‘You forgot about us,’ she says.
‘I know.’
And then I kiss her face and her body and I feel with my lips every inch of her, every line, every scar, everything that she has seen and carried and felt. Then I rest my head on her stomach and she puts her hand on my head and strokes my hair.
‘Maybe we can have another child,’ I say, ‘one day. They won’t be Sami, but we will tell them everything about him.’
‘You won’t forget him?’ she says.
She is silent for a while and I can feel her heartbeat in her belly.
‘Do you remember how he loved to play in the garden?’ I say.
‘Of course I do.’
‘And how he pushed that worm around in his toy truck like he was actually taking him somewhere?’
She laughs and I do too. I can feel her laughter rippling through her body like falling coins.
‘And when I bought him a map of the world,’ I say, ‘and he made a family with stones and sent them out of Syria. He’d been watching Mustafa and me planning out our journey on the globe.’
‘And he didn’t know how to get the stones across the water! How afraid he always was of the water.’ she says.
‘I even had to wash his hair in the sink!’
‘And how about the way he always waited for you at the window when it was time for you to come home.’ And with that last word she sighs and falls asleep and her inner world softens and sounds like water.
Early in the morning the doorbell rings. When nobody answers, it rings again and again. After a while I hear footsteps crossing the landing – they are the footsteps of the Moroccan man. He pauses at the top of the stairs and makes his way down, the floorboards creaking with each step he takes. The door opens and there is muffled conversation. It seems to be a man with a deep voice. I make my way to the top of the stairs and I hear my name, my full name, loud and clear.
‘Nuri Ibrahim. I am here to see Nuri Ibrahim.’
In my pyjamas and with bare feet I go down the stairs and standing there, with the full light of the morning sun behind him, is Mustafa. And the memories flash before my eyes: his father’s house in the mountains, his grandfather spreading honey on warm bread, the paths that led us into the woods where the bees found the flowers, the shrine to his mother and that glittering smile, the way we used to stand exposed in the apiaries with the bees all around us, my father’s sad face and shrinking body, my mother with the red fan: Yuanfen – the mysterious force that causes two lives to cross paths – and our apiaries, the open field full of light, thousands of bees, employees smoking the colonies, the meals beneath the canopies – it all flashes before my eyes as if I am about to take my last breath.
‘Nuri,’ he says simply, and his voice shakes. And that’s when I begin to sob, my body shaking, and I think that I will never stop, and I feel Mustafa moving, coming over to me, resting his hand on my shoulder, a strong grip, and then he embraces me and he carries the smells of an unknown place.
‘I knew you would come,’ he says. ‘I knew you would get here.’
Then he steps back to look at me, and through my blurred vision I see that his eyes are brimming with tears, and that his face is paler than before and older, the lines around his eyes and mouth much deeper, his hair more grey. And there we both stand, battered by life, two men, brothers, finally reunited in a world that is not our home. The Moroccan man stands to one side of us, watching this scene. I notice him now, the sad look in his eyes, the way he is winding his fingers around one another as if he does not know what else to do.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ he says in his own Arabic. ‘Where have you come from? It must have been a long journey.’
‘I have come from Yorkshire,’ Mustafa says, ‘in the north of England; I took the night coach. But I have travelled much further than that.’
I lead Mustafa into the living room and we sit in silence for a while – Mustafa on the edge of the armchair, wringing his hands, me on the sofa. I see that he is looking out into the garden and then at me. He opens his mouth to speak but then remains silent, until we both talk at the same time.
‘How have you been, Nuri?’ he asks.
‘You will be coming, won’t you?’ He sounds anxious.
‘Of course.’
‘Because I can’t do it on my own – it’s not the same.’
‘If I made it this far,’ I say, ‘then I will make it to Yorkshire.’
‘When do you find out?’ he says, and, ‘You said in your email that you’re not well?’