Dreams of Water (16 page)

‘I think it's friendlier, don't you?' Salah replies. ‘Besides, Aneesa doesn't mind. She likes it in here.'

‘I just thought that since we hardly ever use the dining room …'

‘Exactly.' Salah turns away to stir something in a pot on the stove.

‘All right, then,' Samir says after a pause and goes up to his room to change.

When he comes downstairs again, Aneesa is seated at the island in the middle of the kitchen. She does not stand up this time.

‘Your father won't let me help,' she says, ‘so I thought I'd just make myself comfortable.'

‘I'll open a bottle of wine and join you,' says Samir.
‘I'm no good at cooking so I'd better keep out of it.'

He hears himself speak as he takes out a bottle of red wine, opens it and fetches some glasses. His voice sounds distant in his head but she seems to be reacting appropriately to it, nodding, smiling and glancing towards Salah every now and then.

They sit down to eat, Salah at the head of the table and Aneesa and Samir on either side of him. Salah picks up a large spoon and serves them the roast chicken and potatoes.

‘Help yourselves to the salad,' he says.

‘What is that wonderful flavour?' Aneesa asks moments later.

‘Rosemary. I marinated the chicken in garlic, herbs and lemon before putting it in the oven.'

‘Rosemary,' Aneesa repeats. ‘It translates as mountain laurel in Arabic.'

‘
Ikleel al jabal
,' Salah says.

Aneesa smiles and goes back to her food.

Samir feels agitated at the ensuing silence. His knife slips from his hand and falls to the floor. He bends down to pick it up.

‘Excuse me,' he says as he gets up and places it in the kitchen sink. He takes another knife out of the cutlery drawer and stops before returning to the table.

Salah has his hand on Aneesa's arm and they are smiling at each other. She lifts a hand to her mouth and shrugs her shoulders. Samir leans against the work surface. Salah turns towards him.

‘Will you fetch some water with you,
habibi
?' he asks.

Samir goes through his father's things a few days after Salah's death. Inside a dresser drawer he finds a piece of paper with Aneesa's address and telephone number in Beirut on it. He realizes that he will have to either call or write and let her know what has happened but for some reason cannot bring himself to do it just yet.

‘She is here on her own,' Salah had said when he first told Samir about her. ‘She is delighted at meeting someone from back home.'

‘
Baba
, she is only young, after all,' Samir told Salah, worrying that his father was growing too attached to Aneesa.

‘Yes, she is, thank goodness.'

Time to go home, Samir mouths the words silently to himself. He has just had dinner in a restaurant not far from home and is ready to leave. He places his drink on the table in front of him and reaches for his raincoat. When he gets to the door and sees the rain tapping at the window, he goes back to where he was sitting and picks up the umbrella he left behind.

In the street, he steps into a puddle of murky water.

‘Now look what you've done,' Samir mutters angrily to himself, gripping tightly at the open umbrella as he walks.

Despite the rain, he decides to go home on foot and surges forward. With his head held down, all he can see are legs rushing past on the pavement and the inverted beams of car lights through water.

He feels a time will come when one thing alone will
turn his head; not the vagaries of wealth, nor beauty in a woman, but something else, something more like an end to regrets, a sudden, destined peace.

When Mother reached out for me, Samir begins to no one in particular, my hand as she held it felt like a shell that had been wrapped in silk, so weightless was her touch. We would stroll along the pavement, stepping carefully off it when we had to cross the street, and I would watch our feet move, her stride slightly wider than mine and my own legs taking little steps forward, skipping when the pace demanded it, and if I tripped, I would feel the pull at my arm, my body being lifted for a moment, floating, before resting on the ground once again.

He stops to take a breath and sees a poster of sea and nubile girls on the sand in a travel agent's window. I have imagined myself, Samir says to the shifting multitude around him, on a Mediterranean land standing in the sun, where moments such as these flow like water and all through the valley trees grow like rivers where the river has once been.

Samir and Aneesa continue to meet, once or twice for coffee and then at a restaurant near Samir's office for lunch. He is aware of his attraction to her and also of a niggling desire to figure her out, the reasons behind his father's fascination with a young woman who is in many ways unexceptional. Every time Samir has telephoned Aneesa and told her he wants to talk about Salah, she has agreed to meet him. Still, Samir is not certain she believes his excuse. Perhaps, he sometimes likes to think to himself, she is as interested in me as I am in her.

Today, he is speaking more easily to Aneesa, feeling less nervous. He asks her fewer questions and and decides to talk about himself instead.

‘Sometimes I feel I lack insight,' Samir says between mouthfuls of salad. ‘You know, the ability to see beyond the obvious, to read people.'

Aneesa sits across from him with a frown on her face so that he feels she is really listening to him. He lets out a loud sigh and continues.

‘Do you ever remember someone just as a feeling, rather than a face? It happens to me all the time, especially with the people I haven't really figured out – you know, the mysterious ones.'

He laughs and waits for her to do the same but she does not.

‘Like you, for instance,' Samir says. ‘I feel a distant anxiety, something I know I have not quite grasped yet, and then I realize that I'm just thinking of you. Sometimes, I don't realize this for several hours or even days, and all the time I'm experiencing this underlying fear. Strange, isn't it?'

‘What are you afraid of?'

But he has no answer to this. He shrugs his shoulders and looks down at his plate. She touches his shoulder with her fingertips and he watches a smile slowly lift the contours of her face.

‘I think of you too, Samir,' she says quietly.

He feels slightly flustered.

‘My father hasn't told me very much about you,' Samir says. ‘It's difficult, isn't it? To know just where to start, to work out what the important things about your life really are.' He puts his knife and fork down and looks directly
at her. ‘If you could tell me just one thing about yourself, what would it be? I mean, I suppose I'd have to say leaving Lebanon made me a different person, saved me in a way because it opened up my life and my horizons. Made me more flexible because I found myself in an entirely different environment. If you asked me the question, that is.'

Aneesa's face goes still. He had not realized that such a thing could happen, a sudden and certain freezing of movement in the eyes, not a ghostly look, but an immobility with certainty in it, clarity at the edges.

‘And I would say …' she begins. ‘I would say that I once lost a brother.'

He has left his father alone with the nurse for the first time since Salah's illness and is surprised that he does not enjoy the freedom of it more. When he gets home, carrying bags of groceries, his first impulse is to rush to Salah's bedside to make sure he is all right. Instead, Samir goes into the kitchen, sets the bags on the worktop and puts the kettle on before going to his father.

Salah is sitting up in bed holding up the Arabic newspaper Samir bought him the day before, both arms opened wide. The nurse, a young man with a gentle manner, is standing beside him, pointing to different items in the paper. They do not notice Samir.

‘Can you read this headline for me?' The young man asks.

Salah speaks out loud, the words running into each other a little, but they are comprehensible nonetheless.

‘How about this one? What does it mean?' The nurse points to another headline.

Salah leans forward slightly, reads out loud and delivers a rough translation afterwards.

Samir holds his breath and remains absolutely still. He has not heard his father put complete sentences together since his stroke and is afraid of interrupting the flow of words. Salah's voice rises and falls rhythmically, the patient young man standing quietly beside him so that the two of them seem framed by the light coming in from the window, while Samir stands out of sight, trembling helplessly in the doorway.

Samir sits at his father's desk in the living room doing his homework when his mother comes in and looks over his shoulder.

‘You'll have to work very hard to get into university overseas,' she says, patting him on the back.

Salah puts down the newspaper he has been reading.

‘Overseas?'

Huda comes round the desk and sits next to her husband on the sofa.

‘He's not staying here,' she says firmly.

Samir looks from one to the other of his parents and says nothing.

‘What's wrong with our universities?' Salah asks.

‘I want something better for our son.'

‘So do I,
habibti
, but we have an excellent university over here.'

Huda shakes her head.

‘Salah, you know I've always planned for him to leave this country and have a proper future.'

‘But this is his home. This is where his future should be.'

Samir feels sorry for his father. His mother, he knows, is bound to get her way in the end. Huda has always talked about him leaving once he grew up but now the idea seems more real than it has ever been before. The thought of being somewhere different where no one knows him excites him.

‘We'll talk about this later,' Samir hears his father saying. ‘Just get on with your work now, son.'

Aneesa is looking flushed as she steps through the door.

‘I practically ran over here from the bus stop, it is so cold,' she tells Samir, her voice slightly breathless. ‘This jacket is never quite enough. How are you, Samir? Is Salah upstairs?'

‘No, we're in the living room and the fire's going already. Why don't you go inside and I'll bring the tea in?'

It is Saturday afternoon and when Samir found out earlier that Aneesa was coming to visit, he had asked if he could stay. Now he is not so certain that it was the right thing to do.

‘Thank you,
habibi
,' Salah says when Samir walks into the living room with the tea tray. ‘Ah, you forgot the biscuits, Samir. I'll go and get them, shall I?'

‘You don't take sugar, do you?' Samir asks Aneesa as he pours the tea.

She shakes her head. He hands her a cup, pours one for himself and sits back in the armchair by the sofa. The fire is big and warming and emits a pleasant burning scent whenever a wisp of smoke escapes into the room.

‘Do you remember yourself as a child?' Aneesa asks him.

Samir wonders what is taking his father so long.

‘Of course I do.'

‘How?'

‘What do you mean?'

Aneesa shakes her head and snorts slightly.

‘What do you think you were like?'

Fearful, shy and arrogant sometimes, as boys will be for no other reason than to hide their hurt pride. He had also been secretive, not in a sinister way but out of a desire to keep something for himself and from his ever-present parents.

Samir shrugs and smiles at Aneesa just as Salah returns with the plate of biscuits.

‘Did your son keep secrets as a boy?' Aneesa asks Salah. She is smiling and Samir feels a sudden irritation.

Salah passes the plate first to Aneesa and then to Samir. ‘Stop teasing him, Aneesa,' he says. ‘My son has a tendency to be easily hurt.'

Samir looks at his father.

‘Me?'

Salah bites into a biscuit.

‘I always wanted more children, you know,' he says in a conversational tone so that Samir cannot tell if his father is speaking to him or to Aneesa. ‘Huda believed it was because I thought she and Samir were somehow not enough for me but it wasn't like that at all.'

Samir clears his throat loudly and hopes his father will not continue.

‘There were many things my poor wife never understood about me,' Salah goes on.

The day of the funeral is sunny and warm for autumn. Samir sits in the limousine that follows the hearse to the cemetery. The interior of the limousine is spacious but sombre and Samir is glad when they arrive and he can finally get out.

It is more like a park than a cemetery, he thinks as he follows the pall-bearers to the grave. The trees are awash with colour: reds, yellows and golds; and dead leaves crunch beneath his feet as he walks. The air is also beautiful, clean and with only the suggestion of coolness in it. In the distance is a pond with ducks floating on it. This day is so perfect that there seems no place for grieving, Samir thinks to himself. He takes a deep breath. I wish you could see this,
baba
. You would love it here.

When he gets home later that evening, Samir walks around for a few moments with the lights still off. He goes into the kitchen and opens the two windows opposite the counter very wide, just like Salah used to. Then he pulls at the refrigerator door and looks inside. He pulls out cheese, Arabic bread and two cucumbers that he washes under the tap. He takes out a knife and plate and sits at the work surface. From here, he can hear the night but it cannot see him. He cuts a piece of the cheese, wraps it in the bread and eats it noiselessly. Then he picks up a cucumber and takes a large bite of it.

If Father were here … Samir begins. If I were Father, what would I do now? He puts down his sandwich and stands up, pushing his stool back. Then he walks back to the refrigerator and opens its door slightly so that the inside light shines through into the kitchen. He suddenly thinks of Aneesa, how he would often find her in the kitchen when he came home, chatting to Salah as he cooked, both of
them seemingly content. He realizes once again that he should let her know of his father's death. Perhaps I should wait until I go back home and see her, he finally decides