this year, is he?’ asked Rasheed.
Alia shook her head.
‘Your uncle Suleiman just read this to me,’ Alia said, holding the letter up in her hand. ‘No, he’s not coming.’
Approaching his mother very slowly, the boy reached out and placed one small hand gently on her cheek, keeping it there until the tears trickled down onto his fingers. Rasheed treated all his brothers with equal gentleness, showing Fouad the special attention that as a middle child he was never able to solicit from the women in his young life.
Fouad was convinced his grandmother hated him and mistook his mother’s confusion for rejection. ‘I’ll find him, I’ll find him.’ The four-year-old Fouad rubbed his eyes with small hands and lamented to himself.
‘Where are you going, Fouad? Come here. Why are you crying?’
Sheikh Abu Khalil watched the child from astride his donkey.
‘I’ll find him,’ muttered the little boy. ‘I’ll walk to Africa.’
‘Africa. You want to go see your father? Come up and ride. I’ll take you to Africa.’
Abu Khalil jumped off the donkey and lifted the boy onto the cloth saddle. They travelled back home in silence, Fouad finally asking, ‘Is it much further? Is it much further to Africa?’
When, years later, Fouad was able to prove his brilliance by entering medical school at the age of sixteen, his father bought him a new pair of patent leather shoes that squeaked as he walked so that everyone could hear him coming.
At six years old Adel was a dark and thin boy with a quick temper and the long, fine fingers and toes of his father. Alia loved his nervous energy and agile mind, and would sometimes laugh quietly to herself if he got into trouble. As an infant, his grandmother favoured him above the rest, sang to him in her old woman’s voice. He would look into her dried, sunken eyes as she rocked him and together they would remember past lives, dismissed by everyone but the very young and the ageless.
When he was three years old, Adel stepped outside one cold winter’s morning and fell into several feet of snow that had accumulated in the front garden the night before. After an unsuccessful struggle to pull himself up, Adel sank further into the cocoon of snow and fell asleep. A tuft of thick dark hair was all that showed above the snow’s surface. It was a while before Adel was finally found, almost frozen through, his small body curled into a stiff ball, his lips a frightening, ugly blue. Alia carried him inside, undressed him and wrapped him with her own body. Hours later, he pushed her arms away, looked slowly around him and fell into a long, sound sleep.
The children were at once vital and incidental to Alia’s life. She would stop and watch them as they played, four bright-faced boys who loved her with an intensity that sometimes sent her own heart reeling so suddenly that she would wish herself far away and free of them. She could never bring herself to tell anyone about her fear of waking up one day and abandoning her children, choosing instead not to allow herself to love them too much.
As they began to grow older, Alia’s hold over her sons did not diminish. Rather, they seemed to look to their mother for inspiration with even greater enthusiasm, the admiration of followers in their eyes. Between them, Salam, Rasheed, Fouad and Adel drew their mother’s fate as surely as a timely premonition, setting their ambitions against her own and waiting for the future to unfold.
The day that Alia dreamed of changing her life began like any other. She helped the boys prepare themselves for school, made the thickly spread labneh sandwiches they would have for lunch and handed them each a stick of firewood for the classroom stove. Standing on the doorstep, she watched as Salam and Rasheed walked away with the two little ones in tow, a slowness in their step as they tried to shake the last remnants of sleep into wakefulness.
Just as Alia was about to walk back into the house, Rasheed stopped in his tracks and turned round to look straight at her. The early morning sun and gentle mist framed his tall, slim figure and his face in the distance seemed to give out a bright light. Alia’s heart left her for one endless moment and skipped its way to her son, luminescent, reaching for home. Then Rasheed became a schoolboy again and turned away, his back slightly bent with reluctant defeat. He would, she knew, accompany his younger brothers to the village school and then, with Salam, trek several miles to his own in a nearby village.
When she heard of the accident, Alia was in the courtyard with her mother-in-law stirring a huge cauldron of tomato sauce which, once cooled, would be preserved in glass jars for winter stores. Alia’s cousin Iman was running towards the house, her veil flailing behind her, her eyes wild.
‘Alia, Alia,’ Iman shouted. ‘The boys. Hurry.’
Alia did not wait for Iman to reach her. She stood up, grabbed her skirt and flew towards her cousin.
‘The school in Salima . . . Alia, it collapsed over the children and Salam and Rasheed are inside with the others.’
Alia stood still as a rush of fear made its way through her, sending a tingling feeling into her fingertips and down to her toes. She began to run. She ran down through the village souq, past the local school where her two younger boys were safe and sound. She ran the twisting, winding road that led to Salima as fast as the lithe hyena she had once glimpsed as a child on a walk in the woods. She ran, her long pigtail coming loose and trailing behind her, lightning beneath her feet. She shouted an angry pledge to God that if her boys survived the disaster she would never let longing into her heart again.
When she got to the school, she saw a group of men standing among the rubble shouting instructions to one another and attempting to lift the large pieces of limestone that had been the single-storey school building. Dozens of bewildered-looking young boys covered with dust wandered around the school grounds, some weeping, others silent. Alia’s eyes skimmed over their faces, her heart thumping.
‘Mama, Mama.’
She felt two pairs of thin young arms wrap themselves round her and looked down to see her sons looking up at her. She held them tightly to her and kissed the tops of their heads, and felt unable to speak.
On the way back home Alia learned that Salam had jumped onto a window ledge as soon as the rumbling began.
‘But Rasheed was at the lunch table with the others, Mama,’ Salam said. ‘He was the only one to survive.’
Alia grasped Rasheed’s hand a little tighter and repeated a silent prayer.
Later that night, as the children slept, Alia tiptoed out of the house and made her way to the small church that stood at the heart of the Christian area of the village. Hesitating, she pushed the large wooden door open and went in. She had never believed she would one day see the inside of a church and was taken aback by the thick, calm air that filled the near-darkness.
A priest with a large cloth in his hand was wiping objects on a big, rectangular table at one end of the room. He looked up as Alia approached. ‘Yes?’ he asked, until she came up close. ‘Welcome, welcome. You’re Ameen’s wife, aren’t you?’
Alia hung her head.
‘Is everything alright?’ the priest continued. ‘Shall we go outside and sit down?’
She nodded and followed the priest into the courtyard.
‘How can I help you, my daughter?’ he asked her once they had sat down.
‘I need you to write a letter for me. It’s very important.’ He nodded and waited for her to continue.
‘It’s to my husband. He’s in Africa and I need him to come home. I . . .’ Alia squeezed her eyes shut and hoped the priest hadn’t seen in them the beginning of tears.
‘I’ll help you write the letter,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, my dear. No one will know about this but the two of us.’
Alia sighed with relief and lifted her head to the sky.
My husband Ameen,
God willing you are well and