Dreams of Water

by Nada Awar Jarrar

  The door opens and the guard comes in again. It is the same man who was at the door when Bassam had arrived the day before.

  ‘You,’ the guard yells, pointing at Bassam. ‘Come here.’

  He grabs Bassam by his collar and pulls him through into the hallway, then he pushes him roughly into a room several doors down. Bassam lands on the floor. When he looks up he sees another militiaman standing above him.

  ‘Here’s our hero,’ the man says loudly and kicks Bassam in the stomach. ‘Have you come to save this country from evil? Is that what you have in mind?’

  The man walks away and then turns around again. Bassam waits for his own breath to return.

  ‘Pull him up,’ the man says to the guard.

  Once Bassam is standing, the man looks closely at him.

  ‘What do you think is going to happen to you?’ he asks.

  Bassam shakes his head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says quietly.

  ‘You are an enemy,’ the leader shouts into Bassam’s face. ‘There is no place for you or your friends in this country.’

  ‘This is my country,’ Bassam says before he can stop himself.

  The man slaps him. Bassam falls to the floor once again.

  ‘Put him back with the others,’ he hears the militiaman telling the guard. ‘I’ll deal with him later.’

  Later that night, after he has eaten a labne sandwich that one of the other detainees gave him, Bassam sits down on the cushion with his back against the wall and tries to look into a distance that isn’t there. He thinks again of his mother and of Aneesa, and of Leila too whom he has not yet had a chance to love. He feels his heart clench inside him and the blood rush to his neck and up into his face.

  Bassam begins to understand that the prospects of his getting away from here are not very good and wonders if he shouldn’t just resign himself to his fate. After all, many thousands before him have died in the fighting and countless others are sure to follow before it is all over. He tries to imagine what Lebanon will be like after the war but finds it difficult. Will they forget what happened and simply get on with life, he wonders, or will the memory of it remain in the thoughts and minds of those who suffered most? If I die, he thinks to himself, Waddad will never forgive me and Aneesa will hold the injustice of it close to her heart, but will the reality of all this, the horror of it, remain with them?

  Someone coughs. Bassam tries to focus his eyes in the now dark room and is comforted by the sound of the breathing of his fellow inmates.

  He believes there is something so fantastic about war, about the fervent violence it engenders, that makes it almost unbelievable even when one is thrown in the midst of it. It is not fear, he says silently to himself, that makes me think I will somehow wake up and find my life is as it once was, tranquil and moving towards a gentle end; nor is it an attempt to deny what is happening to me. Rather, Bassam thinks as he slides down to rest his head on the cushion, it is the certainty that this war is as fragile and impermanent as the people who make it and will never be a part of truth that he has always known.

  The next morning, the militiaman who interrogated Bassam the day before walks into the room and motions to him to follow.

  ‘Go get his car,’ the man tells the guard once they are outside. ‘Have one of the men follow us in the jeep. This guy is going for a ride.’

  Bassam is sitting in the back seat of his own car with a gunman on either side of him. His hands have been tied in front of him but he is glad that they have not blindfolded him as well. It is mid-morning and the sky is cloudy and grey but there is no rain. He smells the stench of exhaust fumes through one of the car windows. Perhaps if he had left the keys behind in his bedroom they would not have taken this car away and Aneesa could have used it. His head is aching a little. The driver is going fast and Bassam is thrown roughly against the men beside him. He thinks of reaching over to open the door and jumping out but decides he would not get away with it. There must be some way of escaping, he thinks, maybe once the car comes to a stop. We’re bound to encounter some traffic.

  ‘How much longer?’ the militiaman sitting next to Bassam asks.

  The gunman sitting in the front snorts loudly.

  ‘We’ll get there soon enough,’ he says.

  Bassam looks out of the window once again. The people walking around in these streets, he thinks, are just as much prisoners of this war as I am.

  He wishes he had some way of telling Waddad and Aneesa that he is all right, that one day soon he will come back to see them.

  Part Three

  Aneesa has found a small flat in a quiet neighbourhood in the northwest part of the London. There is one bedroom, a shower room and a kitchen that opens out on to a rectangular living space with a large window overlooking the street. She has a bed and an armchair and a sofa in the way of furniture and enough crockery and silverware for her limited needs. Her translation work is done at a small table that she has placed between the kitchen and the living room and which she also uses to have her meals.

  The novelty of having her own place, however small, does not wear off, even months after moving into the flat. On the telephone to her mother, Aneesa tries to tone down the excitement in her voice because she does not want Waddad to think that she is happier far away than she had been at home. But there are times when she questions if she was not always meant to live like this, so alone that the edges of her self are bristling and sharp in her encounters with others and at night when she tucks herself into bed and lies breathing in the dark. And then there is the crushing absence of sunlight. It is almost as if this new world, grey and faltering, invites ambiguity, calls her to a place where she has no identity and where nothing is clearly defined.

  The company she freelances for is a half-hour bus ride from home. On the days she is required to go to the office, she takes a secret delight in waking early, in dressing carefully and going out into the morning like so many other commuters, standing silently at the bus stop and stamping her feet in the cold. Whenever it rains, she carries a large umbrella that she brought with her from Beirut and which she soon realizes was meant to keep out the sun rather than rainfall. She grows adept at shaking the umbrella out before stepping on to the bus or going indoors, tucking it expertly under her arm afterwards and remembering to take it with her when she leaves. She wonders how long it will be before she feels completely a part of this place, before it becomes where she comes from and everything she knows rather than somewhere she has merely been.

  On one of her visits to the office, Aneesa meets Isabel, also a translator. She is red-haired and tall and the kind of person who fills up a room as soon as she walks into it. Isabel greets everyone and looks straight at Aneesa who is sitting at a desk making some final changes to a document she has been working on.

  ‘You’re the new Arabic translator, aren’t you?’ she asks. Aneesa nods and smiles.

  ‘Hi, I’m Isabel. I do French and German.’

  Aneesa stands up and puts out her hand.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Isabel asks.

  ‘Aneesa.’

  The two women shake hands.

  After work, they go out for a meal at a café in a nearby department store. They choose sandwiches and drinks from the food counter and sit at a table by the window that looks out on to the street. Aneesa still feels shy but has begun to warm towards this vibrant woman.

  ‘I suppose you come into the office for a bit of company just like I do?’ Isabel asks between mouthfuls.

  Aneesa is startled at the question.

  ‘Don’t look so shocked,’ Isabel laughs. ‘I know how difficult it is to be a single woman in this city because I’ve been one for years. It’s the ambivalence that gets to me, though. I like being on my own but there are moments when I want to be completely surrounded by people.’

  Aneesa feels comforted at having her own feelings expressed so clearly but says nothing.

  ‘Do you have family here?’

  ‘J
ust a relative of my mother’s who helped me come here and find work,’ Aneesa says. ‘I haven’t been here very long. My mother lives in Beirut.’

  ‘Terrible war over there. It’s a good thing you got out in one piece.’

  Aneesa looks down at her own food, picks up a crisp and pops it into her mouth. She crunches it slowly, savouring the saltiness and the sharp sting of vinegar. She looks at Isabel as she eats, notices the freckles on the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks, her hazel eyes and her small, pink ears that are almost hidden beneath the mane of long hair.

  ‘Where are you from?’ Aneesa asks.

  ‘I was born here but my mother is French and I went to a German school, hence the languages. I studied translation at university and here I am. It’s good money and I like working from home and keeping my own hours. What’s your third language, by the way?’

  ‘French, like most Lebanese. We all have to learn it, along with English, at school. My father was an English Literature professor at the Lebanese University. That’s where I got my degree in translation. I worked for a number of years back home before coming here.’

  She realizes she has not talked so much about herself since she first came here, and the discovery makes her heart race a little.

  ‘So you must be in your early thirties, like me?’ Isabel asks without waiting for a reply. ‘That’s good.’

  It is a pleasant chat, filled with the kind of innocuous, friendly conversation that Aneesa has not really had in a long time. She is heartened at the thought that this young woman does not see her as being in any way different from herself and hopes they will see each other again.

  When they’re finished eating, Isabel asks Aneesa for her telephone number.

  ‘I’m having some friends over for drinks at the weekend and I’d like you to come. I’ll call you and let you know where it is.’

  Aneesa has taken to talking to herself. On a crowded bus returning home, a carrier bag in one hand and her handbag in another, she stands precariously between seats and repeats to herself what she must do next, so quietly that she is certain no one can hear her. Up the steps to the flat and then sort out the groceries; remember the fish is for tonight and the yoghurt for breakfast tomorrow; the bus is coming to a stop, hold on to something now or you’ll keel over. Sometimes she whispers a secret resolve as she walks down the street or while sitting in a café at the weekend: I will not despair, I will be strong. But there are days when no matter how hard she tries to feign the vague lack of concern she has noticed in people here, there is no escaping thoughts of home. She telephones her mother and tries to detect a plea for her to return but there is none.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, mama?’ Aneesa asks. ‘I feel so terrible about being far away when you need me most.’

  ‘Habibti, I love you more than you’ll ever know but I can manage very well on my own,’ Waddad replies in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘All you’re feeling is guilt, Aneesa. It’s time you grew out of that. You have a right to a life of your own.’

  It is new, this learning how to separate herself from people and circumstances that are no longer there. How do I become whole, Aneesa asks herself? How does it feel on the inside, this single pursuit, this self-delineated path?

  She watches Isabel who seems to float effortlessly in a cloud of activity and purpose. They meet often now, together or along with an ever-changing group of men and women whom Isabel describes as her friends. Aneesa joins them when they go out to trendy restaurants and bars, eat, drink and talk about themselves, what they are doing now and what they hope to do in the future. Her new friends are from everywhere and nowhere in particular, rudderless, as if they had been planted here by an invisible hand and might easily vanish without warning or consequence. For Aneesa, they are the ideal companions, asking nothing of her other than that she be entertaining and equally as preoccupied as they are. And for a while, this is what makes her happy.

  When she finally reached adolescence, Aneesa’s world had begun to appear narrower, not because others in it had suddenly grown larger but because she herself, the essential parts of her that were exclusively her own and which could not be mistaken for anyone else, had become more intense, more persistent. The almost palpable reality of this change had taken her by surprise and made her feel awkward around the people she had once been so comfortable with, her family and friends and all those who ventured in and out of an existence that seemed entirely of her own making.

  Now as she attempts to adjust to a new life, Aneesa recognizes similarities to those earlier years. But this time there is gratification associated with her separateness, a sense that she has finally gained control over her destiny and that it is her will alone that can direct it.

  ‘You’ve never had a boyfriend, have you?’ Isabel asks Aneesa one day. They are sitting on the sofa in Aneesa’s living room drinking tea and flipping through fashion magazines.

  ‘No.’ Aneesa is long past trying to evade Isabel’s questions. ‘I mean there were those boys at school but nothing serious.’

  ‘But what about at university and afterwards at work? How did you manage to avoid it?’

  Aneesa has not told Isabel about losing a brother.

  ‘My father died and I had to take care of my mother. I just didn’t have time.’

  ‘Mind you, they’re pretty conservative where you come from, aren’t they? Don’t approve of pre-marital sex, I suppose.’

  Aneesa does not reply.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Isabel softly. ‘I don’t mean to be insensitive but don’t you think it’s time you found someone you can become close to? It doesn’t have to be a permanent thing, you know. I just think you’re missing out, that’s all.’

  Sometime later, Isabel tells Aneesa there is someone she wants her to meet, and repeats this several times over the next few weeks.

  ‘Who is he?’ Aneesa finally asks.

  ‘Just someone I’ve known for a long time,’ Isabel replies with a smile. ‘I have a feeling you’ll get along.’

  When Aneesa first meets Robert she does not expect to like him. He is tall and fair and smiles at her with the confidence of one who expects to be admired. As the evening progresses, however, she finds herself talking to him with ease, like someone long familiar.

  ‘I’ve been to Lebanon you know,’ he says. ‘I was part of a film crew shooting a documentary on the war. I made several visits and must have spent a couple of months there altogether.’

  ‘Is that what you do, then?’ she asks. ‘Make films?’

  ‘I work mostly as a producer now. I started out as a cameraman, though.’

  He does not pursue the subject of Lebanon, nor does he ask her why she left or whom she has left behind, and she realises that that unquestioning acceptance is exactly what she wants from him.

  When Robert reaches for her later that night, cupping her face in both his hands and bending down to kiss her, she watches his eyes darken as he gets closer, sees the longing in them and is surprised to feel it too.

  This is not love, Aneesa reminds herself, just something like it, something real yet containable, a quiet interlude that pleases her and leaves her wanting more. Robert is lovely and fun and sometimes with her but more often away for work. The arrangement suits her perfectly. She feels settled in it, balanced and predictable in the way that the elements can be during any given year. She cherishes her solitude and only longs for him once he returns.

  She does not tell her mother about Robert. Waddad seems immersed in concerns of her own, seeming further away than the distance that separates them. Their telephone conversations are most often short and stilted. And whenever Aneesa suggests returning at least for a visit, her mother tells her to wait a little longer, until things have settled a bit and the situation has improved.

  ‘Mama, I hope you’re being careful.’ Aneesa feels suddenly anxious and remembers the heavy pall of the war. ‘Please tell me you’re not taking any unnecessary chances during the fighting.’

&
nbsp; ‘Honestly,’ Waddad replies, ‘you’re becoming like all the rest of the Lebanese living overseas. You know very well we just have to get on with things. I’m fine and yes, I am being careful.’

  Aneesa wishes she could confide in her mother, tell her about her lover and the quietness that now envelops her life but cannot bring herself to do so. She does not try to work out why she should feel this way and decides simply to trust her instincts about it.

  In time, Aneesa finds herself telling Robert about her father and about Bassam and the desperation she had felt after his abduction. He listens and holds her and does not offer any words of comfort or question her further. She likes this about him, his ability to absorb what she says without pity or surprise and the way he can later behave as though nothing between them has changed. When she looks at Robert during unguarded moments, as he sleeps or while he is busy concentrating on a difficult task, she cannot help but question how Bassam would have felt about him. She remembers the journalist her brother introduced her to in Beirut long ago and wonders if Bassam would have felt the same about the man who is now so close to his sister. Sometimes, she likes to imagine them together, Robert and Bassam sitting down on the sofa in her living room, watching her as she moves above the kitchen and smiling at her with equal measures of amusement and affection.

  Almost a year after they first meet, Robert turns up unexpectedly at Aneesa’s flat from one of his trips overseas. He pulls her into his arms before stepping inside.

  ‘Things must have gone well on this trip,’ Aneesa says, hugging him back and realizing how much she has been looking forward to his return. ‘Come on in, Robert. I’ve missed you.’

  His face is flushed and he looks excited.

  ‘Will you have something to eat?’ Aneesa asks. ‘I was just about to prepare some dinner.’ She goes into the kitchen and begins to take some vegetables out of the refrigerator.

  ‘I’m not hungry, Aneesa,’ Robert calls out to her. ‘I need to talk to you. Come and sit down.’