LITMIR.BIZ

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steps off the chair.

      ‘I’m taking it to my children. They’re hungry.’

      He puts his arm around her shoulders and they walk out of the kitchen.

      ‘Take me there, baba,’ Aneesa pleads. ‘I can hear them calling to me. Take me in the car.’

      Later that night, as she lies in her bed in the dark, Aneesa hears her parents arguing in the next room. She knows that no matter how loud their voices, they cannot drive away the sound of weeping children that fills her ears.

      Waddad spoons a mixture of rice, tomato and parsley on to half-cooked vine leaves that she has placed flat on the kitchen table. Her hair is tied back and her face shines with perspiration. Once each leaf is filled, she rolls it into a small tube and places it in a saucepan. Little Aneesa stands on a chair and peers inside to look at the cigar shapes lined up tightly against one another. She sniffs at the tangy, uncooked smell of the stuffed leaves and feels her mouth water.

      ‘I like the old man best,’ Aneesa says.

      ‘What old man, dear?’ Waddad’s head is bent low and she is not looking at her daughter.

      ‘The one with the beard. I want to see him again.’

      ‘Shhh,’ Waddad whispers. ‘You know your father doesn’t want us to talk of such things.’

      ‘He’s out in the garden. He can’t hear us.’

      ‘What do you want to see the old man for, anyway?’ Aneesa reaches inside the saucepan, takes out a stuffed vine leaf and pops it into her mouth. The rice makes crunching noises between her teeth as she chews.

      ‘That’ll give you stomachache,’ Waddad warns.

      Bassam follows Father around in the garden carrying a heavy bucket filled with wilted roses. Father examines the bushes closely and expertly snaps off the heads of the flowers at the top of the stem before Bassam rushes to pick them up and put them in the bucket. They are not speaking but Aneesa can tell her brother is itching to be elsewhere. She walks up to them and takes baba’s hand.

      ‘Ah, Aneesa,’ he says with a gentle voice.

      Bassam tries to hand her the bucket.

      ‘Your sister can’t carry that, Bassam. It’s much too heavy.’

      ‘I’ll go and empty this,’ Bassam says sulkily. ‘It’s too full, even for me. I’ll be right back.’ But Aneesa knows he will not be coming back.

      There are times when she imagines she can see her brother in the distance. He is walking down their street, hands in pockets, head bent low. He cannot be more than fifteen years old; his hair is sticking upwards at the crown of his head and in the fragile curve of his long neck, Aneesa sees hints of their childhood. She waves to him but he ignores her. When he finally stops, there are two of him, one standing behind the other, arms wrapped tightly around his twin. They are on a beach in moonlight and she hears them whispering to one another above the sound of waves lapping at their feet.

      Somewhere between the village spring and the wilderness, beyond the fragrant fig tree by the grocery shop, Aneesa stands in the single sunny spot in the square. Her eyes are squeezed shut so that blazes of orange line the backs of her eyelids. She raises both arms, palms towards the light, and takes a deep breath. A gentle humming unfolds behind her forehead and her mouth stretches in a smile.

      ‘Aneesa.’

      She opens her eyes and turns around. As Waddad approaches through the light and shadow, Aneesa feels a movement in her chest.

      ‘Come on. The sheikh is waiting for us.’

      He is sitting outside this time, on a low stool by the front door. His slippers are covered in dust and the front of his baggy navy-blue sherwal hangs in folds between his thin legs. A young woman in a black dress and the customary long white mandeel brings out two chairs before walking back into the house.

      Aneesa shifts forward in her chair so that her feet touch the ground.

      The old man lifts a hand to shade his eyes from the sun, puts it down again and looks at her.

      ‘How old are you now?’ he asks.

      ‘She’s six,’ Waddad replies.

      The old man grunts loudly and Aneesa leans towards him, placing both hands on her knees.

      ‘Our house was made of stone like this one.’ She points to the wall behind the sheikh. ‘But it was very small and the ground was uneven. The mattress tilted to one side when we slept and the soles of my children’s feet were always black with dirt.’

      ‘What else?’ asks the sheikh.

      ‘That’s all I remember,’ she says, shaking her head.

      Waddad shifts in her chair but remains silent.

      The sheikh shuffles his old feet and a cloud of dust rises up around them. Aneesa feels suddenly weightless and realizes that she has been holding her breath. When she lets go, the air comes out in a loud sputter. She holds a hand up to her mouth and hangs her head before looking up again a moment later.

      The young woman in the veil is leaning over Aneesa with a tray in her hands. Aneesa takes a glass of lemonade and says thank you. The old man and Waddad are quiet. Aneesa sips at her drink and sees time close around the three of them in a kind of circle.

      They are in the mountains and Aneesa, Waddad and Bassam are in the garden at the front of the house. It is summer and the pine trees around them and in the valley below give out the sticky scents of sap and strong sunlight. Waddad is sitting on the stone bench in the centre of the garden with a tray in her lap on which there are two bowls; one is filled with raw minced meat mixed with bulghur and the other with fried pine nuts and pieces of cooked minced meat for stuffing. Aneesa is standing beside her and Bassam is kicking a football aimlessly on the small patch of lawn around the bench. Aneesa wishes he would either stop or let her join in.

      ‘I want to play too,’ she says.

      ‘Stop whining,’ Bassam retorts and then kicks the ball past her and into a tree trunk just behind Waddad.

      ‘Bassam,’ Waddad says in a warning voice.

      ‘She’s always bothering me, mama. Make her stop.’

      Aneesa lunges after her brother but he slips away and turns around and grins at her. She reaches for the ball, lifts it above her head and aims at him. He moves quickly to one side and the ball misses him.

      ‘Stop it, you two,’ Waddad says absently. ‘Come and learn how to do this.’

      Waddad is making small, stuffed kibbeh which she will later fry for lunch. She rolls a handful of raw meat and bulghur into a ball with one hand which she pierces with the index finger of the other. Then she fills the hole with the stuffing and closes it up at both ends into two neat points, creating an oval shape that bulges out in the middle.

      Bassam sits down beside her and watches carefully.

      ‘I bet I could do that,’ he says with a chuckle.

      ‘Your hands are dirty.’

      ‘I mean if my hands were clean.’

      Waddad looks up at him and smiles before returning to her work.

      ‘Mmmm,’ she murmurs.

      Aneesa bends down to pick up the ball and holds it closely to her chest as she watches them. She sniffs loudly and begins to move towards the bench but her mother and brother do not look up at her. She stops and looks at them again, this time more carefully. They are both very intent on the task before them: Bassam, focusing so completely on his mother’s hands that he seems to be equally involved in its success, and Waddad, her shoulders slightly hunched up with the delicate effort, revelling in the attention. They are perfect together, she thinks, and is surprised at the clarity in this discovery. She lets go of

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