Dreams of Water Read online

  As a young woman, Huda had black hair and skin so fair that everything she wore seemed only to intensify the contrast between them. She was slightly older than Salah and, on first meeting her, he had admired her confidence and her sensual grace and the muted assurance that pervaded everything she did.

  He hangs his head and caresses the soft leather. Then he gets up, stands in front of the mirror and pulls on the jacket, zipping it up over the camel-hair scarf he bought to go underneath it.

  At the graduation ceremony, Salah’s family, his parents and sisters, stand waiting for him after all the diplomas have been handed out. His father, Salah knows, is disappointed that his son had not studied medicine but a diploma in civil engineering is a great achievement, nonetheless.

  The family takes turns hugging and kissing Salah.

  ‘We’re proud of you, habibi,’ they all say.

  Then his father tells him they must talk.

  ‘How would you like to travel for a few months after all your hard work? Your mother and I have arranged for you to go on a tour of Europe with a friend of the family. He’s not much older than you are and has spent time travelling there and will be able to show you around.’

  Salah is not sure what to think. He imagines himself standing on the deck of a ship gazing at a disappearing shoreline, but he cannot conjure images of foreign countries in his mind. He feels excitement bubble up inside him.

  It is at this moment that he sees Huda approach with a couple whom he assumes must be her parents. She is wearing a soft green dress that matches her eyes and her hair is held up with a black velvet ribbon. She smiles and waves at him. He watches as she leads the couple towards his own parents. His heart sinks. Everyone will have to be introduced now.

  ‘Father, Mother,’ Huda says, ‘I’d like you to meet Salah, my classmate and special friend.’

  She is so enticing then, so strong and sure of herself that Salah knows he will not be going on that promised trip to faraway lands.

  The first time Salah sees Aneesa she is waiting at the bus stop around the corner from the house. Her brown hair is frizzy and flies in the wind and she is dressed entirely in black with a pair of huge, bulky boots.

  Salah sits beside her and is met with a breezy perfume of citrus fruits and jasmine. He cannot help staring at her profile. Her skin is luminous, he thinks, and that is what makes her beautiful.

  The young woman suddenly turns to him and says hello but he is so surprised at the greeting that he cannot bring himself to say anything at first. Eventually, as they wait for a bus that is a long time in coming, they begin to talk and Salah feels his spirits lifting at the gentle rhythms in her words.

  Living so intimately with a woman surprises him. Salah wonders if the experience of marriage for most men is like his own and is suddenly aware of a fastidiousness in himself that he had never known he possessed. Huda is as cautious as he is at first, tiptoeing around his emotions delicately, treating him with a deference she did not show when they were merely friends. Their love life consumes them in the first year of their marriage and he is happy with the secrecy of it, the fact that he can appear reserved and unperturbed to the outside world when his senses are reeling with thoughts of his young wife.

  After a few weeks in his parents’ home where the young couple enjoy limited privacy, they move to their own flat. Salah watches as Huda blossoms into something else, into a woman preoccupied with setting up a home and tending to it. They look for furniture together, going from shop to shop on Salah’s days off and at the weekends, but Huda is the one who makes the decisions on what to buy and where to place it. Salah does not mind that his wife seems to have claimed everything domestic in their lives as her own. He notices also how, in subtle ways, she begins to push him out of her world, sometimes temporarily, sometimes indicating that this is a place to which he will never have access. I don’t want you to worry about the housework and cooking, habibi, she says. Let me take care of that and you concentrate on your work. And to his surprise, he seems to love her more not less for this, as if in distancing herself from him she is introducing him to a more grown-up world where responsibility comes before friendship and a more rigid idea of love before unruly passion.

  In time, Salah comes to love their flat, its elegant style and pervading comforts, their streamlined bedroom and, especially, the enclosed balcony overlooking the sea from where he can ponder his fate. Yet he senses a nagging inside him, not quite a longing but a feeling that is less defined and more worrisome. Huda seems to have slipped away from him into a life of her own, into the mundane details of every day and the secret ambitions that she harbours for them as a couple, as though each no longer existed separately from the other. By the time he discovers what it is unsettling him, Salah cannot begin to imagine what to do about it and, anyway, Samir appears and their lives are tossed and turned and filled with joy and frustration and all the things between.

  He likes to watch Huda bathe the baby, the way she slides her forearm under his tiny arms so he is held firmly up, above the water, as she gently cleans him with a flannel in her other hand. Salah stands there, fascinated but feeling useless, until Huda asks him to fetch the baby’s towel and he can scoop his son up in his arms, wet, slithering, a breathing, living thing, a beating heart and the source of so much love. Salah is often left bereft when Huda eventually takes Samir away to dress him and make him ordinary again.

  He is a quiet boy, though Salah cannot really tell since he has had no previous experience with young children and does not really remember being one himself. Perhaps, he sometimes thinks, it is because Samir is an only child. When he broaches the subject with Huda, asks her if it wouldn’t be a good idea to have another, she bristles with annoyance and surprise. He is all I want in this world, she tells her husband, and Salah is effectively silenced, for what could he say then?

  With time, Salah feels a gap between himself and his wife that is only remedied with Samir’s presence, as if the child provided some kind of link between them, not in terms of being something to converse about and busy themselves with, but in being their common feeling, the place where their separate emotions touch and do not recoil. Although this truth worries Salah, makes him apprehensive about a future empty of connection, he does not see a way out and begins to wonder if his preoccupation with having another baby is only an attempt at stalling an inevitable decline.

  He continues to hope, however, that his relationship with his son remains a substantial one, not necessarily strong but resilient and important, and he can see a time ahead when it will bring them both the comfort that they cannot now find in each other. He is affectionate with Samir in unobtrusive ways, as he watches him with tenderness at bedtime or when he passes a hand over the top of the boy’s head, feeling a frisson at the touch of silky child hair, wanting to hold him but not daring to and envying his mother that she can do just that. In understanding that his upbringing has imposed this pretence at detachment, Salah does not attempt to upset or even circumvent it and is too afraid of the many things that will crumble around him if he does. It might be best, he tells himself, on nights when he cannot sleep and his wife’s steady breathing does not comfort him, to let things be. It might be best now, he nods into the darkness, to yield.

  Salah and Samir have just bought themselves a backgammon table from the Middle-Eastern shop where they do their weekend shopping. Samir does not know how to play very well but Salah has promised to teach him the intricacies of the game. They place the backgammon board on the kitchen table and sit at either side of it.

  ‘I’ll take black,’ Samir says, and Salah nods.

  ‘Do you know mahbouseh?’ he asks his son.

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Mahbouseh is the one where you can block your opponent’s pieces …’

  ‘That’s the one I know!’ Samir grins.

  They set the stones on the backgammon table and each throws the dice to decide who will go first.

  The stones, which
are also made of wood, make a great deal of noise as the two men slam them down on the board.

  ‘You’re making mistakes, habibi,’ Salah tells Samir, pointing to the stone his son has just moved. ‘Put that one back and move the other one.’

  Samir shakes his head.

  ‘You’re just trying to distract me, baba. Worry about your own game.’ Moments later, Samir looks up at his father.

  ‘Two out of three?’ he asks.

  ‘I’ll only beat you again, Samir. Let’s take a break and have something to drink.’

  Salah goes to the kitchen worktop where they have placed their shopping and removes a bottle containing a dark liquid out of one of the plastic bags. He fetches two glasses and returns to the table.

  ‘What is that?’ Samir asks as Salah pours the drink into the glasses.

  ‘Jillab. It’s made from dates. Haven’t you ever had it before?’

  Samir takes a glass from his father and sips slowly at it.

  ‘This is wonderful.’

  ‘Strictly speaking, I should have put some pine nuts into the glass. They’re great with it.’

  Samir puts his glass down.

  ‘I remember now,’ he says softly.

  Salah looks at his son.

  ‘I remember going downtown with Mother when I was very young. There was a man who had a stall at the centre of the souq and he sold this. The stall was made of glass and coloured panels of wood.’

  Salah nods.

  ‘People would stop there for a drink. After they’d paid him, the man would take their glasses from them and rinse them under a tap that was on one side of his stall. I remember watching the water trickle down underneath people’s feet but no one seemed to mind.’

  Salah watches as his son wraps his hand around his empty glass and looks into the distance.

  ‘I’d never seen anything like it, the noise, the crowds, the colour and the activity. It was like watching a stage show.’ He looks back at Salah and smiles. ‘When I asked Mother if I could have a glass of jillab, she said no. She said it was all very unsanitary or something.’ He shakes his head and the sides of his mouth droop slightly. ‘Can you imagine that, baba? Can you imagine that?’

  There are some things that so completely define him that Salah cannot bring himself to speak of them to anyone. He knows, for instance, that were he to measure his life in terms of achievements, he would have to think of it as having been successful. He had carried out his duties to the letter and worked hard to provide for his wife and son, and his home had always been a refuge for family and friends. But he is equally certain of an unsteadiness in him that might have led him elsewhere, perhaps towards an exaggerated sense of pride, a misplaced confidence in his own importance.

  As a young man, he had taken pleasure in the beauty of his body, its strength and agility and the ease with which he could satisfy its needs, so that when he chose his wife, desire as well as love had been the impetus. Now, if he allows his mind to wander away from what is undeniable – his love for the departed Huda and for Samir, and the dark fears that he has no wish to explore – if he ventures into the mysteries of his life, what he feels is a kind of physical wonder that begins in the pit of his stomach and makes his hands tremble with excitement.

  I am old, Salah repeats to himself. Here are my creaking limbs, the bend and brittleness of my back. Still, something in him remains unconvinced, something tough and unrelenting. It is perhaps, he thinks to himself, the only thing in me that is still unpredictable and defiant. And of this he cannot help but feel a little proud.

  When Samir takes his baccalaureate exam at eighteen, Salah discovers that Huda has made all the necessary preparations for their son to study abroad. She is adamant when Salah tries to discuss the subject with her.

  ‘He’s going to Europe, Salah,’ Huda says. ‘It’s not the end of the world. He’ll be better off there.’

  ‘But with his grades he could easily get into the American University here. He’d get an excellent education there.’

  ‘Just like you and I did, you mean?’

  Salah feels his heart jump in his chest.

  ‘What is the matter, Huda? What are you talking about?’

  She turns away from him and busies herself with something on the desk. She does this only when she is trying to avoid his eyes.

  ‘Well, we haven’t done particularly well, have we? We’re comfortable, I know, but we’re not likely to get much further than this, you know that.’

  Salah has worked for the same construction firm as a civil engineer ever since his graduation.

  ‘You want him to be rich, is that it?’ he objects. ‘What I have given him is not enough?’

  Huda turns around and looks straight at him.

  ‘It’s not just a question of money. He must be comfortable, of course, but I want more for him than that. I want him to get out of this country and see more of the world, be a part of the world. Besides, the political situation here is getting more precarious by the day. He’s better off far away.’

  Huda’s eyes, which have always fascinated Salah because of their ability to change colour and reflect her mood, burn bright and green. He gets up from his seat, feeling a sudden but certain defeat. Who am I to put obstacles in the way of opportunities for my own son, he asks himself. Perhaps he will be better off away from us and away from Beirut. Looking out of an open window on the enclosed balcony, Huda no longer in his sight, Salah shakes his head and sniffs at the damp air. Although he has been able to swim ever since Huda taught him how all those years ago, he has not been to the beach in a long time. The sea is an undulating dark blue and to his eyes at least appears endless.

  Aneesa tells him about her brother not long after Salah meets her. He feels he is beginning to understand her better, the sadness that seems always to be hovering around her eyes. And while he is certain that Bassam will have been murdered by his abductors – Salah lived long enough in the thick of the war to know that much – he cannot bring himself to say it to her. He believes that in some ways losing his wife to a terrible illness is somehow easier to bear for he cannot begin to imagine what it is like to know that someone you love endured unspeakable cruelty before dying.

  ‘My mother continues to hope, though,’ Aneesa says with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘I try to discourage her from this when we talk on the phone but then I think it might be the wrong thing to do.’ She looks at him as if to ask what he thinks but Salah says nothing. ‘Maybe hope is the only thing she has now.’

  But she has you, Salah begins to say and stops himself. Has she forgotten that she has you?

  The civil war is unexpected. Salah wonders how he could have been so unaware of what was going on in his own country that he did not recognize the warning signals that had been apparent for a number of years. He is no longer averse to his son’s leaving and is glad that he can afford to send him away from the inevitable carnage that will follow.

  Once Samir goes away to university, Huda seems to have more time for Salah, although he is not certain if he is happy about the extra attention or simply feeling more constrained. On days when the fighting is at a minimum and it is safe to venture outside the apartment, they do things together as they had once done, dinners and outings and walks along the Corniche. Friends they have long neglected suddenly become a part of their lives again so that Salah feels he must relearn things he has forgotten over the years, how to make conversation and how to appear well read and cultured. But he is conscious of a need to maintain warm relationships at a time when so much hatred seems to have gripped the country and is glad that Huda is there to help him along. He is also aware that in maintaining these friendships, he and Huda, like so many of their circle in Beirut, are keeping certain aspects of the war at bay, the devastation and harshness that they will likely avoid until the moment arrives when it directly touches them. But he is astute enough to understand that while he plays no part in the sectarian divide that is tearing the country apart, by closing himself off fro
m it he is doing nothing to push the hatred away. And through all this Salah feels Samir’s absence, an empty seat at a dinner table brimming with food and people, an absent conversation about nothing in particular, the ghost of a presence in the flat. But he does not mention his fears to Huda, does not tell her that perhaps they no longer have anything real to share, that in leaving at so young an age, their son might never find the will to return. Instead, Salah attends to Huda and her feelings with the tenderness reserved for those one pities, not realizing that one day in the future compassion will be all he feels for his ailing wife.

  Salah and Aneesa are having a picnic lunch on a park bench. It is sunny and warm and a large group of children in the playground close by are making a lot of friendly noise. Salah bites into his sandwich and peers closely at Aneesa. She is looking happy and beautiful, her cheeks turning pink in the sun and her hair shining.

  ‘Will you have children of your own, do you think?’ Salah asks her once he has finished chewing.

  ‘Do you think I should?’

  Salah turns to look at the playground and laughs.

  ‘It would be like nothing else you have ever done.’

  When Samir was born, a tiny bundle of dark hair and tears, Salah had thought him a stranger at first. But it was not long before, through holding him and watching him awake and asleep, Salah began to feel something between them, a connection that could only grow stronger, his heart claimed and kept for ever.

  Aneesa gathers the sandwich wrapping and their napkins and gets up to throw them away. When she returns, Salah takes a thermos out of the plastic bag beside him and pours coffee into two plastic cups.

  ‘Here you go, habibti,’ he says, handing Aneesa one of the cups and taking the other for himself.

  ‘You always make the best coffee, Salah.’

  ‘The secret is in the beans. I get them from that Middle-Eastern bakery by the house. They’re freshly roasted and I only ever grind them just before making the coffee.’