Somewhere, Home by Nada Awar Jarrar

Author:Nada Awar Jarrar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

There is much destruction, Aida, and a suffocating melancholy that has descended over the areas haunted only by militias and invading armies over the last fifteen years.

But despite the ugliness, there are glimpses of beauty. Only yesterday, I was walking past the American University and saw a beautiful gardenia growing by a barricade. It had been placed on top of a sand barrel and had barbed wire round it for protection. Even these wretched fighters still have some humanity in them.

He had taken to appearing in the armchair in her living room, never staying long but leaving her with an anxiety that he might call to her in sleep or stray into her dreaming. She preferred their encounters in leafy parks or half-empty pavement cafés where she could fail to notice him long enough to gather a measure of composure. Once or twice she saw him enter her classroom and sit among the children as they worked. ‘You cannot interrupt me at school like that, Amou Mohammed,’ she told him crossly one night as they sat in the flat. ‘It distracts me from my work.’

‘I like to watch the children you care about so much.’

He did not come to school after that, choosing instead to meet her at the gate and walk her home whenever the fancy took him.

It was raining very hard and she’d had a very difficult day at school. When Amou Mohammed appeared under her umbrella and took her arm as she walked, Aida felt irritation creep over her. She pursed her lips and determined not to say anything. He did not seem to mind the silence. ‘What is there to hum about?’ she finally asked him.

‘I’m happy,’ replied Amou Mohammed, ‘but I gather you aren’t. What’s the matter?’

‘What do you think?’ She stopped and sighed. ‘I feel so sad most of the time. It’s as if the darkness will never leave me. I miss the light from home.’

The rain dripped down the edges of her umbrella and made puddles at their feet. When Aida looked down, Amou Mohammed’s bare toes had turned blue with the cold. They began walking again.

‘It rains back home too,’ said Amou Mohammed.

‘I know. But for some reason I only remember the sunlight.’

When they finally reached her building, he removed his arm from hers and stepped back into the rain.

Later that evening, as Aida sat reading his last letter to her, Amou Mohammed returned.

‘You were so wrong about those fighters.’ She looked up at him. ‘I can’t believe you had something good to say about them.’

He wandered around the room, fingering the piles of books lying untidily on the shelves.

‘They tended flowers during the day and murdered people at night,’ she continued. ‘Isn’t that what one of them did to you?’

A pained expression crossed his face. ‘He was just a boy, you know.’ Amou Mohammed spoke very quietly. ‘Probably more afraid than I was.’

Aida suddenly felt suffocated by the calm that had descended over the room. ‘How could you forgive him?’ she asked angrily.

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