Nada Jarrar - Dreams of Water

In the back of my mind are thoughts of how we met, both of us in the throes of aloneness, almost content with its settled rhythms, yet feeling the desolation that inevitably comes with it. Is that how we became such fast friends ?

Did we not find, Salah, besides the solitude, a relief in each other’s company that usually comes with a much longer acquaintance? Our mountain people would say we were only two old souls recognizing one another after a long absence .

Waddad is in the kitchen stirring a pot of Arabic coffee over the stove. The smell is strong and pleasing. Aneesa watches as she lifts the dark, thick liquid with the spoon and lets it fall back into the pot. She bends over her mother and plants a kiss on her cheek.

‘Good morning, mama .’

‘Good morning, habibti . Sit down and I’ll pour the coffee.’

Waddad’s hair curls daintily around her long face and her eyebrows are faint lines above watery grey eyes. She is dressed in dark blue jeans and a white T-shirt and looks like a twelve-year-old boy, clean and sweet-smelling first thing in the morning. Aneesa can hardly believe that this is the middle-aged woman she left behind all those years ago.

The two women sip their coffee noisily and with enjoyment, the scent of cardamom seeds rising from the steaming cups.

‘I think I’ve found your brother,’ Waddad says moments later.

‘What?’

Waddad stands up and turns away to place her cup in the sink. She turns the tap on and reaches for the washing-up sponge.

‘What are you talking about, mama ?’ Aneesa jumps up from her seat. ‘Where is he? What’s going on?’

‘Things changed so much for me after you left,’ Waddad continues over the sound of the running water. ‘I had to manage the search on my own. It took a long time, but it’s finally happened.’

Aneesa walks up to Waddad, places her hands on the older woman’s shoulders and gently turns her round so they are facing one another. Soapsuds trickle down on the floor between them.

‘Mother, what do you mean? Where have you found him? Why haven’t you said anything about this to me before? For heaven’s sake, tell me what’s going on.’

Waddad smiles and continues as though she has not been interrupted.

‘He’s at the orphanage in the mountains. I’ve been going there on a regular basis for a few weeks now. We’ve become friends.’ She wriggles out of Aneesa’s grasp and turns to the washing up again. ‘His name is Ramzi and he is eight years old. He was born only a few days after your brother disappeared. It all fits in.’

Aneesa does not understand at first, then she realizes exactly what her mother is saying.

‘What have you done, mama ? What have you done?’

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 .