

He sits down and waits for his friend to look up. Anas is an extraordinarily handsome man. He has the brooding features characteristic of many Arabs, Peter believes, but in him they are softened by luminous eyes and a palpable quietness of spirit.

—How did she manage to get them out without your permission? Peter eventually asks. Surely they would have stopped her at the airport.

—If anyone did try to stop her, she would’ve paid them to keep quiet, Anas says. Anyway, they’re not too strict about things like that these days. Lots of people who have foreign passports and can afford it are leaving.

—At least we know they’re safe, Hannah interrupts the ensuing silence. Brigitte will get in touch soon, I’m sure.

—Do you have any idea where she might be? Peter persists.

—I’m pretty certain she’ll have gone to Germany to her parents. Still, it depends on whether or not she wants me to find her at this point. She’s got lots of friends to stay with.

Peter senses hesitation in Anas’s voice.

—We can try to find her.

Anas puts his cup down on the bar in front of him.

—I’d rather she got in touch first, he says. I don’t want to rush her. She’s probably confused and very angry with me right now.

—No matter how she feels, says Peter quietly, they are your children, Anas, and you have a right to know where they are.

A moment later, he wonders if this was the right thing to say to a man in such a vulnerable state. Perhaps empathy, rather than rational thinking, is what he needs right now.

Peter looks at Hannah but her expression tells him nothing. He sighs and lifts his cup to his mouth.

There are times when he harbours doubts about his true nature, wonders whether or not being a physician has made him impervious to the pain of others, or if, even with those to whom he is closest, he has developed a studied indifference, a metaphorical second skin that protects him from the dilemmas of compassion. Some of this disconnection, he knows, he brought with him from America and a childhood home where a show of emotions was discouraged. During periods of clarity, he has seen that, in trying hard over the years to adapt to a culture so different from his own, he has lost the ability to appreciate the subtle ups and downs of human relationships, a shortcoming he is reluctant to acknowledge openly but which nonetheless shapes his everyday dealings with others. Once or twice, when he has tried to approach Hannah with his suspicions, the fear that she might confirm them and judge him further for his apparent indifference has stopped him. At times distrustful of his feelings, he has become adept at avoiding them, working too-long hours to pay proper attention to anything else or simply putting on a façade of detachment that leaves him only in sleep.

As the situation in Lebanon has worsened and Hannah’s anxieties continue to increase, he has been close, at times, to admitting a distance even from her, a pulling away from the concentrated passions she harbours, which are a good portion of her essential self. And although he is troubled by Anas’s sadness now, he is inclined to leave the dealing with it to Hannah, for whom extreme emotions are an everyday occurrence.

It is often like this, he thinks, my true self appears to me only in bits and pieces, like flashbacks in a film, incoherent but sharp-edged, revealing as much as they manage to hide from me. That surely is why I am bewildered at times like these.

He looks over at his wife again before continuing.

—Look, Anas, I have a friend who is with the International Red Cross here. Maysoun is Iraqi and works mostly with refugees from there, but I’m sure she can find out for us. She told me they have a register of people fleeing war. She’d be able to trace anyone who has left Syria. What do you think?

—I don’t suppose it would do any harm to find out, Hannah says, looking at Anas. Let Peter do this and then we can figure out where to go from there.

Anas smiles.

—You are good friends, he says. Once the exhibition opens and I can go back to Damascus, I’ll be able to think more clearly and decide what to do …

—Wait a minute, Peter interrupts him. You don’t have a German passport, do you?

Anas shakes his head.

—I’m pretty sure the embassy in Damascus will have closed down. If you decide you want to go to Germany to find your family, you’ll have to get your visa from the embassy here.

—He’s right, says Hannah. You can’t possibly think of going in and out of Syria just yet. Besides, there have been battles going on very near Damascus the last few days and it’s dangerous. Stay on with us for a while longer, until we can work out what to do.

Anas hangs his head. Peter looks on as Hannah puts her arms around him and, for a brief moment, is conscious of the rhythmic beating of his own heart.

When Anas goes inside to get ready to leave for the gallery, Peter turns to Hannah.

—I can’t believe Brigitte would leave like that without telling Anas about it, he says.

—Maybe she was worried he’d use the children as an excuse and prevent her from leaving. He could have contacted the authorities and had them stopped at the airport. She wouldn’t have been allowed to take the children away without his consent.

—I can understand her wanting to save the children from the war, Hannah. But she should have found a way to let him know she was planning to escape. She could even have come here with the children instead of disappearing like that.

He grabs his jacket and starts for the front door.

—By the way – he turns to ask her – are you visiting another refugee encampment for your articles today?

Hannah shakes her head.

—I can’t do any work after what has happened. Anas is absolutely devastated and I need to be with him.

—I realize he’s upset. But nothing we do at this point is going to make him feel better.

She looks at him with what seems like reproach.

—He can’t be left to deal with this on his own, Peter.

—Anas is going to feel upset no matter what we try to do. He has to cope with the situation in his own way and he’s aware we’re here to help whenever he needs it.

—Whatever you might think, I will not leave him today. I have to make sure he’s OK. Then, frowning, she continues quietly: You know, there are times when we seem so different, you and I.

Before he can be alarmed by what she has said, he decides to make a joke of it.

—Just as well we are and I can help tone down your angst, he says.

But she only turns away.

Chapter 2

From the beautiful residential neighbourhood of Abou Roummaneh in Damascus, Anas drives his children to school every morning, stopping the car to let them safely out, then placing their bags on their backs and watching them walk away, his heart leaving with them, the tug of separation lingering as he drives on to his studio on the outskirts of the city, as he sets to work and anticipates release from the everyday, as he dreams.

With Marwan and Rana, he has tried to cultivate a quietness that had been largely absent in his own childhood, in which his parents’ love had been too intense at times, too enveloping to allow him breath. Growing up, he had had the comfort of knowing that whatever the challenges, whether it was anxiety over schoolwork or rejection by friends, whether he got disapproval from strangers or simply felt disconnected from the world around him, whatever the break these experiences caused inside him, there would always be someone or something to put him together again. His mother making his favourite sweets and the pleasure in her eyes as she watched him eat them; his sisters, both older, helping him with homework, often doing it for him while he went out to play; his father insisting, at the end of the school week, that he walk down with him to the old souk to help with the shopping. Once there, Anas became so engrossed in the surrounding activity and displays, felt so much a part of them, that he forgot his troubles.

Yet he had felt stifled by this closeness at times, and recalled occasional moments of aloneness that stood out as bright and exceptional: the sun on his back as he bent down on the terrace to play, undisturbed, with a new toy, the joy in that anticipation, or at night, a little while before sleep, shutting his bedroom door and sensing in this instantaneous, temporary solitude the opportunity to be utterly himself, feeling the relief in that, the release. He has always understood that it is exactly this ability to disengage, with fluidity and without notice or regret, that makes way for the artist in him, that defines his deepest being.

He remembers the joy his parents had felt when in his final year at school he passed his baccalaureate exams with distinction, the pride and the boasting, their expressions of hope for his future – medicine perhaps, or law, they advised him –and then their disappointment when he had refused, their despair that he would be willing to give up the opportunity to elevate his standing and that of his family in a watchful and highly critical society. But the urge in him to create, to portray in shape and in colour what defined his essential being was too strong to ignore, and for several years, during which Anas and his parents hardly communicated, he had taken on menial jobs that allowed him to pay for occasional art classes and materials, until the day he was able to announce to them that he had won a scholarship to study art in Germany and their resolve was finally broken.

Anas is aware that in defying his parents’ plans for him as the only son in a traditional Arab family, he became stronger and more determined to succeed as an artist. But this is not a fight he wants to engage in with his children, not the path towards fulfilment that he wishes for them. He sees instead a flexibility in their outlook that they have gained from their mother; this pleases but also at times frustrates him. It is a mirror he is not always willing to look into.

He works on the top floor of an ageing three-storey building, once the pride of Syrian design, with an open stairwell that looks on to a garden overgrown with plants and a small pond that is long dry; and standing right outside his front door, growing in a huge, ancient pot, is a beautiful jasmine bush that dies gracefully in winter and in spring fills the evenings with its perfume. Inside the spacious, high-ceilinged rooms of the apartment are the light and shadows he has always sought, a weightless glowing, and at its edges, a muted gloom, the suggestion of colour that serves as his inspiration.

He spends the best hours of his day sitting at a wooden table placed directly beneath a large, open window, painting with colours he has painstakingly blended together or sculpting materials which he manipulates with nervous hands, slowly but surely drawing the outlines of his better self, he knows, the man he sees clearly in his mind’s eye but who in lesser moments appears dulled and ordinary.

Anas has finally found the recognition that a handful of Syrian and Iraqi artists now enjoy thanks to a greater interest in their work around the world, a recognition that is deserved. However, he comforts himself with the thought that increased material comforts and growing demand for his pieces have neither influenced his outlook nor made him change his work habits. He prides himself on that, trusting that his instincts will continue to carry him through what might turn out to be only a temporary rise. He knows that art is the one thing, above all else, that gives him life.

But if his work has achieved success, his personal life – more specifically his relationship with his wife – has not fared well. That too is a long story which he cannot bring himself to talk about, even to his closest friends.

He had been at art school for almost a year when he met Brigitte at a gathering in the home of a mutual friend. She was tall and attractive, like many of the women he had met since his arrival in Germany, and fair: a striking contrast to his own colouring that appealed to him. Yet he had sensed something about her from the first: a willingness and humility he admired; an interest, too, in him that went beyond that initial attraction. Their affair had been passionate and serious in a way that was unfamiliar to him, demanded from him wisdom that his upbringing and consequent experience had not prepared him for, a view of relationships, of women, that was new and challenging. They had joked once about their closest moments being as lessons in love, with Brigitte as the teacher and he the willing student.

When they married not long after meeting, she had told him she looked on the prospect of moving to Damascus to live and raise a family as a welcome adventure. If she loved her husband so much, she admitted, it was in large part because she was fascinated with his culture, longed to discover a world far outside her own European upbringing.

Syria had lived up to all her expectations at first, as an authentic Arab country that remained largely faithful to its heritage, perhaps – and the irony of this did not escape her – because it had lived so long under dictatorship that Western influences were few and far between. Anas had been charmed, in those first few months after their arrival, by his wife’s wonder at the peculiarities of life in Damascus, at its manifestations of old-world sophistication alongside an innocence that he could see moved her greatly.

Once, using a cashpoint at one of the bigger banks in the city, Brigitte had at first been alarmed when a small group of what were clearly labourers came to stand beside her, apparently watching what she was doing. When Anas explained in German that the service was very new to Damascus and that the onlookers were merely curious, she had smiled and gestured to them to come closer and asked Anas to translate as she gently explained exactly how the machine worked. What she had not known, what Anas did not have the heart to tell her at that moment, was that the men were unlikely ever to need the services of an ATM since bank accounts were a privilege that only a wealthy few enjoyed.

She marvelled also at the daily proximity of people one to the other, the houses in the old neighbourhoods attached to one another in rows, their walls porous, voices and emotions filtering through them in the breathing air, people moving through the crowded alleyways that represented streets, bodies touching as if in a shared dance, the spaces above them filled also with anticipation, and everywhere, at tables eating, in rooms punctuated by conversation, by deathbeds and in silent prayer, the presence of an unseen but nonetheless all-powerful notion of God.

She told him, in those early days when they talked about their almost daily excursions into the heart of the city, that she had never known such clear evidence of vitality, of the feeling that she could, whenever she wished, dip her heart into it and come out overflowing, of the certainty that in loving and being with him, she had finally found her way home.

And if he were to be truthful with himself now, he would have to admit to his wife’s influence on his view of their relationship, the honesty with which she insisted they communicate, the transparency in their dealings with each other.

But neither of them had reckoned on the difficulties Brigitte would eventually encounter in trying to fit in with Anas’s family. His mother, he knew, had been devastated at the news that he would be returning from five years studying abroad with a foreign wife and did not hesitate to show her disapproval at every opportunity. And while his father and sisters tried to make Brigitte feel at home, there was no question as to their disappointment in his choice.

His family’s feelings about his young wife, he was certain, were not personal. Had she been merely a girlfriend who would later return to her own country, they would have found her delightful, would have welcomed her with open arms; but marriage being, to their minds, a lifetime’s commitment, they could not see her playing that long-term role with the dedication to social convention that it deserved; worse still, they could not see themselves settling comfortably with the thought of it.

Anas had been confident that once grandchildren came along the conflict would naturally resolve itself, but the birth of his son and daughter served only to complicate matters further. Brigitte mistakenly believed that she and Anas would be exclusively in charge of their children’s upbringing; she had not reckoned on the role of the extended family in Arab culture and arguments had ensued between them as a result. It began over little things like the grandparents feeding the children sweets their mother insisted were not good for them, or ignoring her instructions about meal and bedtimes when the children stayed with them, and eventually escalated into a headlong battle over who exactly was in charge.

Disagreements became especially heated over the influence of the family over the boy, Marwan, who was generally considered more important because he would eventually carry the family name.

Anas remembers especially one Sunday lunchtime when, as was their custom, they had all gone to his parents’ house. Once lunch was over, Brigitte had asked Marwan and Rana to help with the clearing up but Anas’s mother had been horrified when she saw her grandchildren at the kitchen sink washing dishes, had ripped the apron from around Marwan’s waist and pushed him away.

Anas had been surprised to find himself taking his mother’s side even though he was aware that Brigitte would find this unforgivable.

—How could you let her do that, Anas? Brigitte had begun. Is this how you want our son to be brought up? To think of himself as superior to women and believe they should be relegated to menial tasks?

—That’s not what I want at all, Brigitte, and that’s not what my mother meant. She’s an old woman and she’s set in her ways. Why won’t you give her the benefit of the doubt?

—Your mother effectively told Marwan he was better than his sister, that it was all right for her to do the dishes but not for him. How do you think that made Rana feel? Are her feelings less important because she’s a girl?

—When have I ever acted as if Marwan was more important? You know that’s not how I feel, Brigitte, so stop accusing me like this. Haven’t you learned anything about our culture in the years you’ve lived here? Or is it just that you think your Western ways are better?

—Western or not, Brigitte said, what happened was not right and you know it.

She took a deep breath before continuing.

—What’s happened to us, Anas? Why don’t we talk like we used to? You’ve changed so much recently that I feel I can no longer get through to you.

At these words he had been conscious of a resentment towards his wife’s foreignness that he feared he might never shake off.

—Do you mean get through to me or get me to think and do what you want? he retorted. You refuse to get on with my family and you are constantly trying to turn my children into something they are not. My children are Arab and this is their culture. When are you going to accept that?

If Anas is not able to ascertain exactly how the trouble between them had started, then he is honest enough to admit to himself that his own behaviour after that Sunday had done little to minimize it. With the growing pressure of work, he began to spend less time at home, travelled a great deal, was secretly relieved at the opportunity to avoid conflict, and left Brigitte to cope on her own. But she had not coped, he realizes now; she had become more isolated than ever, until the day the war in Syria began and all she could talk about was leaving. He had tried to make her see the conflict as he then perceived it: a challenge the country would have to go through before it could move forward, a disintegration that would eventually lead to renewal. Brigitte accused him of naivety, of being unwilling to admit to himself that with the escalation of violence, the conflict was headed towards disaster, had even told him once that he was willing to endanger the lives of his own children to maintain the illusion of Syria as home. His intransigence on that point, his insistence that they remain in Damascus, had driven them even further apart. Other matters came to light for him – and no doubt for her as well – as to the extent of their differences, matters which had not been personal at first but which eventually became so significant that they threatened to compromise their love for each other. It was clear that, faced with difficult circumstances, their backgrounds had led them to contemplate different solutions. For Anas, staying on in Damascus was not only a demonstration of his solidarity for his country but also an act that would serve to reinforce its existence, make it somehow resistant to break-up, while Brigitte maintained that a nation was not defined by its borders but by the unity and common vision of its people.

Thinking of his predicament now, despite the anger and frustration he feels at what Brigitte has done, it is almost impossible for him to imagine a life without her, though he admits to himself that there have been moments when he has hoped for just that, when he has sensed the probable inner peace that different life decisions might have afforded him. Where and at what juncture could I have done things differently? he asks himself.

There is great release for him in art; even now, at the news of his family’s departure, his first instinct is to go to the gallery where an exhibition is to be held of his work and spend the day there, among the canvases and away from worry. He is grateful for the support of his friends but for the moment, he knows, there is only one place for him to be.

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