this letter for me and I am grateful to him for that because these words belong only to you now.
When the sun begins to set and the boys are washed and fed and preparing to sit quietly over their school work, there is whispering in our house, a relief in our voices at the blessed ending of another day, a kind of resignation too. That is when I think of you most, of the scent of you and the way your arms swing briskly at your sides when you walk. And as I close my eyes and let the hush sweep over me, I imagine your body brushing noiselessly past my own and begin to dream of a more certain touch.
And try as I might, Ameen, even deep in the night when I am in bed and restless, I cannot see your face; your features, fine and grave, escape me. Are his eyes round or almond-shaped? I ask myself. Does his brow crease when he thinks and do his lips droop or disappear in anger?
Then other questions come to mind about what your life is like so far away and whether you have found your own comforts there, your own release. I pray for you.
Salam is grown and will soon be ready to join you in Africa. Rasheed, Fouad and Adel wait for you as I do. God be with you.
Your wife
Alia.
It was that secret hour between dawn and waking, and Alia stood leaning against the doorway of her home, gazing at the village below. Behind her the sleeping sounds of four boys and their father floated in and out of the spacious rooms, muffled in dreams. She lifted her hands and laid them against her cheeks, then took a deep breath of the sharp spring air and stepped slowly out into the courtyard.
The village was quiet. Rows of umbrella pines stood still and tall, dotted among the stone houses and the narrow dirt road that wound its way between them. In the distance she could make out the moving figures of Milad, the milk-seller, and his donkey. For one moment she imagined she heard the clanking sound of the tin cans filled with pungent goat’s yogurt as they bumped against one another on top of his saddle. In the pink sky overhead, thin clouds of smoke wafted out of a lone chimney and vanished into the morning.
Someone besides myself is awake then, Alia said to herself.
She placed her hand on her lower belly and tried to feel for the budding child she knew was there. This time it would be a girl and she would name her Saeeda.
Alia shook her head and reached down to pluck at a weed wedged between the cobblestones at her feet. The courtyard was strewn with dry pine needles and needed a thorough sweeping. When she straightened up and turned towards the house, catching sight of the four pointed arches outlining the porch and the red-brick rooftop slanted evenly above them, she felt a sudden rush of pleasure. ‘Our house,’ she whispered. ‘Our beautiful house.’
Maysa
Spring
The vine is coming back to life. I can see bright green shoots pushing out of its branches that revel in the sun and make tiny shadows on the tiled floor below. Every morning I carry a plateful of fruit and a cup of flower tea out to the terrace, sit on an old sofa I have placed there and stare out at the view. The village wakes with a start, to the sound of children preparing for school and shopkeepers rolling up the corrugated-iron fronts of their shops, to the smell of wood stoves being relit and the sight of the thin white smoke that rises from them.
Soon after the first small commuter bus inches its way up a steep hill and away to the city, cars appear, dozens of them that whiz up and down the main road. By then, the movement of people and machines appears almost frenetic and I carry the remains of my breakfast back into the quiet of my house lest the anxiety invade me too. There, I wonder how different Alia’s mornings must have been, the duties of house and children to see to, stretching her days into a fever of physical activity. She once told me that she had always favoured early mornings in the village, those moments before the children woke up, when the house pulsed with their collective heartbeat and she could stop and contemplate her fortune.
I look down at my now huge belly that hangs low and round over my legs and feet. I wear different versions of large, comfortable sweatsuits that have only just begun to strain against my widening girth. Selma has cut my hair so that it frames my face in a curly dark cap and lifts the circles from under my eyes. My skin has lost its flaky winter appearance and glows with the freshness of the mountain air. If I did not know better, I would believe Selma when she tells me that a woman who grows prettier as her pregnancy advances is carrying a girl.
The doctor, I know, already has an inkling of the gender of my child, but after the tests I have taken at his clinic he has refrained from telling me which it is and I have feigned indifference. He has extracted from me a promise that I will let him know as soon as labour pains begin and that I will be willing to go to a nearby hospital if he thinks it necessary. ‘We have to think of the baby.’
Alia had all her babies at home, with her mother-in-law and a local midwife in attendance. It was a matter of life or death every time but she always got through it. What it must have felt like to greet each of those babies, their sudden plop into being, a startled screech and the touch of roughened mother-hands on slippery, transparent skin. Did she cherish the approval of the family and indulge in the brief admiration shown her by her husband when he was there?
‘What does it matter either way?’ Selma says to me.
I shake my head and tell her I don’t understand.
‘What does it matter what anyone thinks or says,’ she continues. ‘All you can do is just get on with it.’
Maybe that’s what Alia knew she had to do. I am surprised into silence at the thought. ‘You mean she may not have thought about it at all?’ I ask Selma.
‘I mean she accepted her fate like most women did in those days.’
But I don’t believe that, I begin to say and then stop. ‘What was it, then? What did she really feel?’ I ask instead.
The truth is that I don’t know. I strain to remember the look in her eyes and come up with little more than a mixture of tenderness and distance, the look of a woman with secrets that she will not disclose to a child. Did she love Ameen or had he merely been a part of a destiny she could not avoid? Did she really long to go with him to Africa and did she miss him when he left? Who was her favourite of the children, who held that special place in her heart?
‘If Alia hardened her resolve when it came to bringing up the boys, then what softness was left over for Saeeda?’ I ask Selma. ‘She married off her only daughter before Ameen knew anything about it.’
‘She had no choice,’ Selma retorts. ‘Girls could not be left to fall in love on their own, especially if they were as flighty as Saeeda was.’
‘You remember my aunt?’
‘Yes, of course I do. You do as well, don’t you?’
Saeeda had a small dark mole just above her top lip that moved as she spoke. I remember watching it with intense fascination when I was a child. My aunt took care of Alia and Ameen during the last years of their lives, and we saw her whenever we went up to the village for a visit. Until I moved back to the mountain, my interest in Saeeda had always been superficial.
‘She never told those children that she loved them,’ I say.
‘She didn’t need to,’ Selma replies. ‘They already knew it.’
‘No. Children don’t just know,’ I protest.
I place my hands on my belly and rub gently at the stretching skin beneath my clothes.
‘But they always find out when they grow up,’ Selma says. ‘That you love them, I mean.’
‘Is that what you’re hoping will happen with your own children, Selma?’
She is offended, mutters a quick goodbye and leaves the house.
Spring makes its way into my heart and lifts my spirit. I have the wood stove removed from my room and place the bed underneath the window that faces the front garden. Hovering between sleep and waking in the early morning,