I made my way back up the stairs and along the corridor, the sleepwalking woman had gone, and there was a stillness to the whole place now that was soothing to my mind.
I woke up to glowing white sheets and the confused sounds of engines and people shouting in Arabic or Greek or Farsi, or all three in one sentence. Afra was still asleep.
When I went downstairs the courtyard was full of crates of almost black bananas and boxes of nappies. Two men were holding sacks of potatoes, and another three carried in boxes labelled razors, toothbrushes, notepads, pens. Beyond the broken heart of the open door there were a couple of white vans with charity logos on their sides. I made my way inside to the children’s area, where a woman was putting out toys and board games, notepads and colouring pencils.
‘Excuse me,’ I said.
‘Can I help you?’ the woman said. She spoke English with a different accent.
‘Do you have any paper and colouring pencils?’
‘They’re really for the children,’ she said.
‘My son is upstairs. He’s not well – I thought he might like to draw.’
The woman dug through a bag and produced a notepad and a box of pencils. She handed them to me, reluctantly, but with a smile.
‘I hope he can join us when he’s better,’ she said.
Afra was still asleep, but I slipped them under her hand so that she would feel them there when she woke up. Then I sat for a long time beside her, staring into the whiteness of the sun-filled sheet of the tent, and for a while my mind was blank. Then images began to emerge. There, to my left, was the Queiq River; to my right a grey street with a narenj tree; ahead the famous Baron Hotel; over there was the Umayyad Mosque of Aleppo in the Al-Jalloum district of the ancient city, with the sun setting, painting the domes orange; over that way were the walls of the citadel, and here were crumbling buildings; and there was a broken archway in the al-Madina Souq, and over there a street in the western neighbourhood, the Baby al-Faraj Clock Tower, the abandoned terraces and balconies, the minarets. Then the wind blew through the window and the bedsheet moved and the images faded away. I rubbed my eyes, turned to Afra. She seemed frightened in her sleep – she was restless, her breathing was fast and she was saying something, but I couldn’t make out the words. I put my hand on her head, stroked her hair, and slowly her breathing calmed and the muttering stopped.
She woke up an hour later, but her eyes stayed shut. She was moving; her fingers running over the notepad and then over the pencils.
‘Nuri?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you get these for me?’
‘Yes.’
There was a tiny smile on her face.
She sat up and put them on her lap and ran her hands through her hair with her eyes still closed. Her skin was so clear, and when she opened her eyes they were a metallic grey, her irises so small, as if they were trying to keep out the light.
‘What shall I draw?’ she said.
‘Anything you like.’
‘Tell me. I want it to be for you.’
‘The view from our house.’
I watched her as she sketched, her fingers tracing the pencil marks, following each line as if it were a path. Her eyes flickered onto the paper and away again, blinking a lot now, as if there was a light flashing too close.
‘Can you see anything, Afra?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Be quiet. I’m thinking.’
I watched the picture take shape, I saw the domes emerge and the flat rooftops. In the foreground of the sketch she began to add the leaves and flowers that spiralled the railing of the balcony. Then she shaded in the sky with purple and brown and green – she had no idea what colours she was using, she just seemed to know that she wanted three for the sky. I watched her following the lines of the landscape with the tips of her fingers so that the colour didn’t bleed into the buildings.
‘How do you do that?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, her eyes smiling for a moment. ‘Is it nice?’
‘It’s so beautiful.’
For some reason, when I said this she stopped drawing, so that the right side of the picture was left without colour. Strangely this reminded me of the white crumbling streets once the war came. The way the colour was washed out of everything. The way the flowers died. She handed it to me.
‘It’s not finished,’ I said.
‘It is.’ She pushed it towards me. Then she lay back down and, resting her head on her hands, she remained silent. I didn’t move for a long time. I just lay there looking at the picture, until Neil popped his head around the door to tell us that we had to leave.