Dreams of Water by Nada Awar Jarrar

small that only her face, framed by dark, untamed hair, and her hand are visible. The moment that this unreal figure attempts to speak, everything around her begins to fadeinto the background until the final image, the single impression that is left behind is one of solid emptiness.
    Aneesa wakes up and slowly opens her eyes but the darkness around her does not waver.
    Aneesa does not see Robert again after that final argument but she does hear about his leaving for New York. She is also surprised when she stops hearing from Isabel. When she no longer comes across her friend at work, she telephones and leaves messages for her to call back. But Isabel never does.
    Sometime later, Aneesa manages to get in touch with Isabel and the two women agree to meet at a café near work.
    â€˜I’ve missed you,’ Aneesa begins.
    â€˜I’ve been away,’ Isabel says.
    â€˜Oh.’
    Isabel is absently stirring sugar into her coffee. She is not looking at Aneesa and seems reluctant to talk.
    â€˜What happened, Isabel? Are you angry with me about Robert? Please tell me what I’ve done.’
    Isabel looks furiously back at her.
    â€˜Did you think he had no feelings, is that it?’
    â€˜I didn’t know he was so serious about our relationship—’
    â€˜Aneesa, how could you possibly not know? It was obvious that he was very much in love with you.’
    â€˜Is that what it feels like? I didn’t know.’
    â€˜Oh, don’t play naïve with me, Aneesa. You’re too old for that. You just didn’t want to make a commitment. It wasn’t convenient.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    Isabel’s anger seems suddenly to dissipate. She takes a deep breath.
    â€˜You’ve never taken us seriously, Aneesa, not me or Robert or any of us,’ she says. ‘We’re just something new and exotic, something for you to discover and pretend to care about.’
    â€˜But I do care about you and Robert.’ Aneesa is crying.
    Isabel reaches for her hand.
    â€˜I know you do, but not so much that it can hurt in any way. You’ve never really been here, Aneesa. In your head, you’re always somewhere else.’ Isabel pushes her chair back and stands up. ‘You didn’t hear from me for a while because I was in New York with Robert. He came to me after you left him. He was heartbroken.’
    Sometimes, in the early evenings of her Western sojourn, Aneesa remains at home dressed in a pair of flannel pyjamas and a warm dressing gown and thinks she could live like this for the rest of her life. She moves around the flat in cloth slippers, preparing dinner and taking note of every step she takes. Aneesa, you are washing your hands now, she muses; after that you’ll chop the carrots. Now you can switch the stove off and now it’s time to do the dishes.
    After eating, she picks up a book and holds it tightly to her chest as she makes her way to the living room. Once in a while, she might walk over to the window and pull the curtains back to glance at the grey street below.
    But when she sits down on the sofa, just as she begins to get comfortable, an image of Waddad, alone in herapartment, comes to mind. She sits at the kitchen table, her head bent over a large tray covered with brown lentils. With the fingers of her right hand she removes small stones and bits of dirt which she then pushes to one side with her left hand. She has on her blue-framed reading glasses and her long grey hair is tied back with a black velvet ribbon. When she looks up, her eyes squinting through the lenses, Aneesa notices that her mother’s skin is more tired than she remembered it. It is lined and soft and papery, as though covered with a thin film of powder.

Part Four
    S alah awaits a new-found happiness. At seventy-six, he is reluctant to appear to be searching for it, looking secretly for an indication of unexpected joys in everything that happens to him, in every encounter