The first time Aneesa sees Salah she is waiting at the bus stop near her home. He sits beside her on the plastic perch attached to the bus shelter and immediately the scent of fresh lemon fills her nostrils. His woollen jacket is zipped halfway up so that the denim shirt he is wearing underneath it shows through, and his hair, longish and beautifully white, is brushed back from his forehead.
‘Hello,’ Aneesa hears herself saying.
‘Oh!’
‘I startled you,’ she continues. ‘I’m sorry.’
Salah looks flustered.
‘No, not at all. I was just lost in my thoughts for a moment.’
She nods and turns to look at the traffic moving towards them. Moments pass before she speaks again.
‘Do you think that if we stare hard enough the bus will finally appear?’ Aneesa laughs.
Salah, my dear.
My other life seems far away now that I am back, but not you and not our beautiful adventures together. Those things and you I miss terribly. It’s not that I’m having difficulty getting accustomed to life at home – there is something of that, though it does not occupy my thoughts very much – it’s the ease with which I have slipped back into being here. Lebanon is like a second skin that does not leave me even as I wish it away. It is the here and now of everything I feel and do.
I imagine you, walking down the busy streets of this city in your long brown suede jacket, and when I go past the block of flats you once lived in, I wish I could run upstairs, ring the bell and find you there. We would make tea biscuits, I think, to remind ourselves of our once-Western lives.
In the back of my mind are thoughts of how we met, both of us in the throes of aloneness, almost content with its settled rhythms, yet feeling the desolation that inevitably comes with it. Is that how we became such fast friends?
Did we not find, Salah, besides the solitude, a relief in each other’s company that usually comes with a much longer acquaintance? Our mountain people would say we were only two old souls recognizing one another after a long absence.
Waddad is in the kitchen stirring a pot of Arabic coffee over the stove. The smell is strong and pleasing. Aneesa watches as she lifts the dark, thick liquid with the spoon and lets it fall back into the pot. She bends over her mother and plants a kiss on her cheek.
‘Good morning, mama.’
‘Good morning, habibti. Sit down and I’ll pour the coffee.’
Waddad’s hair curls daintily around her long face and her eyebrows are faint lines above watery grey eyes. She is dressed in dark blue jeans and a white T-shirt and looks like a twelve-year-old boy, clean and sweet-smelling first thing in the morning. Aneesa can hardly believe that this is the middle-aged woman she left behind all those years ago.
The two women sip their coffee noisily and with enjoyment, the scent of cardamom seeds rising from the steaming cups.
‘I think I’ve found your brother,’ Waddad says moments later.
‘What?’
Waddad stands up and turns away to place her cup in the sink. She turns the tap on and reaches for the washing-up sponge.
‘What are you talking about, mama?’ Aneesa jumps up from her seat. ‘Where is he? What’s going on?’
‘Things changed so much for me after you left,’ Waddad continues over the sound of the running water. ‘I had to manage the search on my own. It took a long time, but it’s finally happened.’
Aneesa walks up to Waddad, places her hands on the older woman’s shoulders and gently turns her round so they are facing one another. Soapsuds trickle down on the floor between them.
‘Mother, what do you mean? Where have you found him? Why haven’t you said anything about this to me before? For heaven’s sake, tell me what’s going on.’
Waddad smiles and continues as though she has not been interrupted.
‘He’s at the orphanage in the mountains. I’ve been going there on a regular basis for a few weeks now. We’ve become friends.’ She wriggles out of Aneesa’s grasp and turns to the washing up again. ‘His name is Ramzi and he is eight years old. He was born only a few days after your brother disappeared. It all fits in.’
Aneesa does not understand at first, then she realizes exactly what her mother is saying.
‘What have you done, mama? What have you done?’
Waddad rinses her hands and turns to her daughter once again.
‘Aneesa, it’s time we accepted the fact that your brother is gone. We have to get on with our lives.’
‘But what about the letters we received from him while he was being held captive?’
Waddad lifts a hand to Aneesa’s face.
‘No more letters, Aneesa. No more. Please.’
As an adolescent, Bassam had not grown very tall and had developed a weedy frame that made him bend slightly forwards when he walked so that he seemed almost defenceless. Aneesa used to walk up to him and poke him in the back to make him straighten up. She remembers the feel of the hollow in his thin back.
‘I’ll take you to see Ramzi one day if you like,’ Waddad continues. ‘But you have to promise.’
‘Promise what, mama?’
There is a pause before she replies.
‘Just that you’ll see the truth as I do.’
Away from home, Aneesa dreams exhilarating dreams of her brother. They are moving together towards a sense of effortlessness.
‘Whenever you’re ready, Aneesa,’ Bassam finally says after what seems a long time in flight.
She is holding on to his arm and watches as he lifts off pieces of the surrounding landscape and moulds them into a vibrant picture of faces and places they have known together.
‘That’s beautiful,’ she tells him before waking up sweating in her bed.
She saw a psychic after she left home, in the hope that he would tell her something about the truth behind her brother’s disappearance.
The man sat in a faded velvet armchair: a thin, arrogant man with long fair hair brushed back off his forehead. Aneesa took an immediate dislike to him.
‘You have perhaps a father or brother who was killed?’ the man asked soon after she had sat down.
She tried not to look too surprised.
‘My brother, in the civil war in Lebanon. He was kidnapped and we never saw him again.’
‘He’s with us now,’ the man continued. ‘He wants to let you know that he doesn’t regret what he did.’
‘He’s dead?’
The man said nothing.
‘What does he look like?’ Aneesa blurted out.
‘Is that a trick question?’ The man gave a harsh laugh. She shook her head.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the man said, lifting his hand to his head. ‘He’s got a large scar on his forehead. He says they killed him three days after he was taken away.’ Then he reached over and placed his hand over hers. ‘He wants you to stop worrying about him. Tell your mother too.’
She closed her eyes and sat in silence for the rest of the session, strangely comforted by the unlovable man in the armchair opposite.
Did