Hannah wonders if Maysoun isn’t just running away and will later regret her decision to go to the other side of the world in search of happiness.
—Are you pleased to be leaving, habibti? she dares to ask. Is it what you really want?
Maysoun pauses for a moment before replying.
—I know what I don’t want, she says. I don’t want to be alone and I don’t want to be working in a job and in a part of the world where despair is always the order of the day. Does that sound terribly selfish to you?
—No, of course it doesn’t. You deserve to be happy, Maysoun.
Hannah reaches out and gives her friend another hug.
—I don’t think I’ve thanked you enough for what you did for Fatima and her son. We were thrilled to hear that they’re settling in well at the camp in Turkey.
Maysoun smiles.
—Yes, I was very glad about that too, but what about the baby?
—You mean Hayat? She’s over there.
Hannah points to the pram that Rana is now pushing towards the Ladies with Brigitte following closely behind.
—It’s wonderful, isn’t it? Sometimes things do come full circle, despite the odds. Brigitte had decided to name the baby Hayat, meaning life, and they had all agreed that it was both beautiful and appropriate.
Maysoun plants a kiss on Hannah’s cheek.
—Let’s spend as much time as we can together before I leave for New Zealand. Maysoun turns and walks away as if floating on a cloud.
If we each take different paths in our lives, Hannah wonders, then how true can my interpretation of someone else’s journey be? Maysoun will leave and I will miss her at first, will try and recall how her story once touched my own until eventually even that memory of memories past will fade.
She looks around for Peter and finds him by the statuette she had been looking at with Marwan earlier.
—You like this one too, she says, slipping her hand into his.
He turns around and smiles.
—Something about it is very appealing, isn’t it? It reminds me so much of Anas.
She leans her head against his shoulder.
—You know, Hannah says wistfully, there was something I always wanted to ask him but I never got the chance.
—Hmmm?
—I wanted to ask how exactly he knew when whatever he was working on was finished? How do you know when it is time to stop painting or sculpting or writing or composing something?
—When it’s complete, you mean?
She nods.
—Well, Peter continues, Anas and I talked about something like that once. He told me he always felt he had to attempt not just to create perfection as a final goal but to continue to recreate it again and again as he worked, with every brushstroke of paint, every groove in clay. Maybe what he was trying to say is that there is neither beginning nor end to any kind of endeavour. That it’s the creative process that is its own reward.
Hannah looks at him, marvels at how familiar his face has become to her, and how great is the comfort, how tender the emotion, at times like these of mutual recognition. How had she ever doubted his love for her or hers for him?
—We’re both tired, Peter says with a smile. All this talk about life and art is a bit much, isn’t it?
She laughs.
—Shall we go? he asks.
When we get to the exit, I turn around to take one last look, note the light and sound, the movement and moments of stillness in between. I see in this scene the completeness that Anas had sought in his work and life, the beauty that is displayed here and the people who seek and are moved by it. Most of all, I understand that there is a purpose to all this, that Anas’s death has in part been vindicated, and that suffering does not endure as long as the will is there to let it go.
—Peter?
He looks at her but she’s not sure what it is she wants to say so she reaches out and places a hand on his arm instead.
—How about we pay a visit to your father before we go home? he asks. It would be nice to be with him right now, don’t you think?
—Yes, habibi. Yes, it would.
Once in the car, and despite the rain, Hannah opens her window just a little and breathes in the humid air. Peter has taken the coastal road, driving first through the downtown area, rebuilt since the war but still lacking the soul and vibrancy of the old Beirut, and then onto the Corniche where the blue-black sea menaces, waves rising high over a barrier of rocks on the shoreline before splashing onto the road and the vehicles moving cautiously across it.
She remembers her conversation with Anas as they walked here weeks ago, her assertion that she could only ever be really happy living by this sea and his argument, in turn, that Peter might have sacrificed a great deal because of that.
For a moment, she begins to ask herself if she would have been prepared to do the same for Peter, leave family and home behind just to be with him, then recalls the many times he has insisted that his wish was only that they be together, wherever that might be.
She looks out at her Beirut once again, at night and oblivion advancing and feels, inexplicably, a quiet gratitude. And when Peter, as if recognizing a need in her, reaches out to touch her lightly on the shoulder, she turns to him, his profile indistinct now, imbued with the darkness that surrounds them, takes his hand and lifts it to her cheek.
About the Author
Nada Awar Jarrar was born in Lebanon to an Australian mother and a Lebanese father. She has lived in London, Paris, Sydney and Washington DC and is currently based in Beirut where she lives with her husband and daughter. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, The Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and Lebanon’s English-language newspaper, The Daily Star. Her first novel, Somewhere, Home won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, Best First Book for Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
Also by Nada Awar Jarrar
Somewhere, Home
Dreams of Water
A Good Land
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