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.
Dreams of Water Page 2