‘I promised Ramzi we’d drive across that new bridge they’ve just built,’ Waddad says, turning round to the back seat and smiling at Aneesa and Ramzi. ‘Maybe we can do that on the way back.’
‘No problem,’ Samir says.
She shifts in her seat and pulls the seatbelt down off her neck. Samir insisted that she wear it and it is hugely uncomfortable.
‘I’ll never get used to these things,’ she grumbles and Samir laughs.
Once they get there, Samir drives into the village square. He stops the car and gets out, Ramzi following him. They walk to the spring at the end of a descending flight of steps.
‘I’ve been here many times before,’ Samir says.
They watch a man as he holds a plastic water container under the spout of the spring.
‘So have I,’ Ramzi says. He is standing with his hands in his pockets and is nodding solemnly. Samir wants to laugh out loud but does not want to embarrass the child. He lays a hand on his shoulder.
‘Let’s find a place to get some water for the ladies,’ Samir says.
‘Come on then,’ Ramzi says. ‘I know where it is. I’ll show you.’
At the house, Waddad gives Samir the key and asks him to open the door. Samir looks back at Aneesa but she is wandering around in the bedraggled garden. She must be thinking about her father’s roses, he thinks.
Aneesa squats down and tugs at a weed growing in one of the flower beds. She is not certain it is a weed but it is ugly and she feels a sudden need to pull it out. Ramzi squats down beside her.
‘What’re you doing, Aneesa?’
She throws the weed over to the other side of the garden.
‘Nothing,’ Aneesa replies.
Ramzi jumps up.
‘Let’s go round the back and see what there is there,’ he says.
Aneesa follows him down a slight incline and to the left of what is actually the front of the house. The garden is even more overgrown here. In the centre of the garden, there are stone benches placed in a circle around a large, round slab of marble. Ramzi steps up on to one of the benches and begins to jump across from one to the other.
‘Come on, Aneesa,’ he calls to her.
She joins him and they race after one another, round and round the table until she is breathless, laughing.
‘Stop, Ramzi. I can’t any more.’
He jumps to the ground and shrugs his shoulders.
‘I’m going to go explore over there,’ he tells her and runs off.
Aneesa tries to catch her breath. She looks up towards the verandah that runs along one side of the house and sees Samir and Waddad standing side by side at one end of it. Waddad is pointing to the mountains in the distance and talking. Samir nods and places a hand on her shoulder. He bends down until his ear is close to Waddad’s mouth and when he straightens up again, Aneesa can see the look of concentration on his face. She feels her heartbeat slow down after all the jumping around with Ramzi. Then, still standing on the bench, she turns around and looks in the direction that Waddad is pointing. She sees something glisten all the way across the valley and wonders what it is. She squints slightly and realizes she is looking at the new bridge that her mother had been talking about earlier when they were driving up here. It is so enormous that even from this distance she can see the cars driving across. She looks around for Ramzi but he has disappeared and Waddad and Samir are no longer on the verandah. She steps slowly off the bench and walks back towards the house, suddenly aware of the persistent sound of the crickets hidden high up in the pine trees.
The front door is still open. Aneesa steps inside and shivers at the dampness in the air. We should open up all the windows, she mutters to herself. But the others are nowhere to be seen. In the kitchen, Aneesa stops to try out the tap at the sink. The water comes out in a sudden spurt, murky and smelling of mud.
When she and Bassam decided to camp out in the back garden once, long ago, they had sneaked into the kitchen late at night and raided their mother’s larder. It had been Bassam’s idea, an adventure that he had included her in despite her young age and the fact that she was a girl. The kitchen had seemed different in the dark with only the faint light from Bassam’s torch to light the way. Bassam headed straight for the larder and gestured to her to wait for him, but instead she opened the refrigerator door and looked for something she could take with her. She finally decided on a large chunk of yellow cheese that she knew was Bassam’s favourite. Then she felt her brother’s grip on her arm pulling her roughly away from the refrigerator. Are you crazy? he had asked. They’ll see the light and catch us. There’s still so much you don’t know!
Aneesa walks out of the kitchen and back through the front door. Then she goes looking for Waddad and the others. It is time to lock up and return to Beirut.
Aneesa leans forward and nuzzles her cheek against Samir’s. It is late and they are sitting up in bed talking. She pulls away and looks at him.
‘We could fix the mountain house up and spend the summers there,’ she says with a smile. ‘You probably don’t remember how hot Beirut gets in the summer.’
‘I remember,’ he says. ‘I also remember that the beaches here are great at that time of year.’
‘I prefer the mountains.’
‘Mmmm. Yes, you would. You’re a village girl at heart, aren’t you?’
They laugh out loud and Samir is delighted to see that Aneesa is blushing.
‘Besides,’ he continues, ‘when we go away, we won’t be able to come back here every summer.’
He slips down in the bed and pulls her down with him.
‘Samir,’ she says as he begins to kiss her. ‘Please don’t talk about leaving now.’ She holds his head in her hands. His face looks smaller and almost childlike this close up. ‘You are so different from the nervous man I met all that time ago.’
‘How?’
She frowns.
‘How am I different?’
She puts her hands down and snuggles further under the sheets.
‘You’re bolder and more subtle at the same time,’ she says. ‘It’s difficult to explain.’
He wraps his arms around her so that her head fits over his shoulder and he can feel her chin moving against him as she speaks.
‘I’m just happy that we’re together here for now.’ Her voice is a whisper.
When Aneesa tells Samir that she cannot go back with him, he is surprised at how easily he takes the refusal and wonders if he didn’t half expect it. He asks her why she will not come and she replies with a question of her own. Why don’t you stay here instead, Samir? We can make a home here together.
But he knows that he is not yet ready to live with the hardships of readjustment that would inevitably follow his remaining in Beirut, nor to face the challenges of this love she has brought into his tired life. I don’t think I am brave enough for all this yet, Aneesa, he tells her. But you will be soon, I know, is her reply.
Still, she has not said no to being with me, he thinks as he walks on the Corniche late one night. Now that she is settled here, leaving is no longer a choice. It’s clearly up to me now.
He looks up at the moon, a thin crescent, its light soft and almost translucent so that the sea ripples only faintly with its reflection, and sighs deeply. If he is honest with himself, he will admit that he has not really thought about the prospect of sharing a home with Aneesa and Waddad in London. What would it have been like? he wonders. Would we have eventually moulded ourselves into a unit of sorts? He shakes his head and walks on. His mother would have disapproved. Being on such intimate terms with relative strangers would have appalled her, he knows. But it seems to him now that Huda would have felt just as appalled at everything he has done since his father’s illness and passing. What amazes him is that he no longer cares.
Moving forward, Samir feels immeasurably lighter, as though he has wings to buoy him as he walks. It occurs to him that of all the women he has been involved with, Aneesa is the only one who continues to
puzzle him. Is that the case, Samir asks himself, or is it simply that I want so much to understand her? He stops in front of the Raouche Rock and stands at the railing. The Corniche is empty but the street lights are on and a faint din of popular Arabic music is coming from a restaurant a few metres away. He takes a deep breath of the salty air. When he turns his head to the right, he sees the block of flats that Aneesa and Waddad live in. With only a few lights shining through the windows, the building seems abandoned. But Samir cannot think of himself as a thwarted lover nor of Aneesa as cold and unfeeling. I want only to be with her, he says out loud before slowly turning to make his way back to the emptied flat.
Waddad gets back home much later than usual. Aneesa lets her in and leads her straight to the kitchen for dinner.
‘I’m not hungry, habibti,’ says Waddad.
‘Mother, you know you must eat. Just try a little for my sake.’
Waddad shakes her head and sits down heavily on one of the kitchen chairs. Then she places her head in her hands on the table.
‘Mama, what’s the matter? Are you all right?’ Aneesa puts a hand on her mother’s arm and shakes it gently.
Waddad looks up. She is crying.
‘Please tell me what has happened, mama. Please don’t frighten me like this.’
‘That woman wants to take him back with her.’ Waddad’s voice trembles as she speaks.
‘Who are you talking about, Mother? What do you mean?’
Waddad moves in her seat so that the chair scrapes loudly against the floor. Aneesa winces at the sound.
‘Ramzi’s mother has come to take him away from the orphanage,’ Waddad says. ‘What are we going to do, Aneesa? What are we going to do? God help us!’
Aneesa bends down and embraces her mother. Waddad’s shoulders have caved in so that she seems slighter than usual to the touch. Aneesa does know what to say in the way of comforting words.
‘Is Ramzi all right?’ she finally blurts out.
Waddad pushes her daughter gently away and looks up at her. Aneesa’s face has grown smoother and more open with time so that one can almost believe there is nothing hidden behind it. At this moment, it seems to Waddad as if a light is burning through Aneesa’s skin.
‘You love him too now, don’t you, Aneesa?’ she says to the younger woman. ‘You love Ramzi too.’
Samir does not want Aneesa to accompany him to the airport but he asks if he may come and spend his last evening with her and Waddad.
It is slightly cooler on the balcony where they decide to sit but the air is surprisingly dry and pleasant. Aneesa places a few dishes on the table, tabboule, hommos, mtabbal and mjaddara, as well as a basket filled with bread. She also brings out a large bottle of water and glasses. She is hoping that her mother will have the appetite to eat.
The traffic on the Corniche is noisy. Samir lifts himself off his chair and looks over the balcony railing. There are cars trying to make U-turns into oncoming traffic, others stop and start inches away from vehicles alongside them and still others beep their horns instead of using their signal lights. He shakes his head and smiles.
‘That’ – Samir points down to the street – ‘will never change.’
Aneesa scoops a spoonful of tabboule on to his plate and hands him some lettuce leaves to eat it with.
‘Thank you, habibti,’ says Samir. ‘Mmmm. This is delicious and tangy just as I like it.’
Aneesa nods and smiles.
‘Mama, you have some too,’ she says, serving Waddad. ‘I’ll go and get the cabbage leaves for your tabboule.’
Waddad watches Aneesa walk back indoors, then turns to Samir.
‘Why are you leaving?’ she asks him.
He swallows hard and takes a sip of water before replying.
‘I will miss you both very much,’ he says.
Waddad dips a piece of bread into the bowl of hommos but does not eat it.
‘There’s very little I can make my daughter do, Samir, but I know she would have stayed with you if you’d let her,’ she sighs. ‘That would have made me very happy.’
‘But I asked her to come back with me, for you both to come with me.’
Waddad looks closely at him and purses her lips.
‘That’s not the same thing, is it?’
Samir wonders if Waddad can see into him, not just read his mind but look right through the skin and flesh to the bones and organs, if she can measure his pulse with her eyes and with only a thought stop him in mid-breath. He shakes his head.
‘I’m hoping to come back one day soon, Waddad. That’s all I know right now.’
Aneesa comes out again with half a cabbage in one hand and a plate of olives in the other.
‘Did Aneesa tell you about Ramzi?’ Waddad asks Samir.
He nods.
‘Is there nothing that can be done?’ he asks. ‘I spoke to a lawyer,’ Aneesa says. ‘If his parents want the boy back, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.’
‘But he can come to visit?’
‘They have promised they’ll allow him to come here from time to time. We’ll also be able to go and visit him.’
‘But if we’d had the money,’ Waddad says, scooping tabboule into a cabbage leaf, ‘we could have paid them off and kept him with us.’
‘We don’t know that for sure, mama. Anyway, even if we could have done it, we wouldn’t have wanted to pay for Ramzi to stay.’
Waddad wants to say that she would have done anything to keep him, but she does not.
‘Will you still go up to the orphanage for your volunteer work?’ Samir asks Waddad.
‘I don’t know. I’m not too sure of anything right now.’
‘Of course you will, mama. They need you up there.’
There is anxiety in Aneesa’s voice. Waddad simply nods and goes back to eating. Ramzi would have enjoyed this meal and he would have insisted on going downstairs to ride his bike afterwards. The bicycle no longer stands propped up against the wall in the hallway. Waddad had insisted that he take it with him, along with all the other toys and clothes she had given him. He had stood at the door, his hands grabbing the handlebars and simply said thank you for everything. Then he had nodded and gone downstairs to the car where Aneesa was waiting to take him back to the orphanage. Waddad, not wanting to upset him with her crying, had remained upstairs and watched from the balcony as Ramzi and Aneesa carefully placed the bicycle in the boot. To her surprise, just before getting into the car, Ramzi looked up at her and waved. She waved back and sniffed loudly. Moments later he was gone.
‘I think I’ll go to bed now, habibti,’ Waddad says. ‘I’m feeling a bit tired.’
Samir stands up and they hug one another.
‘Thank you for everything,’ he says as they both step back.
Waddad nods and goes inside.
It is a good place to be, sitting so high up with the sea before them and the world too far away to disturb them. Aneesa thinks that of all the things she and Samir have done together here, this evening will be the one she will remember most, perhaps because it is so final, because there is only one way it can end. She reaches for Samir’s hand and they sit together, touching, until it is time for him to leave.
Ramzi is sitting in the back seat between his mother and another passenger. It is sunny but cold outside and the car heater, which the driver turned on some time ago, is blowing hot air on to Ramzi’s face. He looks out of the window. They have already crossed the border and are now on their way to his mother’s village with Ramzi’s suitcase and bicycle strapped to the roof of the taxi. Ramzi had asked the driver to put the bicycle in the boot before they set off but the man said it would not fit. Instead, he fetched a piece of rope that looked somewhat flimsy and tied it on top of the taxi.
‘Don’t worry,’ the driver had said. ‘It’ll be fine up there.’
But Ramzi is still not convinced because he hears the bicycle rattling from time to time as they move and, anyway, what if it begins to rain and it gets all we
t and rusty?
They have been on the road for many hours and Ramzi is tired. He turns to his mother.
‘How much longer will it be?’ he asks her.
‘Not too long now,’ she replies. ‘Sit still, Ramzi.’
‘But I’m thirsty.’
She reaches into the plastic bag at her feet and pulls out the bottle of water she filled at the last stop they made. Ramzi has a drink and tries to hand the bottle back to his mother.
‘Offer it to the lady next to you,’ she says. Then she takes the bottle from him and leans across to the woman passenger. ‘Please, have some.’
Ramzi looks out of the window again at the wide fields of violet-coloured earth and the occasional gorse bush on either side of the road. It’s very different here. There is no sea; nor are there any real mountains, only low, rocky hills that stand next to each other looking very much alike.
His mother and the passenger are having a conversation.
‘He’s my eldest,’ he hears his mother saying. She pats him on the head and pushes a lock of hair back off his face.
‘How old is he?’ the woman asks.
Ramzi looks away again. He begins to wonder what Aneesa is doing. It is Saturday and she had told him she might go over to the car park and tell his friends that he had had to go away for a while. They’ll probably just go on playing and forget all about me, he thinks, and feels himself getting frustrated.
‘He left me with four children to care for on my own,’ his mother tells the woman. ‘I had no choice but to send Ramzi away for a while and took the other children to my parents’ place until I got myself sorted out. Now we’ll all be together again.’
‘Tsk, tsk,’ the woman says.
Ramzi tries to reach for the plastic bag.
‘What do you want?’ his mother asks, pushing him back against his seat.
‘Can’t we stop for a bit now, mama, and have a look around?’
‘We’re just turning into the village where your grandparents live,’ his mother says. ‘Look!’ She points to the houses that appear on either side of the road. The terrain hasn’t changed, but the one- and two-storey buildings soften the landscape a bit. Some of the houses are made of concrete and look grey and ugly; others are older and made of stone. Ramzi hopes his grandparents’ house looks a little better than these so.
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