sees that his face has gone very red. She remains perfectly still as Bassam stands up and slowly walks out of the room.
Aneesa stands on a chair by the kitchen table holding a large loaf of flat bread in her hands. She sees her child self carefully fold the loaf into quarters and then try to put it inside a plastic bag before it unfolds again.
‘Are you all right, Aneesa?’ Father comes up behind her.
She looks up at him, his round face, bulbous nose and greying hair, and waits for him to smile.
‘Shall I help you with that?’ he asks.
She nods and watches him hold the folded loaf with one big hand, put it into the bag and then tie the handles of the bag together to make a tight bundle.
‘Where are you going with the bread, habibti?’
Aneesa 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
