Most of the courtyard was taken up by a metal garden table positioned right beneath the lemon tree, but there were bird feeders along the edges and a small vegetable patch in a square of soil, where Mustafa tried to grow herbs. Mostly they wilted because there was not enough sunlight. I watched my cousin as he pressed one of the lemon blossoms between his thumb and forefinger and breathed in the scent.
At these times, during the quiet of a Saturday evening, he began to overthink things, to contemplate; his mind could never rest, was never still. ‘Do you ever imagine what it would be like to have a different life?’ he asked me on one such evening.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It scares me sometimes to think how life can go one way or another. What if I was working somewhere in an office? What if you had listened to your father and ended up in his fabric shop? We have a lot to be grateful for.’
I didn’t respond to this. While my life could easily have taken a different turn, there was no chance that Mustafa could have ended up in an office. No, his dark thoughts came from somewhere else, as if he had already become afraid of losing everything, as if some echo from the future was reaching back and whispering in his ear.
Much to Mustafa’s annoyance, his son Firas would never get up from the computer to help with the meal. ‘Firas!’ Mustafa would call, heading back to the kitchen, ‘Get up before you become glued to that seat!’ But Firas would stay on the wicker chair in the living room, in his T-shirt and shorts. He was a lanky boy of twelve with a long face and slightly overgrown hair, and when he smiled, in defiance of his father, for a moment he resembled a Saluki hunting dog, the type you find in the desert.
Aya, who was just a year older than her brother, would hold Sami by the hand and set the table; by this time he was three and he trotted about like a little man on a mission. She would give him an empty plate or a cup to hold so that he would feel that he was helping her. Aya had long golden hair, like her mother, and Sami would pull at her curls whenever she bent down and giggle as they sprang back up. And then we would all get involved, even Firas – Mustafa would drag him from his chair by a skinny arm – and we would take steaming plates and colourful salads and dips and bread to the table in the courtyard. Sometimes we had red lentil and sweet potato soup with cumin, or kawaj with beef and courgettes, or stuffed artichoke hearts or green been stew, or parsley and bulgur salad, or spinach with pine nuts and pomegranate. Later, honey-soaked baklava and lugaimat dough balls dripping with syrup or preserved apricots in jars that Afra had prepared. Firas would be on his phone and Mustafa would snatch it from his hands and put it in one of the empty honey jars, but he would never really get angry with his son – there was a certain humour between them, even when they were in battle with each other.
‘When will I get it back?’ Firas would say.
‘When it snows in the desert.’
And by the time coffee was on the table, the phone would be out of the honey jar and back in Firas’s hands. ‘Next time, Firas, I will not put it an empty jar!’
As long as Mustafa was cooking or eating, he was happy. It was later, when the sun had set and the scent of the night jasmine engulfed us, especially when the air was still and thick, that his face would drop and I knew that he was thinking, that the stillness and darkness of the night had again brought whispers from the future.
‘What is it, Mustafa?’ I said, one evening when Dahab and Afra were loading the dishwasher after dinner, Dahab’s booming laugh sending the birds up past the buildings and into the night sky. ‘You don’t seem yourself lately.’
‘The political situation is getting worse,’ he said. I knew he was right, though neither of us really wanted to talk about it. He stubbed out his cigarette and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘Things will get bad. We all know it, don’t we? But we’re trying to continue living like we did before.’ He stuffed a dough ball in his mouth as if to prove his point. It was late June, and in March of that year the civil war had just begun with protests in Damascus, bringing unrest and violence to Syria. I must have looked down at this point, and maybe he saw the worry on my face, for when I glanced up again, he was smiling.
‘I’ll tell you what, how about we create more recipes for Aya? I have some ideas – eucalyptus honey with lavender!’ And his eyes gleamed as he began considering his new soap product, calling Aya to bring his laptop outside so that, together, they could work out the exact composition. Although Aya was only thirteen at the time, Mustafa was determined to be her teacher. Aya was busy playing with Sami – how the child loved her! He was always desperate to be close to her, always scanning for her with his large, grey eyes. They were the colour of his mother’s eyes. Stone. Or the colour of a newborn baby’s eyes before they change to brown, except his didn’t change, and they didn’t turn bluer either. Sami would follow Aya around, pulling at her skirt, and she would pick him up, high in her arms, to show him the birds in the feeders, or the insects and lizards that crawled over the walls and across the concrete patio.