Free Dreams of Water by Nada Awar Jarrar Page B

do.’
    Some time later, when he looks at his watch, Bassam realizes it is early evening and the fighting outside has resumed. He can hear gunfire and the occasional mortar fire at some distance. He wonders what Waddad and Aneesa are thinking now that he has not returned home. I should have let them know something like this might happen, he thinks.
    He had been involved with the party for nearly two years. The leadership promised great things, that together they would put a stop to the rule of the militias and allow people to live normal lives again, although all those promises sound too good to be true now. Bassam felt when he was approached to join the group that he had no choice. He was young and strong and without a job or prospects for the future. It was either become a memberof a political group or emigrate and there was no way he could have gone away and left his mother and sister on their own in the midst of this madness. I did what I had to do, he nods to himself.
    The man next to him is snoring with his back up against the wall. Bassam slides down so that his head is on the cushion, wraps his jacket more tightly around him and tries to fall asleep.
    His father comes to him in a dream. He looks different, with a full head of hair, and he is much taller than he was in real life. A young Bassam walks alongside him, occasionally looking up to catch what he is saying. They are in search of their flat and want to return home and though they seem to be going in the right direction – Bassam recognizes the road leading up to the block, cliffs going down to the water on one side and the wide esplanade on the other – they cannot find it.
    They sit down eventually, on a large grey rock that has moss all over it. Bassam jumps up and examines the seat of his trousers which is now covered with seaweed. When he looks around him, he realizes that he is standing on the Raouche Rock, high up above the water. Beyond is the horizon. His father stands at the edge of the rock but when Bassam approaches him he disappears. Down in the water, there is no sign of anyone having fallen in. Bassam raises his head to the sky and there is his father, floating up into the clouds so that eventually Bassam only sees the soles of his feet, two dark imprints in a sky of white.
    He wakes up stiff with cold. The man next to him is still snoring and most of the others are still asleep. Hewalks to the door and knocks softly and is surprised when it opens.
    â€˜What is it?’ the guard asks him.
    â€˜I need the toilet.’
    The guard looks at him closely and shrugs, then he takes him by the arm, pulls him out of the room and locks the door again. Bassam realizes that he is not the same militiaman who was at the door earlier. In the dim light of the single bulb in the hallway there is a small kitten at the man’s feet. Its head is bent over a scrap of newspaper where morsels of cheese have been placed.
    â€˜Its mother must have been run over by a car,’ the man whispers to Bassam. ‘I picked it up on my way over here. Poor thing was starving.’
    Bassam looks at the militiaman. He is young, with dark hair and eyes. He could be any one of the dozens of people Bassam meets in the streets every day, and although there is a certain gentleness in his face, he carries his machine gun with the ease of long experience.
    â€˜It’s good of you to take care of it,’ Bassam finally says.
    The man looks at him and nods.
    â€˜It’s that one on the left,’ he says, pointing behind him. ‘Two minutes only. And leave the door open.’
    In the morning, the man sitting next to Bassam is summoned away by the guard. He looks anxious as he walks out of the room, but when he returns moments later, he is smiling.
    â€˜My brother-in-law has come for me,’ he tells Bassam. ‘He knows the leader here and they told him there’d been some mistake. It was someone else they were after.’ Hegrabs his jacket