She joins him on the sofa and feels the warmth from his body enveloping her.
‘What is it that’s so urgent, Robert?’ She smiles at him and shakes her head.
‘You know that job I told you about before I left?’ Robert begins. ‘The one in New York that I had been hoping to get?’
Aneesa nods.
‘Well, I’ve been offered it and they want me to go there right away. There was a message on my answerphone when I got back.’
‘That’s wonderful news, habibi,’ Aneesa says, giving him a hug. ‘I’m so happy for you.’ She feels a twinge of anxiety before she asks him when he is due to leave.
‘There’s a lot to organize over here first. I have to sort out my flat and we’ll have to find work over there for you as well. And I’m sure we’ll have no problem renting this flat before you follow me out there.’
‘This flat?’
‘Well, you won’t want to keep it while you’re away. We could be in America for some time.’
Aneesa stands up and looks down at him.
‘Robert, what are you talking about?’
He reaches for her hand and grasps it.
‘As soon as I heard about the job, I realized that there was no way I could leave without you,’ he says after a pause. ‘I love you, Aneesa.’
In all the time that they have been seeing each other, they have not really spoken of a future together and although Aneesa has sometimes wondered how long the relationship will endure, she has never felt the need to approach the subject with Robert.
‘You’ve never said that before,’ she says quietly.
‘I thought you knew.’ Robert stands up and reaches for her hand. ‘It’s taken me a long time to realize it, I know, but I’m very certain of how I feel.’
When she does not respond, he wraps his arms around her and whispers into her ear.
‘We can get married before we leave, if that’s what you want.’
For a moment, Aneesa does not know what to say.
‘I didn’t say anything about wanting to get married.’ She pulls away from him and sits down again.
‘We can go to Beirut first. It’s time I met your mother anyway.’
Aneesa is surprised at how resentful she suddenly feels.
‘My mother doesn’t know about you, Robert,’ she blurts out.
For the first time since she’s known him, a look of pain crosses his face.
‘You haven’t told her about me?’
She shakes her head but says nothing.
‘You don’t love me, do you?’ he asks after a long pause.
The finality of his words shocks her. Still, she cannot bring herself to say anything to comfort him.
‘Robert, I never realized this was how you felt. I—’
He lifts a hand to stop her.
‘Please, don’t say anything more. I’ll leave now.’
‘Robert, don’t go. Let’s talk, please.’
He shakes his head and opens the front door and she does not try to stop him from walking away.
Tonight, Bassam and her father are ghosts in her dream and everything around them, the faint light that illuminates their movements and the distant sounds that accompany their voices, appears ethereal, as if they would all disappear with a single flutter of her eyelid. And even as she dreams, Aneesa senses a strong desire to keep her father and brother there, to hold on to their awareness of each other and of herself floating somewhere in the background.
They are standing on the balcony of the flat in Beirut and are looking downwards; Bassam is calling out to someone on the ground below. She can see only the back of her father’s head and Bassam, when he turns to look at him, appears vague too, although his features are accurate and clear. Hurry up, Bassam says. You’ve got to hurry and come up here.
When Aneesa follows the line of Bassam’s vision, she sees a miniature, almost cartoon-like version of herself looking towards them and waving. She is so small that only her face, framed by dark, untamed hair, and her hand are visible. The moment that this unreal figure attempts to speak, everything around her begins to fade into the background until the final image, the single impression that is left behind is one of solid emptiness.
Aneesa wakes up and slowly opens her eyes but the darkness around her does not waver.
Aneesa does not see Robert again after that final argument but she does hear about his leaving for New York. She is also surprised when she stops hearing from Isabel. When she no longer comes across her friend at work, she telephones and leaves messages for her to call back. But Isabel never does.
Sometime later, Aneesa manages to get in touch with Isabel and the two women agree to meet at a café near work.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Aneesa begins.
‘I’ve been away,’ Isabel says.
‘Oh.’
Isabel is absently stirring sugar into her coffee. She is not looking at Aneesa and seems reluctant to talk.
‘What happened, Isabel? Are you angry with me about Robert? Please tell me what I’ve done.’
Isabel looks furiously back at her.
‘Did you think he had no feelings, is that it?’
‘I didn’t know he was so serious about our relationship—’
‘Aneesa, how could you possibly not know? It was obvious that he was very much in love with you.’
‘Is that what it feels like? I didn’t know.’
‘Oh, don’t play naïve with me, Aneesa. You’re too old for that. You just didn’t want to make a commitment. It wasn’t convenient.’
‘What do you mean?’
Isabel’s anger seems suddenly to dissipate. She takes a deep breath.
‘You’ve never taken us seriously, Aneesa, not me or Robert or any of us,’ she says. ‘We’re just something new and exotic, something for you to discover and pretend to care about.’
‘But I do care about you and Robert.’ Aneesa is crying.
Isabel reaches for her hand.
‘I know you do, but not so much that it can hurt in any way. You’ve never really been here, Aneesa. In your head, you’re always somewhere else.’ Isabel pushes her chair back and stands up. ‘You didn’t hear from me for a while because I was in New York with Robert. He came to me after you left him. He was heartbroken.’
Sometimes, in the early evenings of her Western sojourn, Aneesa remains at home dressed in a pair of flannel pyjamas and a warm dressing gown and thinks she could live like this for the rest of her life. She moves around the flat in cloth slippers, preparing dinner and taking note of every step she takes. Aneesa, you are washing your hands now, she muses; after that you’ll chop the carrots. Now you can switch the stove off and now it’s time to do the dishes.
After eating, she picks up a book and holds it tightly to her chest as she makes her way to the living room. Once in a while, she might walk over to the window and pull the curtains back to glance at the grey street below.
But when she sits down on the sofa, just as she begins to get comfortable, an image of Waddad, alone in her apartment, comes to mind. She sits at the kitchen table, her head bent over a large tray covered with brown lentils. With the fingers of her right hand she removes small stones and bits of dirt which she then pushes to one side with her left hand. She has on her blue-framed reading glasses and her long grey hair is tied back with a black velvet ribbon. When she looks up, her eyes squinting through the lenses, Aneesa notices that her mother’s skin is more tired than she remembered it. It is lined and soft and papery, as though covered with a thin film of powder.
Part Four
Salah awaits a new-found happiness. At seventy-six, he is reluctant to appear to be searching for it, looking secretly for an indication of unexpected joys in everything that happens to him, in every encounter and despite the confines of his increasingly fragile life.
But since his arrival in this new city, he is careful not to show signs of his expectations to Samir, choosing instead to maintain the air of quiet resignation that his
son has come to expect of him.
‘What are you planning to do today then, Father?’ Samir would ask before leaving for work, his body already leaning eagerly towards the front door.
‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ Salah would reply, looking up with a rueful smile and a gentle nod of the head. ‘I’ve got plenty to keep me busy right here.’
Then, as soon as Samir has stepped outside, Salah would place the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, run a cloth over the kitchen counters and rush upstairs to get ready to go out.
He dresses carefully, pulling on his trousers while sitting on the edge of the bed and buttoning the cuffs of his shirt before putting on socks and shoes. Then, experiencing a sudden frisson of excitement as he puts on his jacket and locks the front door behind him, Salah sets out for adventure.
At eighteen, Salah enters the American University of Beirut and spends his first few months there taking English language courses to prepare for the years of study ahead. He meets many young men like himself whose excellent grades in high school have secured them a place at the best university in the region.
There are women students at the university also. This is a new experience for Salah who has spent his childhood in boys’ schools. Although some of the women are natives of Lebanon like himself, most of them are foreign, either from other Arab countries like Iraq, Palestine or Syria, or from as far as Europe and America.
He continues to live with his parents and two sisters in an apartment building in Ras Beirut that is only minutes away from the university. Both his sisters are younger than he is and are still at school. Although Salah does not know it yet he comes from an enlightened family for whom education is a priority for both sons and daughters. His parents are distant relatives and have lived in Beirut all their lives but they have instilled in him a respect for the world and all it has to offer and have encouraged in him the desire to widen his horizons.
A few weeks into the term a neighbour, an old woman who takes in foreign students, asks Salah if he will accompany one of her lodgers to her classes.
‘She is from India and arrived late in the term,’ the neighbour tells Salah. ‘She does not know her way around and is feeling a little anxious. I thought it would be nice if you walked her to the university just for the first week or so, until she’s got used to things.’
The young woman is very pretty, with long, dark hair and big eyes. She shakes Salah’s hand slowly. It feels very soft to the touch.
‘My name is Sita,’ she says with a smile.
But Salah is too shy to reply.
They walk side by side on the street parallel to the one where the university is situated. Salah has decided to take a slightly circuitous route so that he can study Sita further. She has a plain dress on but there are gold bangles on her right wrist that jangle as she moves and her hair is braided so that it falls flat and thick against her back. He thinks perhaps he will help her when they cross the street to protect her from oncoming trams and motorcars.
‘What is your name?’ she asks as they prepare to cross the street.
Salah holds on to the young woman’s arm and hopes he is not squeezing too tightly.
‘Salah,’ he says under his breath once they get to the other side. He lets go of Sita’s arm.
They are approaching the fig tree by the hospital where Salah’s mother had a small operation only months before. Once they’re past that, they’ll turn left and go down towards the main university entrance. Salah is aware that he is nervous but cannot understand why. Suddenly, he hears Sita cry out.
‘Oh, no!’
He is right behind her as she collapses into his arms. He takes one or two steps backwards but still manages to hold on to her. He looks at her face. Her skin has gone grey and her eyelids are fluttering. She is leaning heavily against him and there is nothing he can do but wait for her to recover. Moments later, Sita pushes herself up and tries to stand straight. Salah holds her by the shoulders and tells her to take a deep breath.
‘Are you all right?’ he asks nervously.
The young woman nods and, pointing across the street, turns her head away with a loud sob. Salah follows the direction of her finger to the butcher shop where a sheep has just been slaughtered, its head lying intact beside its lifeless body.
‘It’s barbaric,’ Sita says through her tears.
But Salah can think only of the feel of her body against his own, the suppleness of it and of the realization that it had disturbed him. A few days later, he finds out that Sita has returned home to India.
He spends much of his time indoors at first, going out only when Samir returns from work and the two of them would walk to the high street for some groceries or for a quick meal at the corner café. Eventually, Salah feels brave enough to go out on his own for a walk to the park or down to the train station to watch commuters pushing their weight through the turnstiles and scurrying up and down the stairs.
He discovers a new freedom in anonymity, in the studied indifference of the strangers who walk past him, their eyes pointing straight ahead, their stride confident and uninterrupted. It is also there in the apparent endlessness of this huge city, unbroken movement and a luring promise of novelty in its buzzing streets. He grows increasingly confident, venturing beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the house on most days, even risking a quiet hello at the newsagent’s where he buys his Arabic newspaper on the way home.
When Samir arrives from work one day and hands him a bus pass, Salah examines it slowly, rubbing a finger over the photograph he’d had taken at the automatic machine inside the railway station a few days before.
‘It’s free, wherever you want to go,’ Samir says, flashing a rare smile, both arms held wide open in front of him.
He begins to take buses everywhere, looking at the sign on the front of each of them as it approaches and quietly mouthing the strange-sounding names as he prepares to step on. He goes across town and back, through bustling commercial districts and untidy neighbourhoods that are very unlike the one he now lives in. He begins to feel as if the city has several hearts that beat separately, each at the centre of its own world.
Standing at the front door one chilly morning as he prepares to go out, Salah looks down the now familiar street, into the distance, and thinks of the roads back home that twist in and out of one another without apparent purpose, leading to untold journeys, catching sunlight in their wake.
‘Do we live in the suburbs?’ he asks Samir that evening.
‘No, of course not. We’re right in the centre of town. You should know that by now, baba.’
While Salah has always excelled at athletics – his slim shape and long limbs help him run and jump with ease – the one thing he cannot do is swim. It is a source of constant embarrassment to him during his days at university since he is loath to admit that his body betrays him in some way.
One day, Salah’s athletics instructor decides to take his students to the beach.
‘We’ll do a few laps and play some games in the water,’ the instructor tells them. ‘It encourages flexibility and endurance.’
Salah makes his way down to the stretch of rocky beach that is also part of the campus with a sinking heart. Once there, Salah is momentarily distracted by the activity around him. He and his fellow students have changed into their swimming suits and are standing on the concrete platform that abuts the water. Around them are dozens of other young men and women either lying down on towels or standing around chatting or splashing noisily in the sea.
‘Right, all of you, get in and swim up to the plank over there and back,’ the instructor suddenly belts out. ‘No dawdling now.’
Floating on top of the water a short distance from the shore is a platform with several students sitting on it. The platform does not look too far away and Salah thinks he might be able to make it that far if he can rest at the other end. He slips into the water and waits for his classmates to move ahead of him, then, slowly letting go of the concrete ledge, he begins
a reluctant dog paddle. For a moment or two, Salah thinks he will be all right but as he moves further away from the shore, a panic suddenly overtakes him and he imagines he is being pulled downwards into the depths of the sea. His head goes down and he struggles to lift it up again. He splashes his arms and calls for help and out of nowhere, an arm appears and lifts his head up above the water. Salah feels his muscles suddenly relax and realizes he was only moments from drowning. His rescuer holds on to him until the instructor, now surrounded by a group of students, lifts him out of the water and on to the concrete slab where he is standing. Salah sits up and begins to cough. Someone taps him gently on the back.
‘Are you all right?’
He looks round and into the face of the woman who rescued him. She is smiling and he notices that her eyes are green and her lashes sparkle with sea water. Salah breathes hard and manages to nod in answer to her question.
‘He must have had cramp or something,’ the young woman tells the instructor. ‘He was doing fine until I saw him go down.’
‘Just rest there for a while.’ The instructor bends down and pats Salah on the back. ‘I’ll get the others and we’ll head back to campus.’
Salah has never felt so ashamed and wishes the young woman would go and leave him on his own for a while.
‘My name is Huda,’ she says with a chuckle in her voice. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Salah. I … Thank you.’
‘I could teach you, you know.’
‘Teach me?’ Salah looks up at her again.
‘You’d only need one or two lessons. Then next time you come here with your classmates, no one will know you couldn’t swim before.’
The brown suede jacket lies on the bed. Samir bought it for him during a Saturday shopping spree that had included lunch and a walk across the park. It is the kind of thing that Salah would never have thought of buying when Huda was still alive. Too young for you, she would have said, smiling, before putting it back on the rack and reaching for something a little more staid, in blue and green plaid or dark charcoal with fine grey stripes.
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