NADA AWAR JARRAR

Dreams of Water

Dedication

For Aida and Aref andfor Amou Ahmad

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Keep Reading

About the Author

Praise

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

Standing in the back garden of her parents’ mountain home, Aneesa, at four, hears the angels, a chorus of sweet voices that tell her to dance for them. She twirls around beds of roses, down a dirt road and into the breeze, humming to herself. When Waddad calls to her, Aneesa stops beneath the shade of a pine tree and takes a deep breath before running indoors.

‘Time for lunch,’ her mother says. ‘Let’s wash your hands before you sit down.’

Aneesa stands up on the stool in front of the sink and puts her hands under the tap. Waddad pulls her sleeves up, turns the water on and lathers soap on to her own hands before grabbing Aneesa’s and kneading them with cool suds.

‘When I call my children in to eat, they wash their hands on their own,’ Aneesa says, looking up at Waddad.

‘Haven’t I told you not to put your dolls in water? You’ll ruin them.’

‘They are my children, mama, not my dolls.’

Waddad wipes Aneesa’s hands dry and gently pushes her towards her seat.

‘Always talking about children that are not there.’ Waddad sounds cross as Aneesa sits down to eat.

Later that day, Waddad takes Aneesa by the hand and they walk down to the village. The sun is strong and wisps of Aneesa’s long dark hair stick to her forehead.

‘Where are we going, mama?’

‘We’re going to talk to the sheikh,’ Waddad replies in a firm tone.

They arrive at a house in a side street just before the main souq and go carefully down some stone steps on its side. The door of a basement room is open. An old man sits on the floor, his back propped up by large pillows against the wall behind him, his legs crossed neatly in front of him. He is dressed entirely in dark blue and has a grey-black beard that lies rigid on his chest like a small, coarse broom. He looks intently at Waddad as she speaks. When he opens his mouth to speak, the beard moves up and down with his words.

‘The child has spoken of a past life,’ he says.

Waddad pushes her hands down on Aneesa’s shoulders, the scent of fear emanating from her skin.

‘But what am I to do? Her father does not believe in these things and he will be furious if he hears her talking about it again.’

The old man shakes his head so that the white headdress slips forward over his forehead. Then he passes a hand over the length of his face. When he removes it, the stiff beard looks narrower and less impressive.

‘She may never speak of it again,’ he says.

He shrugs his shoulders and leans forward until his face is very close to Aneesa’s. She looks into his bright blue eyes and sniffs at the scent of olive-oil soap coming from his skin. When Aneesa reaches out to touch the beard, she hears her mother gasp and call out her name. She puts her hand down. The sheikh smiles and moves back to rest against the pillows once again.

Father is helping Bassam with his homework. The two of them are sitting at the dining table with books and paper and pencils before them. Aneesa can feel anxiety in the air but is not sure if it is hers or theirs.

‘Aneesa,’ her father calls out. ‘Get me a cup of coffee, will you?’

Aneesa looks up at her father and begins to say something but he stops her.

‘Go on, habibti,’ he says. ‘Not too much sugar now.’

Aneesa glances quickly at Bassam and feels her heart sink. He is leaning an elbow on the table and holding his head up with his hand. He looks bored and clearly uninterested in his work. Father will be so angry with him, she thinks. Where has Mother gone?

In the kitchen, Aneesa brings water to the boil in the pot and adds half a teaspoon of sugar, then she puts in the finely ground coffee and stirs gently, taking the pot off the burner just as the mixture begins to come to the boil and then putting it back on again until the coffee is thick and frothy at the edges. She hears her father’s raised voice from the dining room.

‘Bassam, you’re not concentrating. I asked you a question and I want you to think about the answer before you say anything.’

Bassam murmurs something in reply but she cannot tell what he is saying. Aneesa pours the coffee into a cup.

‘What?’ Father asks tersely.

Moments later, Aneesa hears her father shout out loud. When she steps into the dining room with the coffee, he is no longer there but Bassam is still in his chair. His head is bent low and he has one hand over his ear. When he looks up at her and removes his hand, Aneesa sees that his face has gone very red. She remains perfectly still as Bassam stands up and slowly walks out of the room.

Aneesa stands on a chair by the kitchen table holding a large loaf of flat bread in her hands. She sees her child self carefully fold the loaf into quarters and then try to put it inside a plastic bag before it unfolds again.

‘Are you all right, Aneesa?’ Father comes up behind her.

She looks up at him, his round face, bulbous nose and greying hair, and waits for him to smile.

‘Shall I help you with that?’ he asks.

She nods and watches him hold the folded loaf with one big hand, put it into the bag and then tie the handles of the bag together to make a tight bundle.

‘Where are you going with the bread, habibti?’

Aneesa steps off the chair.

‘I’m taking it to my children. They’re hungry.’

He puts his arm around her shoulders and they walk out of the kitchen.

‘Take me there, baba,’ Aneesa pleads. ‘I can hear them calling to me. Take me in the car.’

Later that night, as she lies in her bed in the dark, Aneesa hears her parents arguing in the next room. She knows that no matter how loud their voices, they cannot drive away the sound of weeping children that fills her ears.

Waddad spoons a mixture of rice, tomato and parsley on to half-cooked vine leaves that she has placed flat on the kitchen table. Her hair is tied back and her face shines with perspiration. Once each leaf is filled, she rolls it into a small tube and places it in a saucepan. Little Aneesa stands on a chair and peers inside to look at the cigar shapes lined up tightly against one another. She sniffs at the tangy, uncooked smell of the stuffed leaves and feels her mouth water.

‘I like the old man best,’ Aneesa says.

‘What old man, dear?’ Waddad’s head is bent low and she is not looking at her daughter.

‘The one with the beard. I want to see him again.’

‘Shhh,’ Waddad whispers. ‘You know your father doesn’t want us to talk of such things.’

‘He’s out in the garden. He can’t hear us.’

‘What do you want to see the old man for, anyway?’ Aneesa reaches inside the saucepan, takes out a stuffed vine leaf and pops it into her mouth. The rice makes crunching noises between her teeth as she chews.

‘That’ll give you stomachache,’ Waddad warns.

Bassam follows Father around in the garden carrying a heavy bucket filled with wilted roses. Father examines the bushes closely and expertly snaps off the heads of the flowers at the top of the stem before Bassam rushes to pick them up and put them in the bucket. They are not speaking but Aneesa can tell her brother is itching to be elsewhere. She walks up to them and takes baba’s hand.

‘Ah, Aneesa,’ he says with a gentle voice.

Bassam tries to hand her the bucket.

‘Your sister can’t carry that, Bassam. It’s much too heavy.’

‘I’ll go and empty this,’ Bassam says sulkily. ‘It’s too full, even for me. I’ll be right back.’ But Aneesa knows he will not be coming back.

There are times when she imagines she can see her brother in the distance. He is walking down their street, hands in pockets, head bent low. He cannot be more than fifteen years old; his hair is sticking upwards at the crown of his head and in the fragile curve of his long neck, Aneesa sees hints of their childhood. She waves to him but he ignores her. When he finally stops, there are two of him, one standing behind the other, arms wrapped tightly around his twin. They are on a beach in moonlight and she hears them whispering to one another above the sound of waves lapping at their feet.

Somewhere between the village spring and the wilderness, beyond the fragrant fig tree by the grocery shop, Aneesa stands in the single sunny spot in the square. Her eyes are squeezed shut so that blazes of orange line the backs of her eyelids. She raises both arms, palms towards the light, and takes a deep breath. A gentle humming unfolds behind her forehead and her mouth stretches in a smile.

‘Aneesa.’

She opens her eyes and turns around. As Waddad approaches through the light and shadow, Aneesa feels a movement in her chest.

‘Come on. The sheikh is waiting for us.’

He is sitting outside this time, on a low stool by the front door. His slippers are covered in dust and the front of his baggy navy-blue sherwal hangs in folds between his thin legs. A young woman in a black dress and the customary long white mandeel brings out two chairs before walking back into the house.

Aneesa shifts forward in her chair so that her feet touch the ground.

The old man lifts a hand to shade his eyes from the sun, puts it down again and looks at her.

‘How old are you now?’ he asks.

‘She’s six,’ Waddad replies.

The old man grunts loudly and Aneesa leans towards him, placing both hands on her knees.

‘Our house was made of stone like this one.’ She points to the wall behind the sheikh. ‘But it was very small and the ground was uneven. The mattress tilted to one side when we slept and the soles of my children’s feet were always black with dirt.’

‘What else?’ asks the sheikh.

‘That’s all I remember,’ she says, shaking her head.

Waddad shifts in her chair but remains silent.

The sheikh shuffles his old feet and a cloud of dust rises up around them. Aneesa feels suddenly weightless and realizes that she has been holding her breath. When she lets go, the air comes out in a loud sputter. She holds a hand up to her mouth and hangs her head before looking up again a moment later.

The young woman in the veil is leaning over Aneesa with a tray in her hands. Aneesa takes a glass of lemonade and says thank you. The old man and Waddad are quiet. Aneesa sips at her drink and sees time close around the three of them in a kind of circle.

They are in the mountains and Aneesa, Waddad and Bassam are in the garden at the front of the house. It is summer and the pine trees around them and in the valley below give out the sticky scents of sap and strong sunlight. Waddad is sitting on the stone bench in the centre of the garden with a tray in her lap on which there are two bowls; one is filled with raw minced meat mixed with bulghur and the other with fried pine nuts and pieces of cooked minced meat for stuffing. Aneesa is standing beside her and Bassam is kicking a football aimlessly on the small patch of lawn around the bench. Aneesa wishes he would either stop or let her join in.

‘I want to play too,’ she says.

‘Stop whining,’ Bassam retorts and then kicks the ball past her and into a tree trunk just behind Waddad.

‘Bassam,’ Waddad says in a warning voice.

‘She’s always bothering me, mama. Make her stop.’

Aneesa lunges after her brother but he slips away and turns around and grins at her. She reaches for the ball, lifts it above her head and aims at him. He moves quickly to one side and the ball misses him.

‘Stop it, you two,’ Waddad says absently. ‘Come and learn how to do this.’

Waddad is making small, stuffed kibbeh which she will later fry for lunch. She rolls a handful of raw meat and bulghur into a ball with one hand which she pierces with the index finger of the other. Then she fills the hole with the stuffing and closes it up at both ends into two neat points, creating an oval shape that bulges out in the middle.

Bassam sits down beside her and watches carefully.

‘I bet I could do that,’ he says with a chuckle.

‘Your hands are dirty.’

‘I mean if my hands were clean.’

Waddad looks up at him and smiles before returning to her work.

‘Mmmm,’ she murmurs.

Aneesa bends down to pick up the ball and holds it closely to her chest as she watches them. She sniffs loudly and begins to move towards the bench but her mother and brother do not look up at her. She stops and looks at them again, this time more carefully. They are both very intent on the task before them: Bassam, focusing so completely on his mother’s hands that he seems to be equally involved in its success, and Waddad, her shoulders slightly hunched up with the delicate effort, revelling in the attention. They are perfect together, she thinks, and is surprised at the clarity in this discovery. She lets go of the ball and feels a shiver go through her body. I am growing up, Aneesa murmurs to herself and lifts her hands to her hips. These are all the things I can see.

Part One

The first time Aneesa sees Salah she is waiting at the bus stop near her home. He sits beside her on the plastic perch attached to the bus shelter and immediately the scent of fresh lemon fills her nostrils. His woollen jacket is zipped halfway up so that the denim shirt he is wearing underneath it shows through, and his hair, longish and beautifully white, is brushed back from his forehead.

‘Hello,’ Aneesa hears herself saying.

‘Oh!’

‘I startled you,’ she continues. ‘I’m sorry.’

Salah looks flustered.

‘No, not at all. I was just lost in my thoughts for a moment.’

She nods and turns to look at the traffic moving towards them. Moments pass before she speaks again.

‘Do you think that if we stare hard enough the bus will finally appear?’ Aneesa laughs.

Salah, my dear.

My other life seems far away now that I am back, but not you and not our beautiful adventures together. Those things and you I miss terribly. It’s not that I’m having difficulty getting accustomed to life at home – there is something of that, though it does not occupy my thoughts very much – it’s the ease with which I have slipped back into being here. Lebanon is like a second skin that does not leave me even as I wish it away. It is the here and now of everything I feel and do.

I imagine you, walking down the busy streets of this city in your long brown suede jacket, and when I go past the block of flats you once lived in, I wish I could run upstairs, ring the bell and find you there. We would make tea biscuits, I think, to remind ourselves of our once-Western lives.

In the back of my mind are thoughts of how we met, both of us in the throes of aloneness, almost content with its settled rhythms, yet feeling the desolation that inevitably comes with it. Is that how we became such fast friends?

Did we not find, Salah, besides the solitude, a relief in each other’s company that usually comes with a much longer acquaintance? Our mountain people would say we were only two old souls recognizing one another after a long absence.

Waddad is in the kitchen stirring a pot of Arabic coffee over the stove. The smell is strong and pleasing. Aneesa watches as she lifts the dark, thick liquid with the spoon and lets it fall back into the pot. She bends over her mother and plants a kiss on her cheek.

‘Good morning, mama.’

‘Good morning, habibti. Sit down and I’ll pour the coffee.’

Waddad’s hair curls daintily around her long face and her eyebrows are faint lines above watery grey eyes. She is dressed in dark blue jeans and a white T-shirt and looks like a twelve-year-old boy, clean and sweet-smelling first thing in the morning. Aneesa can hardly believe that this is the middle-aged woman she left behind all those years ago.

The two women sip their coffee noisily and with enjoyment, the scent of cardamom seeds rising from the steaming cups.

‘I think I’ve found your brother,’ Waddad says moments later.

‘What?’

Waddad stands up and turns away to place her cup in the sink. She turns the tap on and reaches for the washing-up sponge.

‘What are you talking about, mama?’ Aneesa jumps up from her seat. ‘Where is he? What’s going on?’

‘Things changed so much for me after you left,’ Waddad continues over the sound of the running water. ‘I had to manage the search on my own. It took a long time, but it’s finally happened.’

Aneesa walks up to Waddad, places her hands on the older woman’s shoulders and gently turns her round so they are facing one another. Soapsuds trickle down on the floor between them.

‘Mother, what do you mean? Where have you found him? Why haven’t you said anything about this to me before? For heaven’s sake, tell me what’s going on.’

Waddad smiles and continues as though she has not been interrupted.

‘He’s at the orphanage in the mountains. I’ve been going there on a regular basis for a few weeks now. We’ve become friends.’ She wriggles out of Aneesa’s grasp and turns to the washing up again. ‘His name is Ramzi and he is eight years old. He was born only a few days after your brother disappeared. It all fits in.’

Aneesa does not understand at first, then she realizes exactly what her mother is saying.

‘What have you done, mama? What have you done?’

Waddad rinses her hands and turns to her daughter once again.

‘Aneesa, it’s time we accepted the fact that your brother is gone. We have to get on with our lives.’

‘But what about the letters we received from him while he was being held captive?’

Waddad lifts a hand to Aneesa’s face.

‘No more letters, Aneesa. No more. Please.’

As an adolescent, Bassam had not grown very tall and had developed a weedy frame that made him bend slightly forwards when he walked so that he seemed almost defenceless. Aneesa used to walk up to him and poke him in the back to make him straighten up. She remembers the feel of the hollow in his thin back.

‘I’ll take you to see Ramzi one day if you like,’ Waddad continues. ‘But you have to promise.’

‘Promise what, mama?’

There is a pause before she replies.

‘Just that you’ll see the truth as I do.’

Away from home, Aneesa dreams exhilarating dreams of her brother. They are moving together towards a sense of effortlessness.

‘Whenever you’re ready, Aneesa,’ Bassam finally says after what seems a long time in flight.

She is holding on to his arm and watches as he lifts off pieces of the surrounding landscape and moulds them into a vibrant picture of faces and places they have known together.

‘That’s beautiful,’ she tells him before waking up sweating in her bed.

She saw a psychic after she left home, in the hope that he would tell her something about the truth behind her brother’s disappearance.

The man sat in a faded velvet armchair: a thin, arrogant man with long fair hair brushed back off his forehead. Aneesa took an immediate dislike to him.

‘You have perhaps a father or brother who was killed?’ the man asked soon after she had sat down.

She tried not to look too surprised.

‘My brother, in the civil war in Lebanon. He was kidnapped and we never saw him again.’

‘He’s with us now,’ the man continued. ‘He wants to let you know that he doesn’t regret what he did.’

‘He’s dead?’

The man said nothing.

‘What does he look like?’ Aneesa blurted out.

‘Is that a trick question?’ The man gave a harsh laugh. She shook her head.

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the man said, lifting his hand to his head. ‘He’s got a large scar on his forehead. He says they killed him three days after he was taken away.’ Then he reached over and placed his hand over hers. ‘He wants you to stop worrying about him. Tell your mother too.’

She closed her eyes and sat in silence for the rest of the session, strangely comforted by the unlovable man in the armchair opposite.

Did I ever tell you, Salah, what happened after my father died? We no longer went up to the village in the mountains. I told my mother that I missed the smells there and the slanting sunlight that passed over rocks and gorse bush and ruffled them like the wind. I knew Father’s spirit was waiting for me there. He’s in the garden, mama, I said, pruning the rose bushes like he used to. I saw him in a dream. This is our only home now, she said, making a sweeping gesture with her arms that encompassed the flat, the streets below, Beirut and perhaps even the sea. You’re too old, Aneesa, to make up stories, even if you do miss your father. Forget the mountains and the village. And I did, growing up into never looking back, drifting into a kind of living.

Soon after Bassam’s disappearance, I arrived home one day to find my mother sitting on my brother’s bed surrounded by papers. She had found them in the back of his cupboard, hundreds of political leaflets and lists of names that she did not recognize. She asked me if I had known anything about them. I told her Bassam had mentioned his political involvement but did not elaborate much. I don’t want to put your life in danger as well, Bassam had said to me.

My mother stood up, grasped me by the arms and shook me hard. You never bothered to tell me about it, you silly girl, she said, her voice rising. You never took the trouble to tell me. Then she burst into tears.

There are times when I wish I had told you all this when we were together but I was afraid of spoiling the quiet joy we felt in our friendship, of harming it with unrelenting sadness.

Perhaps there were many things you would have liked to tell me too, Salah, but never did. Whenever we were together we seemed to speak more of everyday things, steering a long way from the vagaries of our troubled minds. I remember sitting on the floor in the drawing room of your house on that very cold night when snow covered the streets of the city, a fire in the huge stone fireplace, talking of Lebanon. I rubbed the palm of my hand on the carpet beneath me and looked down at the blue, beige and soft white images of birds and deer in its weave. I told you there were times when I liked it in this city with its pockets of green, and the loneliness and peace it brought me. Trouble seems such a long way away, I said. When I told you the story of my brother’s abduction, you asked if that was why I had left in the first place. I nodded and you paused before saying: I’m glad you came here, Aneesa. I mean, I’m glad I met you.

It is mid-morning and Aneesa and her mother have had another argument about Bassam. It is raining hard outside and Aneesa decides to walk along the Beirut Corniche. Big drops of rain splash heavily on to the uneven pavement and on the crests of the mounting waves. She adjusts the hood of her jacket and digs her hands into her pockets.

There are stone benches at regular intervals, each shaped like a flat, squat S, and at the end of the pavement a blue iron balustrade that is bent and broken in places overlooking the sea. There are also tall palm trees planted in a long line on one side of the pavement with what look like burlap bags covering their underside, high up where the remaining leaves flutter in the wind. And if she turns her head to look across the street, beyond the central reservation where flowery shrubs lie almost flush against the deep, dark earth, she sees a number of high-rise buildings that had not been there before she left.

Along the water’s edge, fishermen stand in their plastic slippers on rocks covered in seaweed, their lines rising and falling with the movement of the sea. How many fish do they have to catch to make the effort worthwhile, Aneesa wonders?

A man on crutches walks up to her and stops to extend a box filled with coloured packets of chewing gum. She gives him some money and moves on. The poor have always been here. That is familiar, as is the smell of the sea, a murky, damp smell that is welcome after all the years away.

She reaches the end of the Corniche where the pavement becomes wider and curves around a bend in the road, and stops for a moment to watch as men make their way into a mosque across the street. They pass through a small gate, take their shoes off and enter at the front door to perform the noon prayer. Up ahead, between where she is standing and the buildings diagonally opposite, there is a wide two-way avenue crowded with beeping cars and pedestrians with umbrellas over their heads. Some of the trees planted in the central strip are high enough so that she cannot see through to the other side, but she can hear everything, life and her own heart, humming together.

These are the hours of her undoing, long and sleepless, solitary. She shades her eyes and reaches for the bedside lamp. When she lifts herself off the bed, her body shadowing the dim light, she lets out a sigh and shakes her head. Her dreams, gathering all her fears together in one great deluge until there seems to be no means of overcoming them, were once again of water, the images behind her eyes thick and overwhelming, her pulse quickening and then suddenly stopping in the base of her throat.

She tiptoes into the living room in bare feet, switches on the overhead light and stands still for a moment.

‘Aneesa,’ Waddad calls out from her bedroom. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine, mama. Go back to sleep now.’

Her mother coughs into the night.

‘Don’t stay up too late then, dear.’

Aneesa steps out on to the balcony. Beirut in early autumn: the nights are getting cooler though the air remains humid. She wraps her arms around her body and looks down on to the street where there is absolute quiet. She feels a sudden longing for permanence and certainty, for the hardiness she has seen in large oak trees in the West, unwavering and placid too. For a moment, as a breeze comes in from the sea, she wishes she could fly back with it to anywhere but here.

Months after her return, she is still unused to the feeling of always being in familiar places, indoors and out, as if enveloped in something almost transparent that moves with her, a constant companion. These streets, she thinks when she wanders through them, are a part of me, how familiar are the smells that emanate from them, fragrant and sour, the sun that shines or does not on their pavements, and when the rain falls I, umbrella in hand, mince my way through the water, through the cold.

The first letter arrived not long after Bassam’s car was found abandoned and empty in a car park not far from the airport. My mother saw the white envelope addressed to her on the doorstep when she opened the front door to put out the rubbish. She brought the envelope inside, and sat down heavily on her favourite kitchen chair before handing it to me. Open it, she said.

I tore open the envelope with trembling hands, pulled the letter out and began to read.

‘My darling mother. I cannot imagine how difficult it has been for you and Aneesa these past few weeks and I am sorry for it.’

I looked up at my mother and she nodded for me to continue.

I have already begun negotiating with my captors for my release. It’s a long process, mama, so it might be a while before I see you and my darling sister again. I do not know which part of the country we’re in but please don’t worry about me. I am well and getting plenty of food. I have even made friends with one of the guards here and he has agreed to take this letter for me. I cannot say much more and don’t know when I’ll be able to write again. I love you both very much.

I reached out and placed a hand on my mother’s shoulder. Bassam is alive, mama, I said.

She took the letter from me and put it back into the envelope. Then she stood up and began to pace across the kitchen floor.

He may have been alive when he wrote this but how do we know what’s happened to him since? my mother asked. The only way we’ll know that he’s still alive is if we see him again. And with that, she turned abruptly to the sink and began to wash the breakfast dishes.

When we were children, I used to place my hand on my brother’s forehead as he slept and try to will him to dream of a stronger, hero-like self, of the man he would be, until he woke up and pushed my hand away. Aneesa, what are you doing here in the middle of the night? Let me sleep now.

That moment in my mother’s kitchen, suddenly realizing that Bassam’s living and dying, both, were endless, our fears and hopes entangled between them, I shuddered.

Another letter, I murmured to my mother’s back. Another letter?

They drive south along the coast and then turn up into the hills east of Beirut. When they are halfway there, Aneesa stops the car and steps out to look at the view. The sun is shining, the sea is bright and blue, and the air is so much cleaner up here that she feels she is breathing freely for the first time since her return. She gets back into the car and realizes how much she has missed the mountains.

When they arrive at their destination, Waddad and Aneesa stand at the terrace’s edge and look down to the valley, into the distance. There are pine trees and gorse bushes and a soft haze in the air. Behind them are mountains of grey rock and fine, violet-coloured earth.

‘Shall we go into the shrine now, mama?’

‘We’ll have to put these on.’

Waddad opens her handbag and takes out two long white veils. Aneesa shakes out a mandeel, jerking it up suddenly so that it will not touch the floor. The delicate spun cotton flutters outwards. She places it on her head, throws its folds over one shoulder and takes a deep breath.

‘It smells so sweet.’ Aneesa smiles at her mother.

Waddad reaches for her daughter’s hand and the two women make their way to the shrine. They take off their shoes, placing them neatly outside the door before stepping into the large, square-shaped room.

Several people stand leaning against the iron balustrade around the shrine. Aneesa watches a woman who is kneeling, both her hands wrapped around the railing and her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

‘Let’s sit over there.’ Waddad motions towards quilted cushions placed over the large Persian carpet that covers the floor.

They move to one corner of the room and sit down, their legs tucked beneath them. Waddad places her hands on her thighs, stares straight ahead and begins to mutter softly under her breath. She has a serious look on her face and the edges of the mandeel rest open against her large ears. Aneesa tries to suppress a smile and fails.

Some moments later, a man tiptoes into the room in his socks. He must be taking a break from work, Aneesa thinks, because he is wearing navy trousers and a beige shirt that are dotted with dust and paint. He walks up to the shrine and pushes a folded banknote into the collection box hanging on the railing. He stands still for a moment and taps his roughened hand on the wooden box, while gazing at the shrine. Aneesa wonders what he is praying for and watches as he silently steals back out of the room. The kneeling woman is weeping quietly to herself. Aneesa stretches her legs out and coughs quietly. She feels her mother’s hand on her arm.

‘Shush, dear. I’m trying to concentrate,’ she whispers.

‘What on?’

Waddad presses her lips together and shakes her head. Moments later, she stands up.

‘Come on, Aneesa,’ she says, ‘let’s go.’

When they are back in the car, their heads bare and shoes on their feet, Aneesa and Waddad sit quietly for a moment.

‘I was praying for your brother’s soul,’ Waddad finally says.

‘What good does it do?’ Aneesa rolls down her window and lets in a cool breeze that touches their faces. She reaches a hand up to her hair, missing the feel of the veil around her head and on her shoulders.

‘What other choice do we have?’ Waddad asks.

Salah, when I first returned and would come upon strangers talking on a bus or in the street, I could not tell whether they had just met or had known one another a lifetime. The gestures were always the same, the words delivered up close, voices loud, hands moving wildly, touching shoulders or arms or the tops of dark heads. I could not believe at first how distant I had become in my years in London, how cool compared to the heated passions that I found here. Then there was the open curiosity and warmth in people’s eyes; neighbours and acquaintances who looked closely at me until I thought I would burn under their gazes. Who are you now? they seemed to be saying to me. What do you make of us after all this time? And I sometimes wanted to walk up to them, perhaps put a hand on a listening shoulder, and say I was sorry for having left them for so long.

The first time you and I met at the bus stop around the corner from my flat in London, I wanted to tell you my story because there seemed something familiar about you. You were perched next to me under the awning and stared, not rudely but in a curious way, as if you saw something recognizable in me too.

When I spoke, you blushed and lifted a trembling hand to smooth back the white hair on your elegant head.

I told you my name and you said: Aneesa, the kind and friendly one. It seemed understandable then that you spoke Arabic and that we were natural companions. You reached out to shake my hand and told me your name and for a moment, as we held on to each other amidst the crowd, it was as though we were the only two people standing there, on a grey day when sunlight was not a possibility.

They sit on the top deck of the number nine bus headed for a leafy suburb. This is their second trip there and Salah has on his lap a bagful of stale bread.

Salah is in his suede jacket and Aneesa has on a new plaid cloak with slits on either side for her arms to go through.

‘I didn’t think you’d be willing to come out in this weather,’ Salah turns and says.

The windows have misted over from the rain and cold and the bus is moving slowly through the traffic.

Aneesa reaches over and pulls the window open slightly to let the fresh air in.

‘What does Samir think of our excursions?’ she asks.

Salah looks startled at her question and shrugs his shoulders.

‘Doesn’t he ever ask you what you do with your time while he’s at work?’

‘I suppose we don’t talk very much, my son and I,’ Salah says.

They look out of the window again, down at the rows of semi-detached houses and at the figures on the pavement carrying umbrellas and wrapped up in coats and heavy rainwear. Aneesa pulls her cloak more tightly around herself.

‘When I first came here, I’d always ride upstairs on the buses,’ she says.

By the time the bus reaches the end of the line, Aneesa and Salah are the only passengers. They make their way down the winding steps, Salah opening his large umbrella once they are in the street. They huddle beneath it and walk briskly towards the park where they stand beneath the empty branches of a large tree by the water, both reaching into the plastic bag at the same time. Aneesa breaks the bread into small pieces, throws them into the pond and watches as noisy ducks and geese move effortlessly into the water towards them. Once Salah and Aneesa have thrown all the bread into the water and the bag is finally empty, the birds turn their backs and pedal furiously towards the other edge of the pond.

‘Let’s sit on the bench there,’ Aneesa says, pointing just beyond the tree.

‘It may be wet.’ Salah opens up the umbrella again.

‘Don’t worry, this cloak is waterproof. We’ll be fine.’

Salah chuckles, puts the plastic bag on the bench and they sit down on it.

The rain has turned into a fine drizzle and a low fog covers the park, somehow intensifying the quiet. Suddenly, they hear song rising from the other side of the pond. The male voice, strong and tender, expertly meanders in and out of the unfamiliar melody, enveloping them in its beauty. Aneesa cannot make out the words to the song and when she turns to look at Salah, his eyes are opened wide with astonishment. She reaches out to him. They sit, gloved hands held tightly together, their breath floating back into the music and the mist.

‘When your father collapsed at work, it was Bassam who told me about it,’ Waddad says, looking at Aneesa to make sure she is listening. ‘He was only fifteen. He came in carrying heavy shopping bags. I was just pleased at the time that he’d thought to get the groceries.

‘While I was emptying the bags in the kitchen, I found a bottle of flower water among the things. I couldn’t think why he’d bought it. I’d never known him ask for anything like that.’

Waddad is sitting on Aneesa’s bed. She looks down and pulls at her nightgown. It is white and much too large for her small frame.

‘He seemed irritated when I asked him about it and said I should know that he liked it in his rice pudding.’ Waddad looks up at Aneesa again and blinks. ‘He always hated rice pudding, even as a child.’

Aneesa leans against the headboard of her bed, her eyes half-closed with tiredness, and waits for her mother to continue.

‘Then I realized later, after Bassam told me about your father, when he poured the flower water on a handkerchief and placed it over my face to revive me, I realized that he’d bought it for me all along.’

My mother’s search for Bassam began soon after my departure. It took her to distant corners of the city, through streets where the buildings rested close against one another, and the people moved shoulder to shoulder, jostling for space. She climbed up endless stairways, knocking on doors, sipping cups of coffee and waiting to hear a sign of recognition at her story.

I wish I could help you, friends and strangers said. May Allah give you all the strength you need to endure this great sorrow.

She heard about an organization set up by families of the missing and went to one of their meetings. They sat in a small room in an apartment not far from the city centre. There were many of them, men and women, young and old, all with the same anticipatory look in their eyes, as if their loved one might suddenly appear to hold and reassure them, as if the answer lay in talking to each other, in making words of their loss and weaving the uncertainty into the stories of their lives. When it was my mother’s turn to speak, she shook her head and stepped determinedly out of the room muttering under her breath, I am not one of them. This is not my place.

She went to the police station in her area and asked to see the officer in charge. He gave her a cup of unsweetened coffee and listened politely until she finished speaking, then he opened a drawer in his dilapidated old desk and took out a ream of paper. I have here a list of all the people who have gone missing in this war, he said. Their families are all desperate for news, just like you, but all I can do is write names down and put them away again.

It was then, dear Salah, that she noticed how tattered his uniform looked. The grey material was frayed at the edges and the buttons down the front of his jacket did not match.

When she finally decided to go and and see the leader of the community, a politician, at his mountain palace, my mother had not yet given up hope.

He looked younger than she had thought he would and kept shifting restlessly in the seat of his armchair. She confided in him her worst nightmare. I just want to know, Waddad said, I want to know what happened. Even if he’s never coming back, I need to know what happened to him.

The man only shook his head and she sensed that he might be getting impatient with her.

You must try to forget him, he declared, leaning forward and putting a hand on her arm. It all happened a long time ago. Why don’t you busy yourself with some charity work? If you like children, we’re always looking for help at our community centres.

Once outside, Waddad walked into the palace courtyard and sat on one of the stone steps that surrounded it. She listened to the water from the garden fountain slapping against the marble slabs at its outer edge, wrapped her cardigan more tightly around her and whistled softly to herself.

I imagine that my mother knew then that there was not much she could do about other people’s obstinacy except take it on her own shoulders. Maybe it was that moment in the palace courtyard when her anger had suddenly abandoned her and she felt so bereft that she realized she had been looking in all the wrong places and suddenly knew exactly what she must do.

‘Are you working, dear?’ Waddad asks.

Aneesa is sitting at the dining table with a large Arabic–English dictionary and the document that she is attempting to translate before her.

‘I can’t seem to concentrate on work today,’ she says, looking up at her mother.

Waddad is standing by the sofa, one hand against the back of it, and is running her fingers through her short hair with the other. She is dressed in her daily uniform of jeans and T-shirt.

‘Tell me, mama. What made you change your look so drastically?’

Waddad gives a little grunt.

‘It’s more practical this way. No wasting time over hairdressers and dressmakers. Besides, you get used to it eventually.’

Aneesa shakes her head.

‘But what possessed you to have your hair cut so short?’

‘You don’t like it?’

Aneesa looks closely at the elfin face. It is long and tired-looking in places but seems self-contained and there is a certain fire in the eyes that she remembers seeing in Bassam’s face sometimes. Aneesa feels a shudder go through her body.

‘Yes, I do, mama,’ she says quietly, returning to her work. ‘I like it very much.’

There are days when Aneesa thinks that if she could only concentrate hard enough she could make herself forget for hours at a time that there is a war raging around them. As it is, she can only manage a few moments of peacefulness before her mind interrupts it and she is aware of the presence of violence all around her.

To her mother, and at moments like these, Aneesa speaks harshly and with impatience as if it were up to Waddad to change things, to bring Father back and get them out of the chaos in which they now find themselves.

‘At least take us up to the house in the village,’ Aneesa shouts at Waddad during a particularly vicious battle between militias a few streets away from their block of flats. ‘We’ll be safer there.’

The two of them are sitting in the corner of the kitchen away from the main road.

‘I’m not leaving Bassam here in Beirut and you know there’s no way he would come up to the mountains,’ Waddad replies with determination in her voice.

‘So we have to put up with this because he’s foolish enough to want to stay here?’

Aneesa stands up abruptly and moves her hand away when Waddad tries to pull her down again. Moments later there is a sudden lull in the fighting and they hear the front door being opened. Waddad stands up from her crouching position as Bassam walks into the kitchen.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Are you two all right?’ Bassam asks them and goes to Waddad. ‘Sit down, mama, please. The fighting has stopped for now. You too, Aneesa. Sit down.’

Aneesa saw Bassam leaving the house hours before the fighting began while her mother was out getting the groceries. She knows he will not tell them where he really was no matter how persistent Waddad is in her questions. She decides to steer the conversation clear of any potential argument and reaches for her mother’s hand.

‘I’m sorry for shouting at you,’ Aneesa says quietly.

‘It’s all right, habibti. We were both afraid.’

Waddad pats Aneesa’s hand but she is looking intently at Bassam. Her brother sits down.

‘Everything is going to be fine,’ he says. ‘We’ll be fine.’

He puts a hand on Aneesa’s hair and smooths it back, then he sits back in his chair and sighs.

A rush of wind follows him when he steps outside and Aneesa closes her eyes as he walks past. The front door slams firmly after him and she is left with an impression of a pair of startled eyes and a sense of anxiety. She takes a deep breath.

Salah is standing beside her. His hand on her arm, he leads her inside. They walk slowly through the large house with windows long as doors and elaborate colour schemes in every room.

‘Was that Samir?’ she finally asks.

Salah nods.

‘I didn’t get a chance to introduce you,’ he says. ‘He couldn’t stay.’

They sit on stools at an island in the middle of a kitchen painted in warm yellow. The colour makes Aneesa think of sunlight beaming through half-open doorways. A beautiful floral tea set is laid out on the counter. Salah pushes a plate filled with neatly cut squares of semolina cake towards her.

‘Thank you,’ Aneesa says, taking a piece of the cake and biting into it. ‘This is his house, isn’t it?’

Salah begins to pour the tea.

‘My son brought me here from Beirut after his mother’s death. He said he didn’t want me to be on my own.’ He passes Aneesa a cup of tea. ‘You don’t take sugar, do you?’ Salah asks.

Aneesa shakes her head and sips at the hot tea. It is strong and satisfying.

‘Maybe I’ll meet him next time I come,’ she says.

‘Sometimes, you know,’ Salah continues, ‘I think he’s lonelier than I am.’

She wakes to dreaming, images, faint and gleaming, trailing before her, the colours of her childhood, shades of blues and greens and the warm, nascent yellows of hope. And as she closes her eyes once again, attempting to recapture the clarity of this sudden awareness, of the long journey into the self, she sees herself again and again in the company of those she has loved.

The places they find themselves in are always familiar and magnificent: a sprawling Mediterranean villa in the sun; an old stone house surrounded by tall trees; or a grand home spread over dark red earth, dusty, mysterious and wonderful. The sensation that accompanies the dreams is the same every time: a kind of halting, surprised happiness that threatens to overwhelm her so that she turns to describe it to someone but finds herself suddenly alone.

She wakes up bewildered, wondering where it is all coming from and it is only when she turns on the light by her bed and she realizes she is once again in Beirut that the ghosts of daylight return.

My mother became certain she would find Bassam at the orphanage in the mountains. During her first visit, she asked the directress if she could do volunteer work with the children. After that, she went there twice a week in the afternoons and either supervised the younger ones in the playroom or helped the elementary school children during their study hour. She especially enjoyed the time in the playroom with the younger ones and brought along new toys from time to time. She spent many hours with the children on the floor playing with the farm animals or building high towers with multi-coloured bricks. Sometimes she had a particular project organized and asked all the children to participate in it. They did cardboard cut-outs of a mountain village, complete with houses, trees and prickly bushes, and used some of the animals they already had, placing them among the buildings and stones.

Whenever she helped during study hour, Waddad had to remember to keep her eye out for the boy she wanted to find, always feeling that he was there ready to be discovered. Once or twice, she attended classes where the children were about the right age but nothing came of it. But she continued to look forward to her days at the orphanage, the bus drive up the mountain and back, and the hearts and minds of the little children that she found so compelling. And while she never forgot why she was really there, the urgency of her search had been quelled somewhat so that she was able to hide the visits from me until the day she found him.

Salah, as I write this, my mother sleeps with a happiness I dare not dispel with my doubts. How, I imagine you saying, do you expect me to believe the inventions of a woman torn by grief? How should I read between the words of this story? How can I see, in the birth of an eight-year-old boy, the soul of a man killed at that very moment, moving from one body to another, skin to new skin, time suspended in that movement, transmigration, layers of memory embedded in a young heart and love transported too, as if by magic, burning, passionate and never-ending?

Aneesa decides to buy Salah a pair of gloves for his birthday, something to go with the suede jacket Samir bought him and which he seems to love so much. She goes to a department store in town and finds a pair in tan leather that she knows would look good against the light brown of the jacket. The shop assistant wraps the gloves in two sheets of white tissue paper before placing them in a bag.

When Aneesa hands Salah the gift as they stand waiting for the bus, he looks surprised.

‘I know your birthday isn’t for a few days yet, but I couldn’t wait,’ she says.

Salah clings to the bag and looks away, in the direction of the traffic.

‘Don’t you want to know what it is?’

He opens the bag and pulls out the tissue paper. Looking down at his hands as he attempts to undo the package, trembling, delicate hands with long, tapered fingers, Aneesa feels a rush of tenderness. She takes the parcel from Salah and helps him put the gloves on.

‘Do you like them?’

‘They’re beautiful. Thank you.’

‘They’re lined on the inside so your hands will stay warm.’

He puts his hands together, interlacing his fingers, and smiles.

Once on the upper deck of the bus, Salah takes off the gloves and places them on his lap, giving them a gentle pat.

‘They’re very soft,’ he says.

The bus lurches forward. Then they both look straight ahead, through the window and towards their approaching destination.

The first time my mother saw him, Ramzi was bouncing a ball in the orphanage playground. It was a cold day in winter and there were other children standing in a loose circle around him. She was overcome with a strong sense of recognition as she watched him toss his head back and smile at his audience. Waddad saw him glance at her and then turn away again. When she approached, she noticed tiny beads of sweat on his forehead where his black hair stuck in wet strips. He had brown eyes and fair skin and was only slightly shorter than she was.

She asked him his name and then told him hers. Are you a teacher? Ramzi asked, the ball hugged tightly to his chest. No, she replied. Ramzi looked shyly up at her, and Waddad heard the children behind her giggle.

Maybe it was his hair, the way it fell in a swirl from the top of his head and over his ears and forehead. He was also the right shape, small and intense, as though every part of his body radiated a singular energy. But most of all, it was the way he looked at her with easy recognition, his mouth breaking into a wide half-grin, half-grimace that had been so characteristic of her own son.

She was beginning to like his name too. Ramzi. She said it out loud to herself at night and felt sure she could become accustomed to it. She was equally certain of her growing affection for the boy, for his disarming, hesitant manner.

When Waddad asked the directress of the orphanage about him, she was told he had been brought in by his mother very recently, a woman with several children whose husband had abandoned her and who had been left to care for them on her own.

Talking with Ramzi on her regular visits, Waddad thought she recognized bewilderment at what had happened to him in his manner, but he was too proud to speak of it to her. Once they were closer, when he trusted her more, Waddad decided she would tell him of their story, of the starry meeting of their souls.

I am aghast, Salah, at my mother’s easy fall into dreaming. I had thought her stronger than this, but perhaps I did not realize the magnitude of her grief. I miss you, our conversations and comforting silences. I miss the slant of tree branches heavy with leaves above our heads as we walked, and the empty air, not quite expectant, but quietly stirring because it was ours alone.

Yours, Aneesa

‘He had a girlfriend once, you know,’ Salah explains. ‘They lived here together for about a year.’ He hands Aneesa a wooden spoon and tells her to stir the brown mixture on the stove slowly. ‘Don’t stop, otherwise it will stick to the bottom of the pan.’

Aneesa stirs the powdered rice and water again and again and sniffs at the fragrant spices that waft up towards her.

‘Cinnamon and cardamom, right?’ she calls to Salah as he disappears into the larder. They are in the kitchen making mughli. Salah brings out almonds and walnuts which he then soaks in warm water in separate bowls.

‘We’ll need shredded coconut as well once the mughli has set,’ he says.

‘How long will it take?’

‘Oh, it should be ready in a couple of hours for after dinner.’

Aneesa is reminded of the times she spent watching her mother preparing meals as a child.

‘So it didn’t work out?’ she asks.

‘Sorry?’

‘Samir and his friend.’

Salah shakes his head.

‘He phoned us one day and said she had left. We never found out what happened.’

Aneesa lifts the spoon out of the pot and stares down at the mixture. She wonders what Samir’s girlfriend looked like but is too embarrassed to ask.

‘Keep stirring.’

‘My mother tried very hard to teach me how to cook,’ Aneesa says.

‘I only started doing it after Huda died, and now Samir enjoys having a hot meal when he gets home from work.’

She pushes her lips tightly together before asking Salah a question.

‘Are you happy living here with him?’

Salah stops what he is doing and looks at her.

‘I suppose we need each other so much more now,’ he says, shrugging his shoulders. He puts a hand into one of the bowls, takes out a handful of almonds and begins to peel them. He has folded his shirt cuffs back so that Aneesa can see his thin forearms and the blue veins on the inside of his wrists.

‘I wonder what my mother is doing now,’ she says.

‘Will he be up there?’ Aneesa asks her mother.

‘Who?’

‘Will the boy be at the orphanage tomorrow?’

‘Yes, yes,’ replies Waddad, her voice slightly breathless. ‘It’s a school day. Ramzi will be there. I suppose we should aim to get there around lunchtime.’ She reaches up, pulls Aneesa down to her and plants a kiss on her cheek. ‘I’ll call and let them know we’re coming.’

Once at the orphanage, the two women walk through the main building and into a small courtyard. Young trees and rose bushes are planted at regular intervals throughout the garden and a white plastic table and chairs stand under a trellis covered with a wilting vine in one part of the courtyard. They walk on a stone pathway that leads to another section of the old building and through an arched doorway on to an open terrace that overlooks the village.

‘We’ll wait here for him,’ says Waddad.

Ramzi comes out to meet them dressed in a new pair of denims and a blue shirt. His hair is slicked back off his forehead and his face looks like it has been scrubbed very hard.

‘This is my daughter Aneesa,’ Waddad says.

Ramzi nods and Aneesa takes his hand.

‘Hello, Ramzi.’

They stand in an awkward silence before Waddad hustles them away.

‘Come on, habibi,’ she says, putting an arm around the boy. ‘Let’s show Aneesa around. It’s her first visit here.’

He reminds her so much of Bassam as a boy that Aneesa is taken aback. His colouring, the fine down at the top of his hairline, his small frame and the energy that appears stored within it, all of these remind her of her brother. She wants to hold him for a moment, to gather him together, the pieces that have been missing for so long and which she has so badly missed. Instead, she follows him around the orphanage, virtually speechless while her mother chatters in the background, wondering if she will ever again with her mind’s eye see Bassam as he had really been.

On one of their excursions, Salah and Aneesa venture down to the river where the city becomes a series of bridges that hang over the dark, muddy water that runs beneath it. They get off the bus and walk at a leisurely pace along the banks of the river, stopping occasionally to look down into it or to sit on the wooden benches placed at even intervals along the pavement. It is a work day and except for a few tourists out sightseeing, there are very few people around them.

This is where London appears truly magnificent, Aneesa thinks. Everything – the roads and bridges and the old buildings, some grimy still and others almost pristine – seems large and beyond her reach. There are no intimate corners here in which one can hide; the river, deep and real and redolent of so much history, is very nearly overwhelming. She feels immeasurably small in its presence.

She takes Salah’s arm and stops to look at the scene before them.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ Salah says. ‘I never tire of coming here. It reminds me of how unimportant my own concerns can sometimes be.’

‘It’s a little frightening, though,’ she says.

Salah shakes his head and moves closer to the ledge to look out on to the water.

‘See how fast it moves?’ he asks. ‘No single drop of water flows over the same place twice.’

Yes, Aneesa thinks, but it must be very cold and dirty; moving towards everywhere but here. She shudders.

‘So, what are you so afraid of, Aneesa?’

They move on, Aneesa letting go of Salah’s arm to wrap her scarf more tightly around her neck.

‘You know, habibti, sometimes I think these are the very things that give me comfort,’ Salah says, gesturing at the places and people around them. ‘The thought that everything will continue to change no matter how hard I try to stop it from doing so. That I will grow steadily older, though different and better defined, and that because of this there will always be newness in me too.’ He pauses. ‘Coming to this city has made me understand many things that I had not been aware of before. It’s made me think of myself in a different way.’

Aneesa nods.

‘That’s happened to me too. But what about all the things we left behind when we left home?’

‘They’re still here.’ Salah taps at his chest. ‘I see them in a different light now.’ He stops and looks at her. ‘You must feel the same way too?’

‘I can’t forget everything that’s happened,’ she replies. ‘Bassam, my father and what’s happened to our country. I can never put those things behind me.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Salah says, shaking his head. ‘It’s not a question of forgetting.’

‘What is it then, Salah? What do you think I am meant to do?’

He runs a trembling hand over his hair and smiles.

‘Just be happy, my dear. Do just that.’

There is something beautiful about the neighbourhood in winter, Aneesa thinks as she treads carefully through the rain-soaked streets of her childhood, cars splashing through water that streams past gutters, dark, murky, and often smelly. There is something apologetic about it too, long-ago haunts that speak to her in melancholy whispers, and a muffled tenderness in the way the wind strokes her face.

She tries, as she walks, to hold on to her solitude, to feel unfettered again, but there is too much belonging here after all, blatant and unforgiving, reminders of the person she has always been, of the ties that go far beyond what she knows for certain, and into an unsuspecting future.

Today, Bassam and her father are foremost in Aneesa’s thoughts. They are part of a general unease that will not leave her, though she tries callously to shake them off, images of their faces, dear and familiar, like lights within her recalcitrant mind. Aneesa, Bassam calls to her as she goes past their once favourite bookshop, do you remember it? Habibti, says Father, his voice filled with gentleness, hold on to my hand as we cross the street, that’s a good girl now.

In a car park round the corner from her block of flats, she stops to watch children at play. Some are kicking a football about, others have set up a makeshift ramp to fly off with their bicycles and skateboards. A young boy she has seen here before is sitting on the bonnet of an expensive-looking car. He is watching his playmates intently, stillness amidst a sea of movement. For a moment, Aneesa thinks that were she to reach out across the road, through the car park and to that car in the corner, she could touch the boy on his shoulder and he would turn at last to look at her.

Making her way home again, Aneesa remembers what her mother said to her only last night.

‘You talk to yourself. I hear you late at night when you cannot sleep and again in the mornings as you move around the house. It is a sign of an unsettled mind, my darling.’

We live and falter, Aneesa decides, in recollection and regret, in the throes of endlessness and the reluctant grace of muted goodbyes. I am hopeless at all of this, at making things work, she says out loud to the indifferent gods and to her fragile, wavering self.

The bar is small and filled with smoke and people. Aneesa follows behind Bassam as he pushes his way through the crowd to a counter at the far end of the room by a large glass door. Outside are the darkened shop windows of the small shopping mall in which the bar is located.

‘This is Chris,’ Bassam says in English, pushing Aneesa towards a man who is sitting at the counter with a glass in his hand.

The man nods at Aneesa.

‘What can I get you?’ Bassam asks his friend.

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Chris says.

He has dark, coarse hair and pale skin and is wearing round wire-rimmed glasses.

‘I’ll get us something to drink,’ Bassam says and moves to the bar.

Someone jostles Aneesa to one side so that she has to reach out and steady herself against the edge of the counter.

‘You must be Bassam’s little sister,’ Chris says.

He looks bored and indifferent and Aneesa decides she does not like him. She straightens herself up and looks round for Bassam but does not find him.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t bite.’

‘I didn’t think you would,’ Aneesa says quickly and regrets the apologetic tone in her voice.

‘I’m just kidding,’ Chris says with a sudden smile.

Aneesa moves closer to him and leans against the counter.

‘What are you doing in Beirut?’

‘I’m a journalist.’

Aneesa has never been abroad and this man suddenly seems very exotic to her.

‘Bassam has never spoken about you before,’ she says.

‘Oh? We only met recently. He’s helping me with a piece I’m writing about the war for the newspaper I work for.’

‘But what does Bassam have to do with the war?’

Chris clears his throat and looks at her more closely.

‘Hasn’t your brother told you what he’s been up to lately?’ he asks with a nervous laugh.

Bassam returns with a soft drink for Aneesa and two bottles of beer.

‘Pepsi?’ He grins at her.

He looks just as he did when he was a young boy, his hair mussed up a little and his shoulders hunched slightly forward. Aneesa feels a rush of tenderness for her brother and turns to frown at Chris.

‘What’s going on, Chris?’ Bassam looks from one to the other. ‘What have you been saying to upset my sister?’

‘Nothing. It’s just uncomfortably crowded in here for me,’ Aneesa reaches for her drink. ‘Pepsi, no ice, right?’

This is how I imagine it happened, Salah. Ramzi and Waddad sit at one of the large tables by the window in the orphanage dining room. It is early evening and the mist is rising from the valley, moving up through the pine trees and wrapping itself around the building. The damp is palpable.

Are you warm enough? Waddad asks.

Ramzi pulls at the sleeves of the new jumper she has given him and smiles.

They have been sitting there for some time after finishing their meal. It is a few weeks into their relationship and Waddad thinks this is a good opportunity to tell the boy about Bassam. She pats Ramzi’s arm, leans closer to him and begins.

They came to the apartment on a winter morning. There was a loud banging at the door and someone called out Bassam’s name. When I opened it, a group of men pushed their way into the hall and asked for him.

Ramzi nods his dark head and then holds it perfectly still, as if anxious to hear the rest.

He used to wake up looking astonished, as if he never expected to feel so alive first thing in the morning. That always made me feel good, that look of surprise on his face, she says.

Ramzi fidgets in his chair and she hurries on.

As they led him away, one of the men told me he would be back in a couple of hours, that there was just a small matter that needed to be cleared up. They even let him go back to his room and get changed beforehand.

I keep thinking, though … I keep wondering why, when Bassam saw them and realized what was happening, why he didn’t escape through the bedroom window. It would have been so easy to slip down to the neighbours and run.

She lifts her head and looks around the room. The other children are being unusually quiet over their meal.

I suppose … Ramzi begins.

Waddad feels her body tense up. Ramzi’s eyes wander and for a moment she thinks he will not continue.

I suppose Bassam was concerned about you, he finally says, his voice rising as he speaks.

Waddad suddenly understands what he is trying to say.

Worried they might hurt me? she asks the little boy in the seat beside her. That’s why you didn’t try to escape, isn’t it?

It is a few moments before Waddad allows herself to weep and even then, even as the tears fall down her face and on to her limp hands lying palms up on the table before her, she does not make a sound.

Don’t cry, Ramzi pleads. Please don’t cry.

The second time Aneesa goes up to the orphanage, she is on her own. She asks for Ramzi and is told by the porter that the children are still in their classrooms.

‘I’ll just wait over there,’ she says, gesturing to the inner courtyard.

‘I’ll let his teacher know you’re here.’

She walks over to the plastic table by the young pine trees, wipes the dust off one of the chairs with the sleeve of her jumper and sits down with her legs outstretched. The vine on the trellis above is mostly brown and dry, but Aneesa notices small green shoots here and there. She looks up, squinting in the thin ray of sunlight that penetrates the courtyard and makes shadows of the wiry vine and of the tree branches.

Moments later, the children emerge from their classrooms yelling in unison. Aneesa looks around and sees Ramzi coming towards her, a ball under his arm. She moves an empty chair nearer to her own and he sits down. For a moment, they are entirely engulfed by the noise around them, and can say nothing to each other. Ramzi’s head is bent down and he is holding the ball close to his chest. His trainers, Aneesa notices, are white and very new. Another present from Waddad. She hears Ramzi take a deep breath.

‘Would you like to come and watch me play?’ he asks her. ‘I’m very good.’ Then he looks up and smiles at her for the first time.

It is mid-afternoon and Aneesa and Samir are alone together for the first time. They sit in a coffee shop on one side of a long wooden bench, elbows almost touching. Aneesa hangs her head and looks down at her hands encircling a large mug of coffee.

‘Thanks for agreeing to meet me here,’ Samir begins. ‘I wanted to talk to you about my father.’

She looks up at him.

‘Salah?’

‘He seems to value your friendship a great deal.’

‘I know.’

Samir clears his throat.

‘You know I brought him away from Beirut just after my mother passed away. Too many memories there for him.’

‘You grew up there too, didn’t you?’

‘I left a long time ago. This is where I live now.’

Aneesa nods. She is beginning to lose interest in the conversation.

‘Do you think my father is happy here?’ Samir continues.

‘Wouldn’t it be better if you asked him that yourself?’

He looks slightly flustered.

‘I just thought you might have discussed it with him,’ he says. ‘You seem so close.’

‘We are. He is my best friend here.’

Samir lets out a harsh laugh.

‘A young woman like you? Surely you have plenty of friends of your own generation.’

She shrugs and takes a gulp of the hot coffee. Then she turns her face away, and gazes through the glass shopfront to the busy street beyond.

‘He seems to be growing more and more attached to you. Are you aware of that?’

‘But I feel the same way about him.’

Samir shakes his head.

‘He is an old man, Aneesa. My father is an old man and he has been through so much. He’s very vulnerable and I don’t want him hurt. Anyway, I’m not sure you really know him.’

She looks intently at Samir and waits for him to continue.

‘Maybe I don’t know him too well any more, either. He seems very different from when I was a child. Something has changed and I cannot work out quite what it is. Do you find that strange?’

Aneesa shakes her head.

‘You’re looking at him with different eyes, I suppose,’ she says gently.

Samir smiles and his face is suddenly smooth and bright.

‘The first time I went back home I visited the old hotel in the mountains that my parents took me to every summer. In the late afternoons, just before dusk, they would come downstairs after their nap to sit on the terrace. It was spacious and cobblestoned and there were large clay pots filled with geraniums between the tables. We’d sip on lemonade for a few minutes and I would clamber down from my chair and walk over to the edge of the terrace to look out at the world.’

He turns away so she can only see his profile.

‘But things had changed,’ he continues, shaking his head a little. ‘It wasn’t so much the building itself, but the exterior grounds. They had installed a canopy in white and yellow stripes with curtains that opened out on to the view. At first, I couldn’t quite work out what was wrong, until I realized, looking out at the setting sun, a brilliant haze of red spreading slowly over the sky, that there was a line of young pine trees in view, just below the edge of the terrace.’ He looks at her again. ‘I was very upset,’ he laughs. ‘Someone had taken the trouble to plant much-needed trees on the side of the mountain and I was angry because it made everything look different.’

Aneesa sees a small boy in a short-sleeved shirt tucked into starched white trousers. He stands alone, his dark hair combed back off his anxious face, and behind him, a man and woman are silent and waiting too.

She reaches up to place a hand on Samir’s arm but he has already shaken off the memory.

‘I’ll have to get back to the office now,’ he says.

Aneesa draws her hand away and places it in her lap. Samir stands up abruptly so that the remaining coffee in his mug spills over on to the counter. She covers his hand with her own as he tries to reach for a napkin.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll clean it up. You go on, I’m going to sit here for a bit and finish my coffee.’

She clutches a handful of paper napkins to her chest and watches as he walks away.

Let me tell you about the boy who would be my brother, Salah.

Ramzi sleeps on the bed closest to the window, where the sunlight comes through to wake him and, in spring, the scent of wildflowers. His clothes go into one half of a cupboard placed between his bed and the bed of the next boy down. The warm jacket Waddad bought him hangs neatly next to the two pairs of trousers he brought with him from home and his new trainers and best shoes are directly underneath on the cupboard floor. Shirts and sweaters go on a shelf and his socks and underwear are in the upper drawer.

He does not mind sharing the cupboard because it is the first time he has ever had a proper place to put his things in. But his own bed is what he enjoys most about being here: sleeping without younger brothers pulling at the covers or kicking him in the shins so that he was always waking up; and sitting cross-legged on the bed during the day, the covers pulled tight beneath him, his shoes off and his books spread across its smooth surface, a fluffy pillow behind him against which to rest his back.

The only time his mother has come to visit since she first brought him here, Ramzi showed her around the dormitory, pointing to his made-up bed and the neatly arranged clothes in the cupboard, and waited for her praise. But she only nodded and looked distractedly around her.

I wish they’d agreed to take one of your brothers as well, she said, shaking her head. They’re uncontrollable now that both you and your father are gone.

Ramzi has felt afraid ever since that she would be back with a younger brother for him to take care of, or that she might even decide to take Ramzi away with her to be the man of the house again, just as he had been when Father left home. But it’s not fear that puts him on his best behaviour; Ramzi knows that these things, eating and sleeping well, school and other children and the sojourns in the orphanage playground, all these are the closest he’ll ever get to an ordered life, and that is all he wants.

Salah, Salah, what my mother does not know is that I came back not to find Bassam but myself.

Salah is at the door with a large package under one arm. It is his first visit to Aneesa’s flat.

‘Come in,’ Aneesa says. ‘Come in. I’m sorry everything is such a mess.’

She has been packing and behind her he can see clothes and objects all over the floor and covering all available surfaces.

He steps inside and, before taking off his coat, hands her the package.

‘What is this?’

‘It’s for you to take home with you.’

She tears off the brown paper and stares at the painting.

‘This is the one you brought with you from Beirut, isn’t it?’

He nods.

‘I can’t take it from you, Salah.’

The painting has a narrow gilt frame. Beneath the glass, a wedge of beige cardboard in a rectangular shape surrounds a dark but indistinct figure whose edges trickle into the colours beyond it in bold upwards strokes of yellow, white and light brown. Through the blurriness of it, in the undetermined shapes that surround the figure in the painting, Aneesa sees a circle of wings: two, three or four, she cannot be sure, but feathery and marvellous nonetheless. She touches the angel through the glass with the tips of her fingers.

Salah reaches for her hand.

‘It would really make me happy if you took this with you, Aneesa. Please.’

‘I’ll think of you every time I look at it,’ she finally says.

She puts the painting down and takes his coat.

The windows are grimy and grey and the plaid coat she’s worn so often on their outings together is thrown on the floor in one corner of the room. Salah bends down, picks it up and looks at it for a moment before laying it neatly against the back of a chair. He looks up at Aneesa.

‘I shall miss you, my dear,’ he says quietly. ‘It won’t be the same without you here.’

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