Salah nods.
‘I didn’t get a chance to introduce you,’ he says. ‘He couldn’t stay.’
They sit on stools at an island in the middle of a kitchen painted in warm yellow. The colour makes Aneesa think of sunlight beaming through half-open doorways. A beautiful floral tea set is laid out on the counter. Salah pushes a plate filled with neatly cut squares of semolina cake towards her.
‘Thank you,’ Aneesa says, taking a piece of the cake and biting into it. ‘This is his house, isn’t it?’
Salah begins to pour the tea.
‘My son brought me here from Beirut after his mother’s death. He said he didn’t want me to be on my own.’ He passes Aneesa a cup of tea. ‘You don’t take sugar, do you?’ Salah asks.
Aneesa shakes her head and sips at the hot tea. It is strong and satisfying.
‘Maybe I’ll meet him next time I come,’ she says.
‘Sometimes, you know,’ Salah continues, ‘I think he’s lonelier than I am.’
She wakes to dreaming, images, faint and gleaming, trailing before her, the colours of her childhood, shades of blues and greens and the warm, nascent yellows of hope. And as she closes her eyes once again, attempting to recapture the clarity of this sudden awareness, of the long journey into the self, she sees herself again and again in the company of those she has loved.
The places they find themselves in are always familiar and magnificent: a sprawling Mediterranean villa in the sun; an old stone house surrounded by tall trees; or a grand home spread over dark red earth, dusty, mysterious and wonderful. The sensation that accompanies the dreams is the same every time: a kind of halting, surprised happiness that threatens to overwhelm her so that she turns to describe it to someone but finds herself suddenly alone.
She wakes up bewildered, wondering where it is all coming from and it is only when she turns on the light by her bed and she realizes she is once again in Beirut that the ghosts of daylight return.
My mother became certain she would find Bassam at the orphanage in the mountains. During her first visit, she asked the directress if she could do volunteer work with the children. After that, she went there twice a week in the afternoons and either supervised the younger ones in the playroom or helped the elementary school children during their study hour. She especially enjoyed the time in the playroom with the younger ones and brought along new toys from time to time. She spent many hours with the children on the floor playing with the farm animals or building high towers with multi-coloured bricks. Sometimes she had a particular project organized and asked all the children to participate in it. They did cardboard cut-outs of a mountain village, complete with houses, trees and prickly bushes, and used some of the animals they already had, placing them among the buildings and stones.
Whenever she helped during study hour, Waddad had to remember to keep her eye out for the boy she wanted to find, always feeling that he was there ready to be discovered. Once or twice, she attended classes where the children were about the right age but nothing came of it. But she continued to look forward to her days at the orphanage, the bus drive up the mountain and back, and the hearts and minds of the little children that she found so compelling. And while she never forgot why she was really there, the urgency of her search had been quelled somewhat so that she was able to hide the visits from me until the day she found him.
Salah, as I write this, my mother sleeps with a happiness I dare not dispel with my doubts. How, I imagine you saying, do you expect me to believe the inventions of a woman torn by grief? How should I read between the words of this story? How can I see, in the birth of an eight-year-old boy, the soul of a man killed at that very moment, moving from one body to another, skin to new skin, time suspended in that movement, transmigration, layers of memory embedded in a young heart and love transported too, as if by magic, burning, passionate and never-ending?
Aneesa decides to buy Salah a pair of gloves for his birthday, something to go with the suede jacket Samir bought him and which he seems to love so much. She goes to a department store in town and finds a pair in tan leather that she knows would look good against the light brown of the jacket. The shop assistant wraps the gloves in two sheets of white tissue paper before placing them in a bag.
When Aneesa hands Salah the gift as they stand waiting for the bus, he looks surprised.
‘I know your birthday isn’t for a few days yet, but I couldn’t wait,’ she says.
Salah clings to the bag and looks away, in the direction of the traffic.
‘Don’t you want to know what it is?’
He opens the bag and pulls out the tissue paper. Looking down at his hands as he attempts to undo the package, trembling, delicate hands with long, tapered fingers, Aneesa feels a rush of tenderness. She takes the parcel from Salah and helps him put the gloves on.
‘Do you like them?’
‘They’re beautiful. Thank you.’
‘They’re lined on the inside so your hands will stay warm.’
He puts his hands together, interlacing his fingers, and smiles.
Once on the upper deck of the bus, Salah takes off the gloves and places them on his lap, giving them a gentle pat.
‘They’re very soft,’ he says.
The bus lurches forward. Then they both look straight ahead, through the window and towards their approaching destination.
The first time my mother saw him, Ramzi was bouncing a ball in the orphanage playground. It was a cold day in winter and there were other children standing in a loose circle around him. She was overcome with a strong sense of recognition as she watched him toss his head back and smile at his audience. Waddad saw him glance at her and then turn away again. When she approached, she noticed tiny beads of sweat on his forehead where his black hair stuck in wet strips. He had brown eyes and fair skin and was only slightly shorter than she was.
She asked him his name and then told him hers. Are you a teacher? Ramzi asked, the ball hugged tightly to his chest. No, she replied. Ramzi looked shyly up at her, and Waddad heard the children behind her giggle.
Maybe it was his hair, the way it fell in a swirl from the top of his head and over his ears and forehead. He was also the right shape, small and intense, as though every part of his body radiated a singular energy. But most of all, it was the way he looked at her with easy recognition, his mouth breaking into a wide half-grin, half-grimace that had been so characteristic of her own son.
She was beginning to like his name too. Ramzi. She said it out loud to herself at night and felt sure she could become accustomed to it. She was equally certain of her growing affection for the boy, for his disarming, hesitant manner.
When Waddad asked the directress of the orphanage about him, she was told he had been brought in by his mother very recently, a woman with several children whose husband had abandoned her and who had been left to care for them on her own.
Talking with Ramzi on her regular visits, Waddad thought she recognized bewilderment at what had happened to him in his manner, but he was too proud to speak of it to her. Once they were closer, when he trusted her more, Waddad decided she would tell him of their story, of the starry meeting of their souls.
I am aghast, Salah, at my mother’s easy fall into dreaming. I had thought her stronger than this, but perhaps I did not realize the magnitude of her grief. I miss you, our conversations and comforting silences. I miss the slant of tree branches heavy with leaves above our heads as we walked, and the empty air, not quite expectant, but quietly stirring because it was ours alone.
Yours, Aneesa
‘He had a girlfriend once, you know,’ Salah explains. ‘They lived here together for about a year.’ He hands Aneesa a wooden spoon and tells her to stir the brown mixture on the stove slowly. ‘Don’t stop,