She walks everywhere, across the city, from end to end of the former divisions of East and West and up and down the avenues where the grand hotels are located. She slows down to browse through weekend street markets, though she does not stop to buy, eventually making her way past swarms of people until she finds herself standing beneath the magnificent arch of the Brandenburg Gate looking upward or in Potsdamer Platz where remnants of the wall remain, covered in graffiti, a photo opportunity for the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit every year. In the Tiergarten where, at this time of year, the trees are losing their leaves and appear stark and particularly beautiful, she takes a deep breath of clean, cool air and pauses only long enough to fix a shoelace that has come undone, to wipe perspiration off her face with the cotton handkerchief she pulls out of her jeans pocket, or to coax her flyaway hair back into a neat bun at the nape of her neck.
The trick, she knows, is to keep moving so that the conversation that is going on in her head has nowhere to go but forward, no opportunity to stop until complete exhaustion has been achieved.
These are some of the stories she tells herself: Anas is at the airport preparing to check in when a voice over the loudspeaker announces an indefinite delay of his flight; he is on a plane in mid-air when the captain informs the passengers that a fault has been detected in one of the engines and the flight will have to turn back; or although he succeeds in making his way to Berlin, they somehow miss each other at the arrivals lounge and he ends up wandering around the city for days in search of his family.
The possibility that Anas will never come back, that she will never again have the opportunity to gain his forgiveness, is too much to endure, though there is something in her that knows she will soon have to concede to grief, that she cannot avoid facing the truth of this great loss, if only for the sake of the children. For the moment, she is content to lose herself in what she is beginning to see as pilgrimages to her favourite areas of Berlin, tributes to the city in which she was born and brought up and which, once she was grown, had given her Anas.
When they first met and fell in love, these were exactly the expeditions they set out on together, hand in hand and with Brigitte acting as guide. In English – Anas has only ever spoken rudimentary German – she recounted to him the city’s history revealed as much through its landmarks as in its many scars. Then one day, as Anas described to her his admiration for the people of Berlin because, he said, they are not afraid to face the truth about their past and move on from it, something that we Arabs have never had the courage to do, she had felt such love for him that she stopped mid-step on a busy pavement to wrap her arms around him while passersby looked on with what she suspected was a mixture of amusement and annoyance.
This, Brigitte tells herself by way of consolation, is me coming full circle – although she is confused as to how she will manage to step out of the loop and where she will go from there.
The night they received the news, her mother gave her a sedative and told her to try and go to sleep.
—There’s no need to wake the children and tell them about it now, Elena said. Time enough for that tomorrow.
But the tablet had only made Brigitte feel even more agitated and, unable to sleep, she had walked aimlessly around the flat in her bare feet until first light when she dressed, put on her shoes and went out for a long walk, the telephone conversation she had had with Anas’s sister repeating itself again and again in her thoughts.
When she finally got back home, she had gone into Marwan’s room and lain beside him for a while, and when he woke up had told him about his father’s death, though this had been a much gentler version of the truth. She had held him close, and somehow managed to tell him that everything would be all right, that sadness was a natural consequence of loss and that he should allow himself to grieve.
When Rana eventually found out what had happened, she had insisted on sleeping next to Brigitte every night. She still does so, clinging tightly to her and whimpering herself to sleep, while Marwan, who clearly feels the need to blame someone for the tragedy and has decided to settle the guilt squarely on his mother’s shoulders, speaks to her only when absolutely necessary and even then does so in a voice filled with disdain.
She does not know how she could have coped without the support of her parents, who continue to look after the children during her absences without complaint and once she gets home are the stalwart rocks on which she knows she can lean.
Hannah and Peter telephone every day. She knows this not because she has spoken to them but because her parents, who answer these calls, tell her about them. At first, she is furious when her mother says that in wanting to pay their condolences, her friends are also seeking comfort for their own grief. They loved him too, Elena tells her quietly, their loss deserves recognition and only you can give them that, Brigitte. Then, once on her own, she realizes that her mother is right, though she still feels unable to play the part required of her.
When Elena tells her that Hannah needs to talk to her urgently about Anas’s upcoming exhibition, Brigitte is angered again.
—The exhibition, she cries. Who’s thinking of the damned exhibition now?
For the first time, Elena tells her off.
—Don’t raise your voice to me, Brigitte. Your loss does not mean you can treat me with disrespect. And don’t forget, I am only the messenger in all this.
—I’m not ready yet, Brigitte continues to say until the morning her mother stops her on her way out of the door, sits her down and tells her firmly that not being ready is no longer an option.
—Your father and I will never stop supporting you and your children, Brigitte, but the time has come for you to face circumstances. There is no escaping what has happened, my darling girl. Your husband has been killed in the most dreadful way, but you have a son and a daughter who depend on you to do the right thing next. So what will it be?
It is as if, with that question, she is finally given the opportunity she needed to break down. She falls into her mother’s arms and cries for what seems like hours, hears her father call out to the children and take them to the park to play, listens to the sound of her own sobbing over the noise of traffic below, to a telephone ringing unanswered, to her mother’s soft voice whispering, ‘There, there,’ into her ear.
In her mind’s eye, she reviews her life in Damascus, considers the warmth and the frustration, the richness and at times the absence of reason. She trembles at the thought of war and marvels at the extremity of her fear. She had not been wrong in seeking safety for her children, she realizes that now, though there may have been a better way to deal with the consequences of her actions. For a moment too she sees her husband’s beloved face and traces his features with the tips of her fingers for the last time, and says goodbye in a whisper that only he can hear. She weeps until she can weep no more, then straightens up, wipes her hands over her face and decides she is finally done with sorrow.
—You’re right, Mother, Brigitte tells Elena. I’m willing to accept the truth. You don’t need to worry any longer. I know exactly what I have to do.
*
It is as if the shape of the world itself has changed, as if, in those places where there once was something solid to lean against, there is now emptiness, gaps where his father had been that threaten to fill with uncertainty and make him falter.
In the first few moments after hearing the news, Marwan had felt himself engulfed by terror, had closed his eyes as it swept over him, his skin burning and insides on fire, until he thought that he too might be extinguished, that like Anas he too would be suddenly, inexplicably, consumed by darkness. When Brigitte finally wrapped her arms around him, he had endured the embrace as a kind of confirmation of his existence, a redefinition of the physical boundaries of his being, and had felt instantaneous relief and shame at the thought.
—Rana, she mustn’t know, he had heard himself saying.
Grasping him by the arms, pulling him away from her, Brigitte had looked at him and frowned.
—Just don’t tell her, OK, he pleaded. Not yet, please, Mama.
She nodded.
—All right, she whispered. I won’t yet. Not until you’re ready.
For a while, whenever grief threatened to approach and turn his life upside down, he had willed himself away from it; he had rushed to play with his sister and bask in the comfort of not knowing that surrounded her, believing himself, at least temporarily, untainted by the truth. For a while also he thought hard about his father, as if in doing so he might conjure him back into existence, fashion him out of the thin air they all continued to breathe. He recalled conversations they’d had, the details of them, the way Anas had lifted his hand to his mouth to stifle a cough as he spoke, the anticipation with which he, Marwan, had willed him to continue. He remembered his father demonstrating love for home, not only with words but in the stretch of his arm towards the expanse of sea before them during holidays at the beach, in the silence he maintained as he worked, painting the colours of Syria, the people and places he cherished, the quality of light awarded them by the sun overhead and its fleeting invisibility in moments of shade. He realized that what he had learned from his father was vast and limitless, yet filled exactly this moment, this experience of growing up into someone not only older but somehow more pliable. It was a lesson in how to be an exemplary son, one that caused him anguish now because he had been something less than that while Anas was alive.
The moment had finally come when there had been nothing else to do but to accept that the worst had indeed happened: when he watched as Rana wept and allowed their mother to hold her close; when, with a spare arm, Brigitte had reached for him too and he had suddenly realized that in attempting to assuage her children’s anguish, she was also trying to ease her own. He had hated her more than ever then.
—It’s all your fault, he had said, pulling himself away. It’s because of you we’ll never see Baba again.
His remark had made Rana sob even more loudly and Brigitte, looking at him, had surprised him with her reply.
—You’re right, habibi. I thought I was doing what was best for you by taking you away but perhaps I was wrong. I shall never be able to forgive myself for that.
There was resignation in her face, defeat where he had once seen defiance, and he had realized at that moment that it would always be this way between them, that she would continue to be the parent who could not understand him no matter how hard she tried and that he would always resent her for this.
—I will not stay here any longer, he had said, his voice shaking a little. You can’t make me. I want to go back home.
He speaks only when spoken to and cries when he is alone, in his bed late at night when everyone is asleep or as he walks to and from the shops on errands, his cap placed low over his forehead, his contorting face hidden from view.
It is on these walks that he begins to see a figure resembling his father in odd places, by the lift door as he is walking out of it, or standing near the kiosk where he buys his grandfather’s newspaper every morning, even sitting on a bench at the playground watching over Marwan and his sister as they play.
Anas is not ghostlike, is neither solid nor transparent, though he is always silent during these sightings. He looks at no one in particular but is so definitely there that whenever Marwan walks past him, a whooshing sound fills his ears, the awareness of another’s presence sending a tingling feeling through his body, troubling him. Once, strolling with his mother down the street, he sees his father walking in the same direction a few steps ahead of them. When the figure stops suddenly, the face in profile now so that he notes the unmistakable bend of his father’s forehead, the straight nose, his lips pursed as they always were when he was deep in concentration, Marwan tries to steer his mother clear; but she is preoccupied with her thoughts and ignores his hand on her elbow. When she walks straight through the figure, Marwan gasps involuntarily, then watches her stop, her eyes wide open.
—What was that? she asks him.
—What was what?
She looks at him and frowns.
—I’m not sure exactly. I … I thought I felt something.
She passes her hand over her face and he notices tiny drops of perspiration forming just above her upper lip. His own heart thumps inside his chest.
Had Anas felt it too? Marwan wonders.
On the day his mother sits him down and explains that she will be going to Beirut, he feels rising hope.
—I’m going with you. I want to be there for the opening. Rana too. We should all be there.
Brigitte sighs.
—I’m not sure the exhibition will be going ahead, Marwan. I haven’t made up my mind about that yet.
—But it has to, he protests. It will be Baba’s last exhibition. Don’t you see that? Don’t you understand anything at all? And who said it was up to you to decide, anyway?
He watches as a look of uncertainty passes briefly over his mother’s face.
She grabs his arm and looks into his eyes.
—Don’t do that, Brigitte says. Please don’t, Marwan. I know you’re angry and upset but you are not to speak to me like that. Do you think you’re the only one grieving? Is this how you treat me when I need you most? Is this how it’s going to be between us from now on?
Her eyes, he sees, are hollow with sadness.
She lets go of him, leaving soft indentations in his skin from her touch, and he senses a distance between them that frightens him.
—I’m sorry, Mama, he says. I’m so sorry.
He runs to hug her and, in that instant, senses a shift inside him, what he had once thought true pushed aside to make way for something new, something like forgiveness.