He glances longingly at the big blue slide on the other side of the park, at the children careering down it, his sister among them, a big smile on her face that reflects a happiness he does not feel, and kicks at the bench his mother is sitting on so that she looks up at him with the anxiety in her eyes that has been there since the day they left home: a kind of startled nervousness that only makes him angrier every time he sees it.
—What is it Marwan? Mama asks him. Why don’t you go and play with the other children?
—You want me to play with those babies? he says. I’m too old for slides and playgrounds.
He frowns when his mother reaches out to touch him.
—Sweetheart, come here.
He quickly moves away.
—No, he says, his voice rising. You can’t make me want to be here. No matter what you do.
For an instant, he is pleased at the hurt look on her face before a now familiar feeling of confusion comes over him.
He does not understand why they have to be here. Berlin is unfamiliar, cold most days, with too big, tall buildings crowded up against each other and so many people. Even this park where his mother has insisted on coming every day since their arrival, the greenness here and the relative quiet, make him feel small.
He sighs. He longs for the skies of home and the familiar streets sheltered below, for the smells of Damascus, for its secrets revealed only to him, for the boy he is there and the future he had been promised.
Maybe, he tells himself, maybe if we were here on holiday, I would like it then.
As it is, he does not know how long they are likely to stay. But what scares him even more is that neither does Mama. When is she going to start behaving like a proper grown-up again? he wonders.
She beckons to him, and he realizes that she is as pretty as ever these days, long golden hair and the coloured eyes he and his sister Rana have inherited. Still, she seems less herself lately, thinner and often sad. For what seems to him the thousandth time, he wishes his father were here.
Only yesterday, he had tried to approach her about getting in touch with Baba again to tell him they were willing to return but she had been adamant, had shouted at him for bringing the subject up, for upsetting her and his sister unnecessarily.
—I’ve explained it to you so many times now, Marwan. Why is it so impossible for you to understand? Do you want to go back while the war is going on? Is that what you’re thinking?
Unlike his sister, who was younger, Marwan had known about the unrest in Syria pretty much as soon as it started. His classmates had talked about it constantly, and he, at twelve years old, had understood most of what was said in news bulletins on television. But throughout that period, he had believed in his father’s assurances that they would always be safe, even when eventually he found himself being wakened at night to the sound of gunfire and loud explosions, so that he would have to try to stop the trembling in his body, the dread that gripped his insides, by closing his eyes tightly and humming quietly to himself.
He had been able to keep his fear at bay until the day before they finally left. Baba was away in Lebanon again for work and he and his sister had just arrived home from school when they felt the whole building shake beneath their feet, heard the sound of glass shattering throughout the apartment. He put his hands over his ears as Rana began to scream; then, to his eternal shame, instead of comforting her he had run into his room and hidden under the bed. The moments that followed seemed endless. He remembers the grimy feel of tears on his face, of his nose running so that he had had to wipe it with his sweater sleeve because he was too scared to go and fetch a tissue. Eventually, when his sister’s screaming finally died down, he heard his mother calling to him. The fear and urgency in her voice compelled him to crawl out of his hiding place and into the living room where he found her sitting in an armchair with her arms wrapped around his little sister, her hair matted and splattered with blood, both of them whimpering quietly.
It seemed to him that everything changed at that moment; he was certain he could no longer believe whatever he had once thought true: not his father’s promises, not childhood nor joy, not home nor any claim to it. Sitting in his mother’s lap next to his sister, body trembling, he had felt himself retch at the sight and smell of blood and immediately known guilt and shame because of it.
He wanders over to the edge of the park, away from the playground, and hides under the wide and drooping branches of a large tree. The thought that his mother would not find him should she come looking pleases him. Let her be scared, he thinks. Maybe she’ll try to understand then how I feel.
Until now, his mother’s parents had not figured too prominently in his life. And though he loves them and knows that they return that love, he does not think he knows them well enough to give them his unconditional trust. In Damascus, everything and everyone was familiar: the home he grew up in, the streets and neighbourhood he loves so well, his school and all his friends, the family whom he misses so much – Sitto and Jiddo, aunts, uncles and cousins; all the people who, in recognizing him, made him feel stronger and still more real.
There is something else too, something he would not dare talk about to his mother, especially not now. In Damascus, he was aware of occupying a unique place in the family, of enjoying the privilege of being the only son of an only son – the keeper of the family name, his grandfather had once explained. It meant not only that he was allowed more freedom than his sister but that, as he grew older, there were fewer restrictions on his movements than on those even of his mother and other older female members of the family. It was something that he had heard Brigitte and Anas argue about so that at times he had felt in himself the same divergence, the same struggle to accommodate conflicting ideas without success. Still, whatever the conflict, there was always the reassurance that it would be resolved, that the family, unbroken, would always win through.
But he is fearful that all that has been lost now, that in the rift between his mother and father, in the spaces between himself and his home, in the before and after of this war, his own life has been immeasurably altered, his future riven with uncertainty. And while having his German grandparents here helps soften the fall, Marwan knows that falling of some kind, that being thrust into the fearful unknown, has become inevitable not just for him but for his parents and sister too.
Rana comes running towards him, grabs his hand and pulls him out of his hiding place.
—Come see, come see, she squeals.
—What is it?
—I can slide down on my stomach now, really fast. Come watch.
She pulls at his arm but he stands his ground.
—Marwan, bitte?
He looks up to find Brigitte beside him and expects her to begin pleading with him again. Instead, she is smiling, her face open and with so much expectation in it that his heart leaps inside his chest.
—OK, I’ll come, he says. Just stop pulling at my arm, Rana.