Yes, he’d missed his chance to pick up that bouquet hundreds of times. Deep down, he still believed that she was a goddess who deserved to be worshipped, not approached. One touch from her was enough for him; he couldn’t imagine her as a wife chopping onions, her clothes reeking of cooking smells. But now everything had been lost, regardless, and he was content with what remained of their relationship. Here and now she looked like an angel to Bolbol, an angel reaching out her hand to save the drowning; humanity’s only hope lay in her delicate fingers, which could grant life with one affectionate touch.
Bolbol had convinced himself that merely retaining her friendship was a miracle for which he should thank God. He would wait for her to visit Damascus and then take her to the restaurants she loved. Sometimes, and quite intentionally, he took her to places of special importance to their past relationship, where he was tempted to reach out and take her hand. She was polite and friendly to him in those moments, but the silence which soon settled over them made it clear that the past was the past. Then they would return to their favorite topic of conversation when things became awkward: Bolbol would speak and she would listen as he complained about his wife, who thought that buying a new sofa would be preferable to climbing up to the roof of the world and taking in the view. He told her about his wife’s repugnant smell, her hardness and utter lack of concern about him. He complained about their sex life; she called the deed “homework” and laughed endlessly at this little witticism. He described her yellow teeth and her never-ending list of demands: fix the boiler, stock up enough fuel for winter, invite her sister and her husband for dinner. Bolbol would then go on to describe what happened whenever the four of them met: his brother-in-law talked constantly about house prices and would end the evening by advising Bolbol in his hoarse voice to convince his father to sell the large family house or to knock it down and build an apartment block so Abdel Latif could sell off the individual apartments. Bolbol didn’t know how to extricate himself from this situation, he said, but he never allowed his impatience with his wife or her family to show. He remained the same kind man as ever, who allowed his foolish brother-in-law to appear smart and continually advise him how to arrange his life. Still, Bolbol always concluded this litany by restating his regret at having married a woman who didn’t know the poetry of Riyadh al-Saleh al-Hussein—whose conversation consisted entirely of repeating the silly jokes she had been told by colleagues during her trivial day.
As he looked at his shrouded father, Bolbol told himself that he had no regrets at not trying to convince him to sell the house with the flowers Lamia had loved. She used to exchange seedlings with Abdel Latif and spent hours helping him arrange the flower beds. It gave them both indescribable joy, a joy shared by Bolbol’s mother, who adored her plants to the point of madness. Bolbol had often observed his mother and father in the garden, lingering over the harvest of their three olive trees. They behaved like the seasonal workers, eating breakfast under the tree and discussing how much of the harvest to give their friends. Bolbol told Lamia that the flowers were a love token between his parents; he meant that they were a secret token of his own love for her, one of many. He didn’t dare tell her that he lingered to breathe in the fragrance of every flower she herself had pruned or caressed.
Lamia didn’t take too many of the things Bolbol said seriously, but even so, she was an eager listener. He was a different man when he spoke to her; his eyes were bright, his face alive—though he was careful not to be overheard. She knew that he was polite to his brother-in-law, that he didn’t argue with his wife but gave in to all her demands. He didn’t really care if his wife loved the poetry of Riyadh al-Saleh al-Hussein or not.
Back when Zuhayr was still in prison, Lamia would visit Damascus and insist on spending a lot of time with Bolbol, listening to his complaints. It wasn’t that she was getting revenge on him by wallowing in his unhappiness; on the contrary, she sympathized deeply with her old friend. Hearing him, she thought of and enjoyed Bolbol’s image of her as an angel. As for herself, she didn’t complain: she was strong and didn’t want Zuhayr to compromise in exchange for his freedom. She summarized the difficulties caused for her by the Mukhabarat in a few sentences—how they were harassing her at work and in her social circle, which was not really so different from the world of Bolbol’s wife. Lamia didn’t tell Bolbol that she, too, repeated the same jokes told by all low-ranking public employees, that her house clothes stank of onions, and that she often helped her friends with their simple household errands; equally, she didn’t tell him it had been some time now since she last read the poetry of Riyadh al-Saleh al-Hussein, and she never took his diwan down from her bookshelf anymore.
But back when they had graduated and Lamia returned to her hometown and married Zuhayr, her visits grew more and more infrequent, and she lost all interest in those flower beds, just as Bolbol’s father lost interest in them after his wife’s death. One after another, the flowers withered and died, but Bolbol still tried to enjoy the scent of the rosebushes that Lamia had once tended.
Bolbol used to see his father looking miserably at the garden that had changed so utterly, staring with grief in his heart. For him, it had become a place that spoke only of loss, a leftover from a happier and vanished age. After his wife’s death, Abdel Latif changed considerably; he no longer cared much about little details, and the things in his life all lost their shine. He refused Fatima’s offer to clear the closet of her mother’s clothes and many belongings, and he became suspicious that she might do it in his absence. His misgivings increased dramatically whenever Fatima visited him; he would lock the door to her mother’s room and put the key in his pocket. He wouldn’t even allow anyone to clean it unless he was present, a clear sign that he wanted his memories left undisturbed, or so it seemed to everyone. He spent a lot of time reading history and sitting silently in front of the television. He wished he would die, but death wouldn’t grant his wish, no matter how much he pleaded. He spent five years in this way, longing for death as if he and his wife had made a secret pact to depart this life together, although when at last she had deserted him, he had simply let her go.
After his wife’s death, Abdel Latif rarely referred to the dear love he had just buried. He didn’t mention her much or reminisce about the details of his life with her, as if he had lost the vocabulary to speak of his happier past. No one doubted seventy-year-old Abdel Latif’s love for his wife. Everything was proof of it: the rarity of their fights, the way they clung to each other—the image of the happy family (so much like all other happy families) that they projected wherever they went. But Bolbol often thought that the true meaning of love was what he had never experienced and what was now lost to him. He was reminded of all this when he first brought his ailing father back to his house. Bolbol examined him closely; he would almost have sworn that this man wasn’t his father. Starvation had left its scars on his aged body, and his eyes had an odd gleam to them. Abdel Latif wasted no time in telling Bolbol that he had distributed his mother’s clothes to the few neighbors who had stayed behind during the siege. And, by the way, the garden had returned to its former splendor, though now all it grew was basil and wormwood, not counting the three olive trees, which he hoped would hold out for a few more years at least. He added, “Nevine and the martyrs love wormwood.” Without giving Bolbol time to ask, his father told him neutrally that he had married her, Nevine, and that she was the one who had pushed him to escape the besieged town. She had told him resolutely, “Leave this sacred ground.” His father was silent for a long time before carefully addressing Bolbol’s questions over the next few days. Bolbol was very frightened and didn’t fully grasp what his father had said that night.