That afternoon Hakim took Yasmin and me up the nearby hill to try out my sled. We sat one behind the other, with Hakim puffing and panting as he hauled us through the snow. Father didn’t come. By now I’d almost grown used to his strange moods. The day after he’d promised to tell me another story, for example, there he was, pacing up and down again like a caged animal. The telephone had rung a little while earlier and Mother had answered it. She’d said “Hello?”, repeating it in a loud voice several times, then hung up. Around half an hour later, Father slipped out of the flat. I knew he was going to ring Grandmother, but I resisted the urge to tell Mother she needn’t worry.
Besides, the arrival of the snow meant there were far more important things on my mind. When I’d come down in my snowsuit, Yasmin was already out the front in her red hat and gloves, armed with a perfectly formed snowball. Now we were sitting on my new sled, urging Hakim to pull us faster, and roaring with laughter when he whinnied like a horse. We lost track of time as we whooshed down the slope over and over again. The air was cold and clear and full of shrieks of joy. Our cheeks were red, our eyelashes frosted over, our noses ran, but we barely noticed. Winter had come, the time for family fun. The air smelled of cinnamon and tangerines instead of damp cold and dead leaves, of log fires and cloves instead of chestnuts and musty earth. We left sled tracks in the snow. We were happy.
The hours flew by, and suddenly we realised it was dusk. “That’s enough for today,” shouted Hakim, his eyes gleaming with the cold. “There’s plenty of winter yet. Next time we’ll take the car and find a bigger hill.” We protested, but only half-heartedly, as we could feel a pleasant tiredness taking hold. If Hakim was tired, he didn’t show it. He just whinnied cheerfully and pawed the snow before pulling us home.
When we got home, the smell of hot punch already filled the whole stairwell. Yasmin and I pushed past each other into our flat, quickly discarded hats and gloves, and clambered out of our snowsuits. Mother was already waiting with two steaming mugs.
“You’re frozen to the bone,” she remarked, stroking our cheeks.
We were indeed, and all the more glad to wrap our hands round the warm mugs. Hakim closed the door behind us and knelt down to pick up the hats and gloves we had carelessly tossed on the floor.
“Give that pair a sled and a hill and they don’t just forget the time, they forget their manners as well.”
Mother smiled gratefully, relieved him of our things, and handed him a mug of punch. He closed his eyes and held it to his cold cheek. Then he followed us into the kitchen.
“Where is Brahim?” he asked, poking his head into the living room.
“He’s not back yet,” said Mother.
“When did he leave the house?”
“This morning.”
Hakim raised his eyebrows and looked at the clock above the kitchen door. It was just after six. He’d been gone over seven hours.
“Do you know where he went?”
“No.”
Mother sighed. Hakim frowned and took a seat. Outside, darkness had descended.
Mother turned to us. “Tell me all about the snow.” She gently pushed a lock of Yasmin’s hair out of the way before she bent over her cup.
We regaled her with our adventures on the slopes, each trying to outdo the other’s descriptions of breakneck speeds and spectacular falls into the deep snow. Even Mother laughed out loud when we described our draught horse, Hakim. She really was so pretty when she laughed.
We sat in the kitchen for about an hour, drinking punch and eating our supper. Then we went into the living room. Yasmin and Hakim had gone downstairs briefly and reappeared in cosy sweaters. The four of us were wrapped up on the sofa now, the warmth of the heating behind us and a soft blanket tucked round our feet. Yasmin and I had found some notepaper and were making out our Christmas lists. I wanted a bike and Yasmin wanted a new schoolbag. Hakim was asking Mother about her sewing and her latest ideas. He had one of her sketchbooks on his lap and was running his flat fingertips over the drawings as if he could feel the fabrics’ weft and weave. Mother was using the drawings to explain the different steps in her work and telling Hakim about a Christmas market where she was hoping to buy material at a keen price. Hakim already knew about the market. His boss had suggested that he carve nativity figurines to sell there and asked if that would be a problem for a Muslim. It was no problem for Hakim, of course.
We were so absorbed that we never even heard Father coming in. I’ve no idea how long he had been standing there before we noticed him. Mother startled as if she’d got an electric shock. Hakim looked up and the sketchbook fell from his hands. Yasmin dug her nails into my arm. Father stood there in the doorway, staring at us like we were ghosts. His clothes were all wet and crumpled, his face as grey as a November morning. Time seemed to stall for a moment. Water dripped from his hair and beard onto the wooden floor. A puddle had already formed around his feet. Then he closed his eyelids, raised his hands, and pressed the insides of his wrists to his temples, as if he’d felt a jolt of pain. It was as if he couldn’t bear the sight of us and hoped we’d be gone when he opened his eyes again. But we still sat there, motionless, staring back at him. He lowered his hands, turned, and stumbled out of the room. A few seconds later we heard the click as he locked himself into the bathroom.
When I was younger still—three or four maybe—I almost drowned. It was summertime. A small river flowed through our town, and its grassy banks were very popular once the weather grew warmer. On a sunny day you’d see couples sprawled on rugs rubbing sun cream on each other’s backs, popping luscious strawberries into each other’s mouths, and gazing at each other with bedroom eyes. Youngsters with blaring boom boxes cooled their beers in the water; toddlers in nappies waddled across the grass, trailed by tail-wagging dogs; young guys playing football in their swimming trunks grinned cheeky apologies when they happened to hit the bikini-clad girls feigning disinterest at the edge of the pitch. Old folks summoned their dogs in vain when a refreshing dip proved irresistible; back on the riverbank, the dogs would shake rainbows of water off their fur. That’s the kind of day it was. The sun shone so brightly that the water sparkled like a shop window full of diamonds.
We were a bit late getting there. The best spots along the riverbank—where the water was shallow and perfect for a quick dip—were already gone. We carried on upriver until we found a spot where the grass hadn’t been flattened by too many towels. We spread out our rug. Father set up the barbecue and lit the coal. Mother sliced carrots and cucumbers. And I fell into the water. I’m hazy on the details now, but I remember the water being extremely cold and swallowing me up, and then the current sweeping me away. I have a memory of Mother’s voice shouting Father’s name, but that could also be my imagination. In any case, I saw Father jump fully clothed into the water and swim after me with powerful strokes. He made several attempts to grab hold of me before he eventually succeeded. He held me tight with one arm and slowly swam to the river bank with his free arm. Mother was in an awful state. She wrapped me up and rubbed me dry. As I sat there bundled in my towel, I looked up at Father, standing in the sun, soaking wet. I remember the water dripping from his clothes and beard, but the look in his eyes was very different that day. That day he was smiling.
It was a whole hour before Father came out of the bathroom. Hakim and Yasmin had left. I sat at the door, listening to the muffled sounds of the shower. Mother paced up and down the corridor. She had hastily knotted her woolly red cardigan round her waist. She kept running her hands through her hair. Eventually she told me to get up off the floor and go to my room. I pressed my ear to the bedroom wall but couldn’t hear a thing. I was scared and confused. I’d never seen Father this way, so frightened, so vulnerable. As if he’d used his last reserves to escape from some dark torture chamber, or been chased through the snow by ghosts he had barely managed to shake off. I wondered what kind of terrible news he must have got in that phone call to come home in such a state. My vivid imagination conjured up the worst for Grandmother in Lebanon. Maybe she’d told him she was very ill; maybe she’d said that this might be their last phone call. I imagined how sad this made Father, how he’d dropped the receiver,