them to grow strong, disciplined like their father, and would reproach them for weeping. She was convinced the emotional distance was more painful for her than for the children and did not waver from her resolve in their wakeful hours. But on long, quiet nights when her loneliness seemed too much to bear, Alia would steal into the boys’ bedroom and, standing in the hollow of the open doorway, would watch the four of them as they slept.
Whenever their father came to visit, the children were wary of him until he shed his air of strange lands and smelled like them of the mountain. They would sit around him in the winter room, warming yogurt sandwiches on the stove, waiting for him to speak, to ask for something that they might obey. Wrapped in a greatcoat made from the finest camel hair, he looked as magnificent as an Arab prince, his skin darkened by another sun. Though he never spoke of Africa, they knew he was as great a man there as he was in the village.
My father this, my father that, Salam boasted to other children, until he turned eighteen and went to work alongside his father in jungle dampness. There he saw the making of men’s fortunes, travelling to and from tribal settlements and selling what he could of his goods, an apprentice in trade. As the years passed and his work expanded, Salam would take the time to sit on the porch of his wooden house enjoying the coolness of the evening, gazing at the stars that visited the skies of Africa and were so unlike those at home, dreaming of his return and leaving the dream to rest in a quiet corner of his heart.
Alia thought Rasheed the most beautiful of her children, with his evenly spaced eyes beneath gently arching eye brows, his straight nose and small mouth that smiled in a graceful upward motion as if in quiet amusement. His demeanour suggested an aged serenity that, in a child, inspired awe in some, disbelief in others. In conversations with his mother, Rasheed would sometimes stop in mid-sentence and appear to give himself an almost imperceptible shake before suddenly picking up where he had left off. Alia began to fear that while blessed with the looks and manners of a patrician, Rasheed did not have the wisdom to cope with life, until the day he came to her as she sat on the edge of the bed, a letter from Ameen crumpled in the palm of her hand, the pain of disappointment clutching at her heart.
‘He’s not coming 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.
