Waddad is sitting on Aneesa’s bed. She looks down and pulls at her nightgown. It is white and much too large for her small frame.
‘He seemed irritated when I asked him about it and said I should know that he liked it in his rice pudding.’ Waddad looks up at Aneesa again and blinks. ‘He always hated rice pudding, even as a child.’
Aneesa leans against the headboard of her bed, her eyes half-closed with tiredness, and waits for her mother to continue.
‘Then I realized later, after Bassam told me about your father, when he poured the flower water on a handkerchief and placed it over my face to revive me, I realized that he’d bought it for me all along.’
My mother’s search for Bassam began soon after my departure. It took her to distant corners of the city, through streets where the buildings rested close against one another, and the people moved shoulder to shoulder, jostling for space. She climbed up endless stairways, knocking on doors, sipping cups of coffee and waiting to hear a sign of recognition at her story.
I wish I could help you, friends and strangers said. May Allah give you all the strength you need to endure this great sorrow.
She heard about an organization set up by families of the missing and went to one of their meetings. They sat in a small room in an apartment not far from the city centre. There were many of them, men and women, young and old, all with the same anticipatory look in their eyes, as if their loved one might suddenly appear to hold and reassure them, as if the answer lay in talking to each other, in making words of their loss and weaving the uncertainty into the stories of their lives. When it was my mother’s turn to speak, she shook her head and stepped determinedly out of the room muttering under her breath, I am not one of them. This is not my place.
She went to the police station in her area and asked to see the officer in charge. He gave her a cup of unsweetened coffee and listened politely until she finished speaking, then he opened a drawer in his dilapidated old desk and took out a ream of paper. I have here a list of all the people who have gone missing in this war, he said. Their families are all desperate for news, just like you, but all I can do is write names down and put them away again.
It was then, dear Salah, that she noticed how tattered his uniform looked. The grey material was frayed at the edges and the buttons down the front of his jacket did not match.
When she finally decided to go and and see the leader of the community, a politician, at his mountain palace, my mother had not yet given up hope.
He looked younger than she had thought he would and kept shifting restlessly in the seat of his armchair. She confided in him her worst nightmare. I just want to know, Waddad said, I want to know what happened. Even if he’s never coming back, I need to know what happened to him.
The man only shook his head and she sensed that he might be getting impatient with her.
You must try to forget him, he declared, leaning forward and putting a hand on her arm. It all happened a long time ago. Why don’t you busy yourself with some charity work? If you like children, we’re always looking for help at our community centres.
Once outside, Waddad walked into the palace courtyard and sat on one of the stone steps that surrounded it. She listened to the water from the garden fountain slapping against the marble slabs at its outer edge, wrapped her cardigan more tightly around her and whistled softly to herself.
I imagine that my mother knew then that there was not much she could do about other people’s obstinacy except take it on her own shoulders. Maybe it was that moment in the palace courtyard when her anger had suddenly abandoned her and she felt so bereft that she realized she had been looking in all the wrong places and suddenly knew exactly what she must do.
‘Are you working, dear?’ Waddad asks.
Aneesa is sitting at the dining table with a large Arabic–English dictionary and the document that she is attempting to translate before her.
‘I can’t seem to concentrate on work today,’ she says, looking up at her mother.
Waddad is standing by the sofa, one hand against the back of it, and is running her fingers through her short hair with the other. She is dressed in her daily uniform of jeans and T-shirt.
‘Tell me, mama. What made you change your look so drastically?’
Waddad gives a little grunt.
‘It’s more practical this way. No wasting time over hairdressers and dressmakers. Besides, you get used to it eventually.’
Aneesa shakes her head.
‘But what possessed you to have your hair cut so short?’
‘You don’t like it?’
Aneesa looks closely at the elfin face. It is long and tired-looking in places but seems self-contained and there is a certain fire in the eyes that she remembers seeing in Bassam’s face sometimes. Aneesa feels a shudder go through her body.
‘Yes, I do, mama,’ she says quietly, returning to her work. ‘I like it very much.’
There are days when Aneesa thinks that if she could only concentrate hard enough she could make herself forget for hours at a time that there is a war raging around them. As it is, she can only manage a few moments of peacefulness before her mind interrupts it and she is aware of the presence of violence all around her.
To her mother, and at moments like these, Aneesa speaks harshly and with impatience as if it were up to Waddad to change things, to bring Father back and get them out of the chaos in which they now find themselves.
‘At least take us up to the house in the village,’ Aneesa shouts at Waddad during a particularly vicious battle between militias a few streets away from their block of flats. ‘We’ll be safer there.’
The two of them are sitting in the corner of the kitchen away from the main road.
‘I’m not leaving Bassam here in Beirut and you know there’s no way he would come up to the mountains,’ Waddad replies with determination in her voice.
‘So we have to put up with this because he’s foolish enough to want to stay here?’
Aneesa stands up abruptly and moves her hand away when Waddad tries to pull her down again. Moments later there is a sudden lull in the fighting and they hear the front door being opened. Waddad stands up from her crouching position as Bassam walks into the kitchen.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Are you two all right?’ Bassam asks them and goes to Waddad. ‘Sit down, mama, please. The fighting has stopped for now. You too, Aneesa. Sit down.’
Aneesa saw Bassam leaving the house hours before the fighting began while her mother was out getting the groceries. She knows he will not tell them where he really was no matter how persistent Waddad is in her questions. She decides to steer the conversation clear of any potential argument and reaches for her mother’s hand.
‘I’m sorry for shouting at you,’ Aneesa says quietly.
‘It’s all right, habibti. We were both afraid.’
Waddad pats Aneesa’s hand but she is looking intently at Bassam. Her brother sits down.
‘Everything is going to be fine,’ he says. ‘We’ll be fine.’
He puts a hand on Aneesa’s hair and smooths it back, then he sits back in his chair and sighs.
A rush of wind follows him when he steps outside and Aneesa closes her eyes as he walks past. The front door slams firmly after him and she is left with an impression of a pair of startled eyes and a sense of anxiety. She takes a deep breath.
Salah is standing beside her. His hand on her arm, he leads her inside. They walk slowly through the large house with windows long as doors