Free Dreams of Water by Nada Awar Jarrar

reaches to touch her hair. It is still long and silky though she has it held back in a bun.
    â€˜Take care, habibti ,’ Bassam whispers.
    â€˜What time are you coming home?’ Waddad asks as he goes through the door with the men.
    â€˜Don’t worry, khalti , he’ll be back later,’ the ringleader says with a chuckle as he puts his arm through Bassam’s.
    â€˜Did you bring your car keys?’ the ringleader asks Bassam once they get downstairs.
    Bassam nods.
    â€˜Give them to me.’ The ringleader throws the keys to one of the men. ‘Follow us in his car. It’s the little red Renault in the car park over there.’
    â€˜What do you want my car for?’ Bassam asks but the man ignores him.
    They lead him to a small van and tell him to climbinto the back. One man sits next to him. When he unzips his jacket, Bassam sees the gun pushed into the top of his trousers. The man takes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it up without offering one to Bassam.
    It is a sunny day and because it is still morning, people are out in the streets. The fighting doesn’t usually begin until late in the afternoon once everyone is home from work and the militiamen have had their rest. It seems to Bassam, for one moment at least, that Beirut is back to its normal self, cars are hooting their horns at one another and there is a sense of buoyancy in the air. He laughs out loud and the man next to him looks up.
    â€˜Shut up,’ the man says with obvious boredom.
    Bassam shakes his head and looks out of the car window, suddenly wishing he had seen his sister before she left the house earlier that morning.
    His father had always insisted that the family spend several weeks of the summer in their home in the mountains. But it was Aneesa who seemed to enjoy the experience most. Bassam remembers her as a little girl, dressed in a thin cotton dress and sandals, her legs slim and brown as she danced around the roses that their father had loved so much. There had been something baffling about her even then, a kind of wholeness that excluded everyone else. Still, he had felt fiercely protective of Aneesa when they were children and feels it even more strongly now that they are both older. The thought that he might have let his sister and mother down enters Bassam’s head.
    â€˜Where are you taking me?’ he asks, but no one bothers to reply.
    There are many things that Bassam regrets. He was never particularly close to his father, perhaps because they were both too embarrassed to show affection openly; nor did he ever make a real effort to understand his mother, his role being only one of protector rather than friend. There have been times since his father’s death, however, that Bassam has sensed in Waddad a strength greater than his own, a resourcefulness that makes him uneasy at times.
    He is also sorry that he left university before he had gained a degree, something he knows he would never have done if his father had been alive. I might have had a chance, if I had continued, to eventually leave this country and find work, he thinks. I would have sent for mother and Aneesa later on and then we all might have been free.
    Aneesa. It had been his maternal grandmother’s name, soft and beautiful like his sister, the sweet companion, the friend. That is what Aneesa is to him, someone he can trust, who sees the things he fears most and loves him the only way she knows how, fiercely and without reproach.
    â€˜That’s not the way you do it, Aneesa,’ Bassam says, pushing his sister away impatiently. ‘Here, let me.’
    They are trying to put up a tent in the back garden of the house in the mountains. Their father has given them instructions on what to do but Bassam is not sure he has understood. He is feeling angry with himself and with Aneesa’s futile fumbling with the pegs and ropes.
    â€˜It’s no use you trying to do something you know nothing about,’