‘Mmmm.’
The two sit happily sipping their coffee and watching the children in the playground. Some of them are playing in the sand pit, others are on the swings and on the climbing frame. They move from one to the other with seamless purpose, the transition from one activity to another, from one feeling to another, effortless and true. Aneesa leans forward on the bench beside Salah, resting her elbows on her knees. She has to lift her head up to see the playground and then bend it forward again to drink her coffee. He loves this naturalness about her and the ease she feels in his presence. When she sits up again, Salah takes the empty cup from her and places it along with his own in the plastic bag with the thermos. They both stand up, Aneesa stamping her feet on the ground and Salah looking back at the bench to make sure they have not left anything behind, and in that moment it comes to him. I am in love with all this, he thinks to himself with astonishment.
‘They are lovely, aren’t they?’ Aneesa says, pointing to the playground.
Salah looks at her and nods.
He is beginning to feel the cold, a chill that goes through his clothes and penetrates his skin until it reaches his bones. You’ll have to get used to this kind of weather, baba, Samir says to him as he opens windows upstairs and downstairs early every morning so that the house feels more like outside than in.
But Salah shuts all the windows again as soon as his son leaves for work, turning on the central heating and putting the kettle on for a warming cup of sugary tea. It’s unnatural, he mutters to himself, to laugh at the elements like this.
He remembers Huda bundling Samir up in the winter. I don’t want him to catch cold, she would say, zipping up the child’s jacket, wrapping a scarf around his neck and pulling a woollen hat over his head. He had marvelled at how still Samir could be when his mother was fussing over him.
Let’s go, son. Let’s go and find the snow in the mountains, Salah would say as he led his son out of the front door. Then there was Samir, up on a hill, standing next to a snowman whose uneven head tilts dangerously to one side, his coat and scarf on the snow beside him, his cheeks red and his hair plastered to his small head, a sight to see.
Huda’s body is blistering with pain and Salah is no longer certain he has the strength to cope with it. The doctors at the hospital tell him to take her home, to find a nurse who will administer the necessary medications and wait for the end to come. When he telephones Samir he tells him not to come for a week or two.
‘She would not want you to see her like this, habibi. Wait until she has settled down a bit and she is able to talk to you.’
But the day when Huda settles into her misery does not come. She passes away in the night, with Salah at her side and a promise that Samir will never know how bad things had been for her at the end.
Not long after the funeral, on a quiet afternoon when Huda’s absence makes it impossible for him to stay in the flat, Salah dresses carefully and goes down the stairs to the art gallery on the floor below. He had read a notice in the lift only the day before of a new exhibition and he decides he might as well go and see it.
The paintings are mostly modern, splashes of colour on huge canvases that make him think of loud, discordant music. He wanders around the rooms of the gallery during the opening, a drink in hand, and looks tentatively at the artwork, straining to hear the conversations around him.
As he stands leafing through the brochure he was handed at the door, Salah looks up to find the gallery owner beside him.
‘What do you think?’ she asks.
Salah feels suddenly nervous.
‘Very nice. I was just reading up on the artist.’
The woman puts a hand on his arm and leans closer towards him.
‘You’re our neighbour from upstairs, aren’t you?’ She smiles at him. ‘I imagine this sort of thing isn’t much to your taste.’
He shakes his head.
‘Why don’t you come with me into the office? I have a painting I want to show you that I’m certain you’d like.’
Once inside, the woman lifts a painting from a stack leaning against the wall on to a large desk.
‘It’s by a Greek artist. I had wanted to keep it for myself.’
Salah looks closely at the seeming chaos of colours until they make sense to him.
‘It’s an angel, isn’t it?’
He touches it through the glass with the tips of his fingers. When he finally lifts his head, he sees the gallery owner smiling at him and suddenly realizes where he is now and where his thoughts have been.
When Samir comes to Beirut following Huda’s death, he suggests that his father return with him to London. But Salah is unprepared. He will have to speak more openly to his son, he knows. As it is, they meet each morning as if for the first time, inching their way through reluctant conversations, only warming up to each other in their thoughts and after they have parted.
Salah begins by bringing Huda up at odd moments or by suddenly mentioning her after long periods of silence between them.
‘Do you remember when she used to bring you to my office after school?’ he would say and then wait for Samir to nod in agreement. ‘Everyone admired her there, you know.’
One day, he grabs on to his son’s arm as they walk and bends his head low to his ear.
‘She never asked me for money, you know that?’ Salah begins. ‘I used to urge her to reach into my pocket and take out whatever she wanted but she always refused.’ He realizes there is a note of despair in his voice. ‘I gave her enough for household expenses and some extra to spend on herself but she used to save whatever was left over. For Samir, she told me later when I found out about it. For his future.’
They walk a few moments longer in silence.
‘Did you know, son?’ Salah finally asks. ‘Did you realize then just how much your mother loved you?’
When Samir arrives to take him away, Salah is unprepared. He tries to dissuade Samir of the notion of departure, even suggests that his son should return to Beirut to live but Samir is adamant. Salah recognizes the same underlying scorn for the country that Huda used to feel and is saddened for his son’s sake that there should be no place for which he harbours unquestioning love.
Before they leave, Salah slowly goes through the flat, trying to decide what he will take with him. He packs a suitcase of his own clothes and begins to fill another but Samir tells him to leave many things behind as they will buy new things once they get to London. Just take the bare necessities, baba, he tells him, and we’ll get the rest over there. It’s much better quality anyway. Then Salah wonders if he should take something of Huda’s as a keep-sake to remember her by, but eventually decides against it since she is always in his thoughts anyway. Samir tells him they cannot take any furniture with them – We are not leaving the flat for ever, baba, we’ll be back again – so Salah tears up some old bed sheets and places them on the sofas and chairs against the inevitable dust of time.
Just as he is about to end his search, Salah comes upon the painting. It is not the only one in the flat nor is it the most valuable but he does not question his desire to take it along. He looks at the bold strokes of colour, seemingly random but together forming one certain image. The gallery owner had told him that different people saw different things in it but Salah cannot understand how. He shows it to Samir and waits for his son to comment. Very nice, Samir says. We’ll wrap it up carefully and take it with us if you like. But what do you see in it, Salah insists, pointing to the angel, to the tip of its wings and the glow of colour above its head. Samir shakes his head and smiles. It’s an angel, of course. Is that what you’ve come to at your age, baba? Is it angels that you believe in now?
Samir and his father drive to Aneesa’s block of flats to pick her up for dinner.
‘I could have met you there,’ Aneesa protests as she gets into the car.
Salah notices that her smile is a little nervous. She has on a long black dress with a wine-coloured shawl wrapped around her shoulders.
She is also wearing a pair of drop earrings and has put on some make-up.
When they arrive at the restaurant, Salah pulls out a chair for Aneesa before he sits down.
‘Thank you,’ she says, looking at him, and in that instant, in the turn of her face, her soft cheek as it dips forward in gratitude and the unexpected colour in her lips, he realizes he has just had a glimpse of the woman in her.
Salah is wearing a suit for the occasion and had advised Samir to do the same, though unlike Samir he does not take his jacket off but chooses, instead, to keep it on, lifting his arms slightly to pull back the sleeves just before he picks up his knife and fork.
‘My father tells me you’re a translator.’ Samir looks at Aneesa as he speaks.
‘Yes, I translate documents for government departments.’
Salah watches Aneesa pick at her food, her shawl slipping off her shoulders and falling into the bend of her elbows.
‘Do you enjoy your work?’ Samir continues.
When Aneesa says nothing, he pushes his tie up against his neck and grunts.
‘Shall we have more wine?’ Samir asks before gesturing to the waiter to come to their table.
Salah looks at Aneesa. Her lipstick has faded on to the outer edges of her lips and she has one hand held up to her face. He reaches out and touches her arm.
‘You look beautiful tonight, my dear,’ Salah says softly. ‘Did I neglect to tell you that?’
Salah and Samir go for a drive in the country one Saturday, to a village where the houses are small and quaint and greenery is everywhere. The day is somewhat cloudy and threatens rain but they have time before the storm to take a walk up into the hills that overlook the village and contemplate the beauty of a patchwork of open fields.
Standing there, Salah realizes how vast the world is and how circumspect his own life has been. He thinks that if he were young again he would do a few things differently; he would travel, perhaps, or simply let himself be. He no longer understands why it was always so important to have a purpose that drove him and wishes he had occasionally succumbed to his innate sense of adventure and drawn his wife and child into it also. Perhaps if I had loved Huda more, he ponders. Perhaps then things would have turned out differently.
He lets out a long sigh and feels Samir come up behind him. His son puts an arm around his shoulders and Salah turns to look at him They gaze at each other for a long moment before making their way back down the hill to the village pub where they will have their lunch. As they descend, Samir walking ahead and turning every few moments to guide his father, Salah senses that a measure of closeness has been restored between them.
The airport café is crowded. Salah and Aneesa push their chairs closer to their table to let a couple with a trolley loaded with luggage go past. The coffee in their cups pitches forward and spills on to the saucers. Salah steadies the table and pushes the napkin holder towards Aneesa.
‘Here we go,’ Aneesa says as she places a napkin under each of their cups.
‘Did you get anything on your clothes?’
She looks down at her shirt and trousers and shakes her head.
‘No.’
‘You want to arrive looking your best.’
Aneesa laughs nervously.
‘I shall miss you,’ she says.
Salah puts one hand, palm down, on the table and taps it with the other.
‘And I shall miss seeing you do that,’ Aneesa says. ‘You always cup one hand and pat the other with it when you’ve got something on your mind.’
Salah looks down at the table before speaking.
‘I never realized.’
Aneesa’s smile falters.
‘I know.’
For a moment, they are enveloped by the noise around them: overhead announcements; the sound of luggage being wheeled back and forth across the terminal floor; people’s voices and nondescript music interlaced in the background. Salah closes his eyes and feels the artificial light penetrate through his thin lids. When he opens them again, Aneesa is looking at him.
‘They did a good job packaging the painting,’ he says. ‘It’ll be fine in the luggage compartment.’
Aneesa nods. She is grasping her handbag close to her body.
Salah holds a hand to his mouth and coughs.
‘I think I’d better go in now,’ Aneesa says.
They stand up slowly. Salah notices that there are two people, cups in hand, waiting to sit at their table. He leads Aneesa out of the café and stands with her at the entrance to the departure lounge. He places his hand on her arm.
‘I shall miss you, my dear,’ he says. ‘It will not be the same without you here.’
Aneesa begins to cry.
‘I’ll see you again soon,’ she says, sniffing loudly. ‘You’ll come back to Beirut, I know.’
He bends down, puts his arms around her and kisses her on the cheek and then leads her gently towards the queue going into the departure lounge.
‘Hurry up now, Aneesa,’ Salah says and then watches her turn and walk away.
Salah hates the shuffling most of all, the sound of his slippered feet as he moves across the marble floors in the kitchen, up the stairs and along the magnificent Persian carpet that covers his bedroom floor. At night, when he cannot sleep, preferring instead to stand listening to his loneliness as it whispers through the kitchen window – the light from the refrigerator left open faint and strangely comforting – he thinks on the life and times he once had. Of Samir as a young boy shimmying up a pine tree, monkey-like, his denims scraping against the scales of the narrow trunk, making them break off and fly upwards, his small feet crossed and meeting in front in one great hug. Of Huda, during those final days when her eyes began to fail, laying her two hands on his face, tracing his features with tremulous fingers and stirring in him thoughts of dizzying, youthful desires before her joy suddenly turned into rasping coughs and he, despite the nearly overwhelming sorrow that enveloped him, feeling an inexplicable disappointment. Of Aneesa, holding his hand as they stand at a bus stop, her unkempt hair flying in the wind and his heart stopping at the sight.
Some days, when Samir comes home from work and finds him sitting on a stool by the island in the centre of the kitchen, stirring a cup of steaming tea, the sugar bowl beside him, his pyjama top askew and his thin ankles visible above the leather slippers Huda had bought him years ago, Salah hears his son sigh with frustration as he turns on the light and reaches out to him, whispering words of comfort, shaking his head and leading him upstairs, and Salah wanting all the time to tell him, If only you knew, my son. If only you knew.
Part Five
Samir is sitting on the enclosed balcony of the flat where he grew up. The windows are open wide and the breeze makes the dust on all the surfaces – wicker chairs, glass table and tiled floor – whirl around in the fading sunlight. The sound of traffic from the street below drifts up and turns into a comforting hum.
This is the first time I have ever been entirely on my own here, he thinks to himself. What do I do now?
He shifts in his seat. The smells of Beirut never change: pungent like the Mediterranean, slightly damp and dusty. They are as familiar to him as the scent of his own skin.
He gets up slowly and walks to the edge of the balcony to look out at the sea. It is the beginning of autumn but the water is still a deep blue and the sun, as it sets, shimmers a rich, warm red. A handful of people are walking on the Corniche across the road but everything – the sounds and the sights of home – appears muffled to him. He feels the impulse to lift up his arms in triumph, but they remain pinned to his side.
When Salah died, Samir had felt exactly like this, dejected and unable to understand how anything so mysterious could have happened to him. Only yesterday, it seemed, his father had been lying in his bed, Samir smoothing back his hair and whispering comforting words to him.
He walks back inside the flat and begins to turn lights on but the rooms remain dark, their dim corners now engulfed in the shad
ows created by the light. He carries his suitcases into his parents’ bedroom, pulls back the curtains and opens the windows but does not look out.
I will just have to spend my first night smothered in despair, Samir says out loud. He lies down on the bed and closes his eyes.
Ever since Salah’s stroke, Samir has approached the task of taking care of his father methodically, running through every step in his mind before beginning, and then carrying everything out gently, though without hesitation.
Salah is no longer the same man. The right side of his face droops so that an involuntary tear often drips through his half-open eye and down his cheek, going unnoticed until Samir, tissue at the ready, leans towards him to wipe it off. He can no longer walk unaided and his speech, once precise and beautifully delivered, has become slurred, words running into each other, sputtering through the side of his mouth, hopeless and unintelligible. His right hand remains curled inwards into an uneven ball that has to be prised open, the long, tapered fingers unfurling with difficulty like trembling petals then falling in upon themselves as soon as Salah lets his guard down.
Samir pours shampoo over his father’s head.
‘Close your eyes,’ he says loudly, over the sound of the water.
Salah’s hair is still thick and mats easily. Samir rubs his scalp gently in a circular motion until he has created a generous lather.
‘OK, baba, I’m going to rinse now. Keep your eyes shut … Is the water all right, baba?’ Samir continues. ‘Not too hot?’
Salah shakes his head, his eyes still tightly shut, his face screwed up as if with distaste. After turning the shower off, Samir hands his father a towel and goes back into the bedroom to fetch clean underwear and a fresh pair of pyjamas. He returns to the bathroom, helps Salah out of the shower cubicle and on to the walker where he dries him thoroughly and rubs moisturizing cream over his body before helping him to dress.
Dreams of Water Page 10
