Dreams of Water

by Nada Awar Jarrar

  I stood up, crossed over in front of you and looked at your left profile.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said.

  ‘I know I need a haircut, but they can never seem to get it right here.’ You put down your pen and shook your head. ‘I miss my barber in Beirut.’

  I put my head back and laughed loudly.

  ‘Come to Beirut with me then,’ I said. ‘Come home with me and we’ll get your hair cut the way it should be.’

  But when I looked back at you again, there was only sorrow in your face.

  Aneesa does not remember the last time she saw Bassam. Instead, there is a persistent image in her mind of a day they spent together only a week before his abduction.

  It is summer and they are at the beach in the south with a group of their friends. The fighting seems to have come to a temporary stop and the war is far from all their minds.

  Bassam has brought with him a young woman whom Aneesa has not met before. She is petite and very pretty, with fair hair and startlingly green eyes. Bassam introduces her as Leila and the two spend much of their time sitting together on the sand or jostling each other at the edge of the water. Aneesa wonders if her brother has fallen in love. It is not something they have ever talked about and she feels a momentary distance from him, as if he has changed in some way, as if there are many things in his life that she does know about.

  The sea is especially beautiful today because rather than being its usual still self in the heat of summer, Aneesa can see ripples of waves in the distance that move down to the shore lazily and end in a frothy foam on the wet sand. She watches Bassam and his friend step into the water and swim out into the distance. They come to a stop and move closer to one another so that their shiny heads seem to be touching. Aneesa looks away and turns on to her stomach and tries to listen to what a friend next to her is saying.

  Later, as they prepare to leave, Leila comes up behind the car where Aneesa is getting out of her bathing suit and putting on her clothes.

  ‘Hello,’ says the young woman. ‘Do you mind if I get dressed here too?’

  Aneesa shakes her head and pulls a blouse over her head. She does not look at Leila.

  ‘We didn’t really get a chance to talk, did we?’ says Leila. ‘Bassam has told me so much about you.’

  Aneesa puts on her denims and takes a pair of sandals out of a plastic bag.

  ‘I guess Bassam didn’t tell you about me?’ Leila’s voice is quiet but when Aneesa looks at her she is smiling. ‘We haven’t known each other very long but I like him a lot. Maybe he doesn’t feel the same about me?’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not why he hasn’t mentioned you before,’ Aneesa says hurriedly. ‘He’s just very private about things like this.’

  Leila smiles.

  ‘You’re sweet,’ she says, making Aneesa feel slightly embarrassed at the compliment.

  When they’ve finished dressing, they walk away from the car and join the others once again. The sun is beginning to set and Aneesa feels a shiver run through her body. She looks around for Bassam and sees him coming out of the water.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s still swimming,’ Leila says with a shake of her head. ‘He must be freezing. I’ll take a towel out to him.’

  Leila runs down towards Bassam waving with one hand and holding a towel with the other. Aneesa watches her brother’s face. He is smiling. The sky above him is beginning to turn a slow, soft red and the sea is moving fluidly and silently behind him. He grabs the towel from Leila and wraps it quickly around his body, then he puts an arm over the young woman’s shoulder and pulls her towards him. As Aneesa prepares to turn back to the car, Bassam looks up and waves to her. He cups his hands over his mouth and calls out.

  ‘Aneesa!’

  But she only turns and walks away.

  Leila left the country only weeks after Bassam’s disappearance and Aneesa never got the chance to talk to her about him. Now, she wonders what her brother had wanted to say to her on that day. Sometimes she thinks he had been trying to point to his own happiness on such a perfect day. At others, she imagines he had been about to say something of such significance that she would for ever remember it. But most of all, she will always be ashamed of having refused to share what might have been one of his final joyous moments.

  Part Two

  When they come for him Bassam knows that there is no escape. He sees them standing at the front door with his mother as he comes out of his room. There are four of them, looking very ordinary, although the ringleader is dressed in fatigues. Bassam recognizes one man who stands in the hallway, half hidden by the door. He is short and thin with a bushy moustache and Bassam is certain he has seen him at one of the many political meetings he has attended. Perhaps he is the informer, Bassam says to himself as he approaches the men.

  ‘Ahlan, ahlan,’ he welcomes the men and puts his arm around Waddad’s shoulders. They all shake hands and pretend to have a normal conversation. Bassam tells Waddad he must attend to some business and will wash and get changed before leaving. He hears her offering the men some coffee as he walks back to the bathroom.

  In his room, Bassam looks around carefully at all his things: the unmade bed pushed against one wall just below the window; the too-big cupboard that nearly overwhelms the room; his cluttered desk and the clothes he took off last night and threw on to the chair. He does not think he has time to write to Aneesa to explain and he is concerned that if he delays in coming out the men might hurt his mother. He dresses quickly, pulling on a clean pair of trousers and shirt. He is surprised at how calm he feels, perhaps because he has been expecting this for some time now. He picks up a comb and runs it through his hair, then he looks at himself in the mirror. His face is pale and drawn with tiredness. He wishes suddenly that he were a child again and that the war had never been.

  At the front door, Bassam gives Waddad a quick peck on the cheek and smiles broadly.

  ‘Everything will be all right, mama,’ he says quietly.

  There is an anxious look on Waddad’s face as he reaches to touch her hair. It is still long and silky though she has it held back in a bun.

  ‘Take care, habibti,’ Bassam whispers.

  ‘What time are you coming home?’ Waddad asks as he goes through the door with the men.

  ‘Don’t worry, khalti, he’ll be back later,’ the ringleader says with a chuckle as he puts his arm through Bassam’s.

  ‘Did you bring your car keys?’ the ringleader asks Bassam once they get downstairs.

  Bassam nods.

  ‘Give them to me.’ The ringleader throws the keys to one of the men. ‘Follow us in his car. It’s the little red Renault in the car park over there.’

  ‘What do you want my car for?’ Bassam asks but the man ignores him.

  They lead him to a small van and tell him to climb into the back. One man sits next to him. When he unzips his jacket, Bassam sees the gun pushed into the top of his trousers. The man takes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it up without offering one to Bassam.

  It is a sunny day and because it is still morning, people are out in the streets. The fighting doesn’t usually begin until late in the afternoon once everyone is home from work and the militiamen have had their rest. It seems to Bassam, for one moment at least, that Beirut is back to its normal self, cars are hooting their horns at one another and there is a sense of buoyancy in the air. He laughs out loud and the man next to him looks up.

  ‘Shut up,’ the man says with obvious boredom.

  Bassam shakes his head and looks out of the car window, suddenly wishing he had seen his sister before she left the house earlier that morning.

  His father had always insisted that the family spend several weeks of the summer in their home in the mountains. But it was Aneesa who seemed to enjoy the experience most. Bassam remembers her as a little girl, dressed in a thin cotton dress and sandals, her legs slim and brown as she danced around the roses that their father had loved so much. There had been something baffli
ng about her even then, a kind of wholeness that excluded everyone else. Still, he had felt fiercely protective of Aneesa when they were children and feels it even more strongly now that they are both older. The thought that he might have let his sister and mother down enters Bassam’s head.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asks, but no one bothers to reply.

  There are many things that Bassam regrets. He was never particularly close to his father, perhaps because they were both too embarrassed to show affection openly; nor did he ever make a real effort to understand his mother, his role being only one of protector rather than friend. There have been times since his father’s death, however, that Bassam has sensed in Waddad a strength greater than his own, a resourcefulness that makes him uneasy at times.

  He is also sorry that he left university before he had gained a degree, something he knows he would never have done if his father had been alive. I might have had a chance, if I had continued, to eventually leave this country and find work, he thinks. I would have sent for mother and Aneesa later on and then we all might have been free.

  Aneesa. It had been his maternal grandmother’s name, soft and beautiful like his sister, the sweet companion, the friend. That is what Aneesa is to him, someone he can trust, who sees the things he fears most and loves him the only way she knows how, fiercely and without reproach.

  ‘That’s not the way you do it, Aneesa,’ Bassam says, pushing his sister away impatiently. ‘Here, let me.’

  They are trying to put up a tent in the back garden of the house in the mountains. Their father has given them instructions on what to do but Bassam is not sure he has understood. He is feeling angry with himself and with Aneesa’s futile fumbling with the pegs and ropes.

  ‘It’s no use you trying to do something you know nothing about,’ he says with anger.

  Aneesa looks at him and sighs.

  ‘I’ll go and get some cushions for us to sit on inside the tent,’ she says. ‘You put it up, Bassam, and I’ll be right back.’

  She skips as she moves, her body light and delicate. For a moment he imagines she might float away from him and up into the pine trees.

  Bassam eventually calls his father to help him pitch the tent, so that when Aneesa comes back, her arms full of cushions, it is up, its two flap doors pulled back to invite them in. She claps her hands and the cushions fall on the ground.

  ‘I knew you could do it, Bassam,’ she squeals with delight. ‘Isn’t it beautiful, baba?’

  He is not sure why he did not confide in her about his political activities. It was partly because he feared for her safety but there was something else also. Perhaps, Bassam admits to himself, I wanted to do something that she would not be a part of; something that would give me the sense of being free and independent.

  Bassam hangs his head and for the first time since his capture feels fear, not just for himself but for everyone, his mother and his sister, for these sorry men who are as mindless as the wretched war they insist on making.

  He is being held with about a dozen other men in an old building near the city sports centre. There are armed militiamen at the entrance to the building and in the hallway outside the room where the prisoners are kept. The room is large but has no windows and a group of men are sitting on cushions on the floor. The air is heavy with smoke and someone lights a cigarette when Bassam walks in. He stands there for a moment looking for a familiar face when one of the men motions to him to come and share his cushion.

  ‘The floor is cold,’ says the man quietly, though he does not smile. ‘You’ll be better off here.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Bassam leans his back against a wall and looks around. Some of the prisoners seem to have been here for several days. They look bedraggled and sleepy.

  ‘They brought me in yesterday and still haven’t told me what’s going on,’ the man next to Bassam says with a sigh. ‘I was on my way back home from work and was stopped at a checkpoint. I work down at the port.’

  Bassam nods but does not say anything.

  ‘What about you? Does your family know what has happened to you?’

  Before Bassam can reply, the door opens and an armed man appears, dragging someone in behind him. The detainee falls on to the floor and moans loudly. Nobody moves until the guard shuts the door again.

  ‘He’s been badly beaten,’ one of the prisoners says as he leans over the injured man.

  When they lift him, the man moans again. They move him to a corner of the room and put his head on a cushion. Someone puts a jacket over him.

  ‘Does anyone have any water?’

  One of the men takes a small plastic bottle out of his pocket.

  ‘I saved this from this morning,’ he says as he hands the bottle over.

  The injured man sips at the water and closes his eyes.

  Bassam’s companion shakes his head.

  ‘So, does your family have any idea that you’ve been taken?’ he asks again.

  ‘They came for me at home. Walked up to my front door, greeted my mother and asked me to go with them.’ Bassam shrugs his shoulders. ‘I never thought they’d be as bold as that.’

  ‘It happens all the time,’ says the man. ‘If they want to get you, believe me, they’ll find you.’

  ‘Had they been looking for you too?’

  The man shakes his head.

  ‘I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose. The militiaman at the barricade didn’t like the sound of my name.’ He smiles and looks at Bassam. ‘The funny thing is, I’ve been all right all this time, escaped the worst of the bombardments, and now this! What Allah wills is bound to happen. There is nothing we can do.’

  Some time later, when he looks at his watch, Bassam realizes it is early evening and the fighting outside has resumed. He can hear gunfire and the occasional mortar fire at some distance. He wonders what Waddad and Aneesa are thinking now that he has not returned home. I should have let them know something like this might happen, he thinks.

  He had been involved with the party for nearly two years. The leadership promised great things, that together they would put a stop to the rule of the militias and allow people to live normal lives again, although all those promises sound too good to be true now. Bassam felt when he was approached to join the group that he had no choice. He was young and strong and without a job or prospects for the future. It was either become a member of a political group or emigrate and there was no way he could have gone away and left his mother and sister on their own in the midst of this madness. I did what I had to do, he nods to himself.

  The man next to him is snoring with his back up against the wall. Bassam slides down so that his head is on the cushion, wraps his jacket more tightly around him and tries to fall asleep.

  His father comes to him in a dream. He looks different, with a full head of hair, and he is much taller than he was in real life. A young Bassam walks alongside him, occasionally looking up to catch what he is saying. They are in search of their flat and want to return home and though they seem to be going in the right direction – Bassam recognizes the road leading up to the block, cliffs going down to the water on one side and the wide esplanade on the other – they cannot find it.

  They sit down eventually, on a large grey rock that has moss all over it. Bassam jumps up and examines the seat of his trousers which is now covered with seaweed. When he looks around him, he realizes that he is standing on the Raouche Rock, high up above the water. Beyond is the horizon. His father stands at the edge of the rock but when Bassam approaches him he disappears. Down in the water, there is no sign of anyone having fallen in. Bassam raises his head to the sky and there is his father, floating up into the clouds so that eventually Bassam only sees the soles of his feet, two dark imprints in a sky of white.

  He wakes up stiff with cold. The man next to him is still snoring and most of the others are still asleep. He walks to the door and knocks softly and is surprised when it opens.

  ‘What is it?’ t
he guard asks him.

  ‘I need the toilet.’

  The guard looks at him closely and shrugs, then he takes him by the arm, pulls him out of the room and locks the door again. Bassam realizes that he is not the same militiaman who was at the door earlier. In the dim light of the single bulb in the hallway there is a small kitten at the man’s feet. Its head is bent over a scrap of newspaper where morsels of cheese have been placed.

  ‘Its mother must have been run over by a car,’ the man whispers to Bassam. ‘I picked it up on my way over here. Poor thing was starving.’

  Bassam looks at the militiaman. He is young, with dark hair and eyes. He could be any one of the dozens of people Bassam meets in the streets every day, and although there is a certain gentleness in his face, he carries his machine gun with the ease of long experience.

  ‘It’s good of you to take care of it,’ Bassam finally says.

  The man looks at him and nods.

  ‘It’s that one on the left,’ he says, pointing behind him. ‘Two minutes only. And leave the door open.’

  In the morning, the man sitting next to Bassam is summoned away by the guard. He looks anxious as he walks out of the room, but when he returns moments later, he is smiling.

  ‘My brother-in-law has come for me,’ he tells Bassam. ‘He knows the leader here and they told him there’d been some mistake. It was someone else they were after.’ He grabs his jacket and puts out his other hand. ‘Do you want me to get a message to someone for you? Give me your mother’s number. I’ll telephone her if you like.’

  ‘We have not even exchanged names,’ Bassam says, shaking the man’s hand. He imagines Waddad receiving the call and trying desperately to do something, even coming out here to find him. He shakes his head. ‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘I’m sure I’ll be out soon, anyway. Thank you.’

  Once his companion has left, Bassam looks around him. The man who was beaten last night is sitting up. His face is bruised and there is dried blood on one side of his head but he seems otherwise all right. He looks at Bassam and blinks before turning away.