Dreams of Water (10 page)

‘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.'

‘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.'

She joins him on the sofa and feels the warmth from his body enveloping her.

‘What is it that's so urgent, Robert?' She smiles at him and shakes her head.

‘You know that job I told you about before I left?' Robert begins. ‘The one in New York that I had been hoping to get?'

Aneesa nods.

‘Well, I've been offered it and they want me to go there right away. There was a message on my answerphone when I got back.'

‘That's wonderful news,
habibi
,' Aneesa says, giving him a hug. ‘I'm so happy for you.' She feels a twinge of anxiety before she asks him when he is due to leave.

‘There's a lot to organize over here first. I have to sort out my flat and we'll have to find work over there for you as well. And I'm sure we'll have no problem renting this flat before you follow me out there.'

‘This flat?'

‘Well, you won't want to keep it while you're away. We could be in America for some time.'

Aneesa stands up and looks down at him.

‘Robert, what are you talking about?'

He reaches for her hand and grasps it.

‘As soon as I heard about the job, I realized that there was no way I could leave without you,' he says after a pause. ‘I love you, Aneesa.'

In all the time that they have been seeing each other, they have not really spoken of a future together and although Aneesa has sometimes wondered how long the relationship will endure, she has never felt the need to approach the subject with Robert.

‘You've never said that before,' she says quietly.

‘I thought you knew.' Robert stands up and reaches for her hand. ‘It's taken me a long time to realize it, I know, but I'm very certain of how I feel.'

When she does not respond, he wraps his arms around her and whispers into her ear.

‘We can get married before we leave, if that's what you want.'

For a moment, Aneesa does not know what to say.

‘I didn't say anything about wanting to get married.' She pulls away from him and sits down again.

‘We can go to Beirut first. It's time I met your mother anyway.'

Aneesa is surprised at how resentful she suddenly feels.

‘My mother doesn't know about you, Robert,' she blurts out.

For the first time since she's known him, a look of pain crosses his face.

‘You haven't told her about me?'

She shakes her head but says nothing.

‘You don't love me, do you?' he asks after a long pause.

The finality of his words shocks her. Still, she cannot bring herself to say anything to comfort him.

‘Robert, I never realized this was how you felt. I—'

He lifts a hand to stop her.

‘Please, don't say anything more. I'll leave now.'

‘Robert, don't go. Let's talk, please.'

He shakes his head and opens the front door and she does not try to stop him from walking away.

Tonight, Bassam and her father are ghosts in her dream and everything around them, the faint light that illuminates their movements and the distant sounds that accompany their voices, appears ethereal, as if they would all disappear with a single flutter of her eyelid. And even as she dreams, Aneesa senses a strong desire to keep her father and brother there, to hold on to their awareness of each other and of herself floating somewhere in the background.

They are standing on the balcony of the flat in Beirut and are looking downwards; Bassam is calling out to someone on the ground below. She can see only the back of her father's head and Bassam, when he turns to look at him, appears vague too, although his features are accurate and clear. Hurry up, Bassam says. You've got to hurry and come up here.

When Aneesa follows the line of Bassam's vision, she sees a miniature, almost cartoon-like version of herself looking towards them and waving. She is so small that only her face, framed by dark, untamed hair, and her hand are visible. The moment that this unreal figure attempts to speak, everything around her begins to fade
into the background until the final image, the single impression that is left behind is one of solid emptiness.

Aneesa wakes up and slowly opens her eyes but the darkness around her does not waver.

Aneesa does not see Robert again after that final argument but she does hear about his leaving for New York. She is also surprised when she stops hearing from Isabel. When she no longer comes across her friend at work, she telephones and leaves messages for her to call back. But Isabel never does.

Sometime later, Aneesa manages to get in touch with Isabel and the two women agree to meet at a café near work.

‘I've missed you,' Aneesa begins.

‘I've been away,' Isabel says.

‘Oh.'

Isabel is absently stirring sugar into her coffee. She is not looking at Aneesa and seems reluctant to talk.

‘What happened, Isabel? Are you angry with me about Robert? Please tell me what I've done.'

Isabel looks furiously back at her.

‘Did you think he had no feelings, is that it?'

‘I didn't know he was so serious about our relationship—'

‘Aneesa, how could you possibly not know? It was obvious that he was very much in love with you.'

‘Is that what it feels like? I didn't know.'

‘Oh, don't play naïve with me, Aneesa. You're too old for that. You just didn't want to make a commitment. It wasn't convenient.'

‘What do you mean?'

Isabel's anger seems suddenly to dissipate. She takes a deep breath.

‘You've never taken us seriously, Aneesa, not me or Robert or any of us,' she says. ‘We're just something new and exotic, something for you to discover and pretend to care about.'

‘But I do care about you and Robert.' Aneesa is crying.

Isabel reaches for her hand.

‘I know you do, but not so much that it can hurt in any way. You've never really been here, Aneesa. In your head, you're always somewhere else.' Isabel pushes her chair back and stands up. ‘You didn't hear from me for a while because I was in New York with Robert. He came to me after you left him. He was heartbroken.'

Sometimes, in the early evenings of her Western sojourn, Aneesa remains at home dressed in a pair of flannel pyjamas and a warm dressing gown and thinks she could live like this for the rest of her life. She moves around the flat in cloth slippers, preparing dinner and taking note of every step she takes. Aneesa, you are washing your hands now, she muses; after that you'll chop the carrots. Now you can switch the stove off and now it's time to do the dishes.

After eating, she picks up a book and holds it tightly to her chest as she makes her way to the living room. Once in a while, she might walk over to the window and pull the curtains back to glance at the grey street below.

But when she sits down on the sofa, just as she begins to get comfortable, an image of Waddad, alone in her
apartment, comes to mind. She sits at the kitchen table, her head bent over a large tray covered with brown lentils. With the fingers of her right hand she removes small stones and bits of dirt which she then pushes to one side with her left hand. She has on her blue-framed reading glasses and her long grey hair is tied back with a black velvet ribbon. When she looks up, her eyes squinting through the lenses, Aneesa notices that her mother's skin is more tired than she remembered it. It is lined and soft and papery, as though covered with a thin film of powder.

S
alah awaits a new-found happiness. At seventy-six, he is reluctant to appear to be searching for it, looking secretly for an indication of unexpected joys in everything that happens to him, in every encounter and despite the confines of his increasingly fragile life.

But since his arrival in this new city, he is careful not to show signs of his expectations to Samir, choosing instead to maintain the air of quiet resignation that his son has come to expect of him.

‘What are you planning to do today then, Father?' Samir would ask before leaving for work, his body already leaning eagerly towards the front door.

‘Oh, don't worry about me,' Salah would reply, looking up with a rueful smile and a gentle nod of the head. ‘I've got plenty to keep me busy right here.'

Then, as soon as Samir has stepped outside, Salah would place the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, run
a cloth over the kitchen counters and rush upstairs to get ready to go out.

He dresses carefully, pulling on his trousers while sitting on the edge of the bed and buttoning the cuffs of his shirt before putting on socks and shoes. Then, experiencing a sudden frisson of excitement as he puts on his jacket and locks the front door behind him, Salah sets out for adventure.

At eighteen, Salah enters the American University of Beirut and spends his first few months there taking English language courses to prepare for the years of study ahead. He meets many young men like himself whose excellent grades in high school have secured them a place at the best university in the region.

There are women students at the university also. This is a new experience for Salah who has spent his childhood in boys' schools. Although some of the women are natives of Lebanon like himself, most of them are foreign, either from other Arab countries like Iraq, Palestine or Syria, or from as far as Europe and America.

He continues to live with his parents and two sisters in an apartment building in Ras Beirut that is only minutes away from the university. Both his sisters are younger than he is and are still at school. Although Salah does not know it yet he comes from an enlightened family for whom education is a priority for both sons and daughters. His parents are distant relatives and have lived in Beirut all their lives but they have instilled in him a respect for the world and all it has to offer and have encouraged in him the desire to widen his horizons.

A few weeks into the term a neighbour, an old woman who takes in foreign students, asks Salah if he will accompany one of her lodgers to her classes.

‘She is from India and arrived late in the term,' the neighbour tells Salah. ‘She does not know her way around and is feeling a little anxious. I thought it would be nice if you walked her to the university just for the first week or so, until she's got used to things.'

The young woman is very pretty, with long, dark hair and big eyes. She shakes Salah's hand slowly. It feels very soft to the touch.