Oh, her name is Amal. Finally, a familiar name, Yasmina thought, as she heard one of her regular passers-by calling out Amal. From her spot, it was hard to know people’s names. She could only watch them pass by.
Yasmina had been watching Amal for over three years without knowing her name. Amal would pass by her every weekday on the same side of the road, the one close to the garden fence. She walked at the same fast pace, head lowered, looking down at the ground. Most of the time, Amal had her headphones on but on some mornings she would be on the phone. Yasmina could never hear the phone conversations clearly as she passed by quickly.
Amal worked for a big company a little way down the road from Yasmina. The company had a large number of employees. Amal was one of the few staff members who arrived and left at random times. Everyone else was consistent, like clockwork. It was on a morning when she arrived early, that Yasmina heard a woman call her.
‘Amal, Amal.’
Because of her headphones Amal could not hear her, until the woman tapped her shoulder. They were near Yasmina.
‘Good morning. Sorry. Had my headphones on. How are you?’
Yasmina was excited to finally know the woman’s name and hear her voice. Amal and her friend paused briefly and chatted before they continued walking to work. Yasmina was intrigued by how Amal spoke English differently to what she was used to hearing.
Yasmina had become an expert analyst of her regular passers-by. She could tell what their mood was from their pace and postures as they walked. When the cars’ exhaust smoke became too suffocating, she had to remind herself she was lucky to be living on a busy road. She could have been living in a neighbourhood where hardly any humans passed by.
Moreover, Yasmina was happy that there was a creche nearby. She loved watching the kids with their parents, walking, sitting in buggies or, her favourite, on bike baby seats. She thought the kids in helmets looked adorable. It was only through a conversation with Roseo that Yasmina learnt that the kids wore the helmets for safety. She had thought it was part of their outfits.
‘Health and safety are a priority in the UK. I learnt that through my experience travel-ling here from Spain,’ Roseo told her once. Yasmina always thought it was a shame that Roseo did not speak to her often. She could have learnt more from him.
The fact that the woman had an Arabic name, was the kind of thing she would have immediately spoken to Opunita about, had she still been living next to her. Opunita and Yasmina had been friends. They’d had many conversations. They connected over missing the sun, the warm weather, and the loudness of people. They found many things in common between Mexico and Syria. For Yasmina, the sun was a blessing even before it was fully up in the sky.
Yasmina often missed Amira, who did not leave Damascus with her. Amira used to wake up at dawn. The first thing she would do was to give water to Yasmina and talk to her while softly caressing her. ‘Sabah el kheir Yasmina. Keefek elyom? Good morning Yasmina, how are you today? What have you carried for me from last night?’
Yasmina told Opunita all about Amira and how she had a specific way of collecting jasmines. Amira would leave half the jasmines on the branches. She would smell them with the morning breeze from her balcony when she woke up for her prayers at dawn. Then she would collect the other half of the jasmine buds on a plate at dusk. Most of the jasmines would be closed and would later blossom on the plate, filling the entire house with their heavenly scent.
One day, not long after Yasmina learnt Amal’s name, she noticed a change in her. She had stopped looking at the ground as she walked. She smiled more and seemed like a different person. She would now look at the sky or at the tree.
There was a tree that grew on the street very close to the fence where Yasmina was. Amal would pass by, brush her fingers through the dangling leaves and branches of the tree and smile. Yasmina was shocked to see Amal pet the tree that way. It reminded her of Amira. Yasmina had not seen a single person do that since she moved out of Damascus.
Amal would even whisper something to the tree that Yasmina could not hear. She might have been speaking in a tree language. One thing that always bothered Yasmina was that she had never learnt how to communicate with trees.
It was an unusually hot summer. Roseo bloomed and grew so big, the fragrance of his roses was so strong. His branches grew so aggressively he began to overshadow Yasmina. In spite of her struggle to get some sun and regain her usual view of the street, she was grateful. Finally, Roseo broke his vow of silence. He only spoke when he was in full bloom. His conversations helped her a lot, especially on quiet evenings when the street was near dead.
One morning, Amal was passing by, wearing a beautiful white summer top, a grey skirt and carrying a colourful bag. She had her headphones on and was smiling and singing. Yasmina could see she was skipping more than walking, as she approached from the corner. Amal brushed her fingers through the tree leaves and was about to continue walking, when she paused and looked to her left at the garden-fence.
Finally she has noticed me, thought Yasmina.
Alas, Amal approached Roseo, buried her nose in one of his big red roses and inhaled the fragrance deeply. She then patted the rose petals and whispered, ‘Thank you.’
‘What a selfish human being.’ Said Roseo. ‘I can’t believe she inhaled so much of my scent in one sniff. Doesn’t she realise I need this scent, otherwise the bees won’t land on me?’
Yasmina didn’t reply. She was captivated. She followed Amal’s skipping steps until she turned right, to get into her workplace. She could not believe Amal had come so close and yet did not see her.
‘At least she saw you, touched you and thanked you,’ Yasmina finally responded to Roseo’s moaning.
‘Of course, you’re jealous. A small jasmine vine like you that bears tiny flowers would be jealous of my beautiful roses.’
‘My flowers! You’ve never seen my flowers in full bloom. When I was back in Damascus, I had the largest, most fragrant jasmines. They would fill the entire neighbourhood with scent.’
‘Exactly, back in Damascus. Reality check, we are in London. It’s cold here and you barely blossom. You and that old cactus, Opunita, were always jealous of me.’
‘Never. Jealous of you? You were jealous of us being close friends while you remained in your stupid vow of silence most of the year. If it wasn’t for our conversations, you would have been totally bored. It is me who keeps you entertained every evening with my stories.’
‘Your stupid stories do not entertain me. They disturb my quiet and peace.’
‘Well, you don’t have to worry about that then. I will stay silent. No one will disturb you and your big roses. Opunita is long gone. I shall never forget your joy the day they moved her and dug out her roots. Soon, I too will be gone if you keep pushing your thorny branches over my soft leaves.’
‘Sarah and Richard would never cut you down, you know that.’
Yasmina wished they would. She hoped they would dig her out and send her back to Damascus or even to Calais, to be with Layla.
Everyday after that, Yasmina longed to be seen and touched by Amal but Amal did not see her. Amal would smell Roseo, caress his petals and the tree and go on walking. Yasmina wished Sarah and Richard had never moved her out to the garden. Inside the house, the cat had always kept her company.
When Yasmina first moved to London in the middle of winter in 2015, Sarah and Richard kept her in the living room near the fireplace. She had lost many of her branches in the cold weather in Calais. The house was small and cosy but old.
The middle-aged couple would light the fire in the fireplace in the evenings. The fire made the living room as warm as the streets of Damascus in autumn. The living room had a big bookcase filled with books, one big sofa and two armchairs. The table in the middle of the room was always covered with papers, books, cups of tea and Sarah’s knitting basket.
Only a few times did Sarah take Yasmina to the kitchen to add some fertiliser and trim the dried branches. Yasmina saw her dead leaves fall into the compost bin. It was the only brown bin of the three bins in the kitchen. The compost bin felt like a grave for Yasmina. She wondered what would be buried in the green and blue bins if plants were buried in the brown one.
When spring arrived, Sarah and Richard decided to move Yasmina out to the garden to give her more soil to grow in. Sarah watered Yasmina and caressed her every day. She even spoke to her, but Yasmina could never understand Sarah. Yasmina’s branches curled up and her buds did not blossom. Sarah was so sad that she cried. That was the first time Yasmina was able to understand the English language.
‘I am sorry, we promised Layla to look after you. She’d travelled with you all the way from Damascus for you to live. Layla trusted us. We only wanted to help give you a new home and enjoy your presence until Layla hopefully manages to cross over. I can’t believe I am failing her again,’ Sarah said with tears flowing down her face.
On that same day, Yasmina talked to Opunita. Yasmina had been ignoring Opunita’s attempts to communicate for days. It felt as though all of Yasmina’s leaves and tiny branches reached out to the world seeking connection. Opunita and Yasmina became friends. They spoke all the time. Until one day, when the neighbour spoke to Sarah over the fence.
‘Your cactus has grown so big. It’s now leaning on my fence and tilting into my garden. I don’t think our fence can provide enough support.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I did not realise it was spreading over to your garden.’
‘To be honest, I have been meaning to talk to you about it for a while, to see if you could maybe cut it back, or better still, remove it altogether.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I have grandchildren, you see. They play in the garden when they visit. I am constantly worried they’ll prick their fingers on the cactus’s thorns.’
‘My husband or I can come over to your garden and cut the bits that are tilting over. But I will not chop off the entire cactus for sure. We got it from Mexico years ago. I even had to go through a lot of paperwork to get it through border control. It took a lot of effort looking after it to grow this big.’
However, Sarah had to chop Opunita down in the end when the neighbour complained to the council. On lonely evenings, Yasmina used to push one of her roots under the ground a bit further to where Opunita used to be. Yasmina hoped if she pushed some of her nutrients through, she would bring whatever was left of Opunita in the soil back to life. But, when Opunita was uprooted, the gardener they hired did a very thorough job. Yasmina chose to believe that Richard and Sarah did not really kill Opunita but rather relocated her to somewhere else more spacious and with a lot of sun.
One morning Amal did not stop by to smell the roses.
Roseo said to Yasmina, ‘See? She no longer stops to smell my roses.’
‘She was sad today. Didn’t you notice how she was walking?’
‘Of course, you know all about her personality, don’t you?’
‘I’ve been watching her for three years. She reminds me of Layla.’
‘Layla, again. Why does she never come to visit you, this amazing Layla?’
Yasmina had been waiting for over three years for Layla to visit. But Layla never visited. Yasmina constantly wondered why she could come in Sarah’s and Richard’s car from Calais while Layla could not. Seeing Amal sad that day, Yasmina remembered Layla’s tears and promises when she said goodbye.
Layla promised Yasmina that Richard and Sarah would take good care of her until she came over to London. Sarah and Richard took Yasmina in her small pot from Layla’s hands. They put Yasmina on the car’s back seat. Each of them gave Layla a hug and insisted on giving her the sleeping bag they had in their car boot.
Yasmina remembered how Sarah also cried in the car after they left Layla. Every now and then Richard held Sarah’s hand. When the car boarded the ferry, they got out of the car and took Yasmina out with them. Each of them sat reading a book and drinking tea. Yasmina sat on the table in between their chairs. The white neon lighting of the ferry’s café seating area felt artificial.
Sarah and Richard bought some food from the café at the end of the ferry ride. Sarah put the apples and the sandwiches in her recyclable shopping bag. Yasmina was surprised when she realised the small paper packages contained food in them. She had never seen a triangular sandwich in Syria, only rolled wraps. Sarah did not seem excited about the ferry food, but it was the only option. They had decided not to stop at a service station on the way back. They had left their cat alone and did not like to leave him for more than two days at a time.
Amal was not sad for too long. A few days later she got back to her routine. Every day during summer, she would pet the tree. She would then turn to Roseo to sniff his fragrant roses, whisper thanks and walk on. Roseo stopped getting annoyed by her sniffs. He even enjoyed them.
‘A smart woman this one, she appreciates my beauty and is trying to show it to me,’ he once said to Yasmina.
Yasmina kept watching Amal. Like a lover stuck in a hopeless love triangle, she suffered quietly. She felt her odourless jasmines would never attract Amal. Amal would come so close everyday but did not see Yasmina. Yasmina felt like those early days in the garden when she was unable to communicate and had lost connection with everyone. She longed for her Damascus life.
Yasmina was sent out by Amira with her youngest granddaughter, Layla, who was leaving Damascus to flee the war. Yasmina remembered the sound of explosions, the distant cries and the shelling. She remembered seeing roads with mounts of dirt and big holes in the ground on her way in the taxi. There were so many men carrying guns stopping the car every now and then. They requested to check identity cards. Many asked the passengers to get out of the car for a personal search.
Each time the car stopped, Yasmina felt Layla holding her breath. Layla only exhaled again when the car moved past the military checkpoint. One of the soldiers commented how beautiful Yasmina was. Layla was afraid. Layla feared he would take Yasmina from her. Yasmina was all Layla had of her grandmother and of her Damascus. With her bent branches in Layla’s tight hold, Yasmina learnt how fear can turn the most sacred of touches to painful ones.
Throughout the journey, Layla brushed her fingers through Yasmina’s leaves in the same manner her grandmother would stroke them. Layla gazed out of the car window until the road out of Damascus ended.
Yasmina never told Opunita about that journey. Not sharing was not intentional but rather because she did not understand most of it. She only recollected Layla’s pain and tears, the entire time they were on the road together. Layla would speak to her every night with tears in her voice. On cold nights Layla wrapped Yasmina with her scarf.
Each time they walked across mountains and valleys, Yasmina enjoyed the beautiful scenery. But her joy in nature was spoiled by her worries. She saw Layla’s sad face, and the pain and exhaustion that grew every day. There was a time when Layla had to let go of her spare pair of shoes. She was too tired to carry them, so she gave the shoes to a homeless woman in Budapest.
‘Don’t worry Yasmina! I won’t leave you anywhere. We will go together to London. You shall grow in the new home I will live in. We shall send your photos to teiteih Amira. She will be happy to see us,’ Layla used to assure Yasmina in the evenings.
It was now the end of the summer. Yasmina grew fewer jasmine buds each day. When Roseo’s rose petals all fell, Amal still paused and nodded to Roseo. Every now and then Amal would be on her way to work and wouldn’t acknowledge the tree or Roseo. However, a day or two later, Amal would go back to her caring routine.
One day, Amal paused by Roseo and whispered, ‘Thank you.’ It was when she was looking down among the bare branches that she noticed Yasmina. She gasped.
‘La ma bsadek! No, I can’t believe this. How long have you been here for?’.
Using her phone, Amal took a picture of the three jasmine flowers that Yasmina was carrying and stroked her softly. She examined her small leaves with her fingers and sniffed the jasmine fragrance that was barely there.
‘Marhaba, keefek? Hello, how are you? I used to have many of your sisters growing in my garden back home. Actually, jasmines grew all over our neighbourhood. But our jasmines are bigger and more fragrant. This is not to say yours aren’t pretty. They really are. Your faint scent smells just like the jasmines back home. Thank you,’ Amal said in perfect Arabic.
Yasmina’s leaves flinched. She could not talk to Amal. But she squeezed her entire being to exude any odour that she held within herself as a response to Amal. Amal smiled and stroked her.
‘I can’t believe there has been a jasmine vine on my way to work for years and I only got to see it now. I wonder how long she has been there for,’ Amal said to herself out loud in Arabic, as she walked away.
‘Ha, you must be thrilled now,’ said Roseo.
‘I am in pure joy. Amal turned out to be Syrian. See, I told you she reminded me of Layla. Her soft touch, warm voice and sweet Arabic words.’
‘I was surprised I didn’t understand her language.’
‘You have to feel the connection with a human to understand their language.’
‘Right. Says the expert.’
Amal reminded Yasmina of Amira. She had nearly forgotten Amira’s face and voice. In that moment, to Yasmina, all three women, Amira, Layla and Amal, felt like one. They all felt like Syria. They carried Syria’s warm fresh breeze and loving sunrays.
Autumn was in the air. Yet, Yasmina felt warm every time Amal petted her leaves and talked to her. Slowly, Amal no longer acknowledged Roseo. It was not intentional. Some days Amal did not feel great and was not present enough to connect with Roseo or the tree. On such days, she would pause, glance over at Yasmina and smile.
Like the Damascus sun, Amal brought warmth and light to Yasmina’s grey London skies. But Yasmina could never tell Amal. She could not grow new jasmines to please Amal either. She tried hard but blossoming new flowers proved impossible in the cold British winter.
However, as the days passed, Yasmina realised Amal did not need the little white flowers to pause or smile at her. It made her happy to hear Amal simply say ‘Sabah elKheir. Good morning,’ as she passed by her every morning.
Amal worked for a big company a little way down the road from Yasmina. The company had a large number of employees. Amal was one of the few staff members who arrived and left at random times. Everyone else was consistent, like clockwork. It was on a morning when she arrived early, that Yasmina heard a woman call her.
‘Amal, Amal.’
Because of her headphones Amal could not hear her, until the woman tapped her shoulder. They were near Yasmina.
‘Good morning. Sorry. Had my headphones on. How are you?’
Yasmina was excited to finally know the woman’s name and hear her voice. Amal and her friend paused briefly and chatted before they continued walking to work. Yasmina was intrigued by how Amal spoke English differently to what she was used to hearing.
Yasmina had become an expert analyst of her regular passers-by. She could tell what their mood was from their pace and postures as they walked. When the cars’ exhaust smoke became too suffocating, she had to remind herself she was lucky to be living on a busy road. She could have been living in a neighbourhood where hardly any humans passed by.
Moreover, Yasmina was happy that there was a creche nearby. She loved watching the kids with their parents, walking, sitting in buggies or, her favourite, on bike baby seats. She thought the kids in helmets looked adorable. It was only through a conversation with Roseo that Yasmina learnt that the kids wore the helmets for safety. She had thought it was part of their outfits.
‘Health and safety are a priority in the UK. I learnt that through my experience travel-ling here from Spain,’ Roseo told her once. Yasmina always thought it was a shame that Roseo did not speak to her often. She could have learnt more from him.
The fact that the woman had an Arabic name, was the kind of thing she would have immediately spoken to Opunita about, had she still been living next to her. Opunita and Yasmina had been friends. They’d had many conversations. They connected over missing the sun, the warm weather, and the loudness of people. They found many things in common between Mexico and Syria. For Yasmina, the sun was a blessing even before it was fully up in the sky.
Yasmina often missed Amira, who did not leave Damascus with her. Amira used to wake up at dawn. The first thing she would do was to give water to Yasmina and talk to her while softly caressing her. ‘Sabah el kheir Yasmina. Keefek elyom? Good morning Yasmina, how are you today? What have you carried for me from last night?’
Yasmina told Opunita all about Amira and how she had a specific way of collecting jasmines. Amira would leave half the jasmines on the branches. She would smell them with the morning breeze from her balcony when she woke up for her prayers at dawn. Then she would collect the other half of the jasmine buds on a plate at dusk. Most of the jasmines would be closed and would later blossom on the plate, filling the entire house with their heavenly scent.
One day, not long after Yasmina learnt Amal’s name, she noticed a change in her. She had stopped looking at the ground as she walked. She smiled more and seemed like a different person. She would now look at the sky or at the tree.
There was a tree that grew on the street very close to the fence where Yasmina was. Amal would pass by, brush her fingers through the dangling leaves and branches of the tree and smile. Yasmina was shocked to see Amal pet the tree that way. It reminded her of Amira. Yasmina had not seen a single person do that since she moved out of Damascus.
Amal would even whisper something to the tree that Yasmina could not hear. She might have been speaking in a tree language. One thing that always bothered Yasmina was that she had never learnt how to communicate with trees.
It was an unusually hot summer. Roseo bloomed and grew so big, the fragrance of his roses was so strong. His branches grew so aggressively he began to overshadow Yasmina. In spite of her struggle to get some sun and regain her usual view of the street, she was grateful. Finally, Roseo broke his vow of silence. He only spoke when he was in full bloom. His conversations helped her a lot, especially on quiet evenings when the street was near dead.
One morning, Amal was passing by, wearing a beautiful white summer top, a grey skirt and carrying a colourful bag. She had her headphones on and was smiling and singing. Yasmina could see she was skipping more than walking, as she approached from the corner. Amal brushed her fingers through the tree leaves and was about to continue walking, when she paused and looked to her left at the garden-fence.
Finally she has noticed me, thought Yasmina.
Alas, Amal approached Roseo, buried her nose in one of his big red roses and inhaled the fragrance deeply. She then patted the rose petals and whispered, ‘Thank you.’
‘What a selfish human being.’ Said Roseo. ‘I can’t believe she inhaled so much of my scent in one sniff. Doesn’t she realise I need this scent, otherwise the bees won’t land on me?’
Yasmina didn’t reply. She was captivated. She followed Amal’s skipping steps until she turned right, to get into her workplace. She could not believe Amal had come so close and yet did not see her.
‘At least she saw you, touched you and thanked you,’ Yasmina finally responded to Roseo’s moaning.
‘Of course, you’re jealous. A small jasmine vine like you that bears tiny flowers would be jealous of my beautiful roses.’
‘My flowers! You’ve never seen my flowers in full bloom. When I was back in Damascus, I had the largest, most fragrant jasmines. They would fill the entire neighbourhood with scent.’
‘Exactly, back in Damascus. Reality check, we are in London. It’s cold here and you barely blossom. You and that old cactus, Opunita, were always jealous of me.’
‘Never. Jealous of you? You were jealous of us being close friends while you remained in your stupid vow of silence most of the year. If it wasn’t for our conversations, you would have been totally bored. It is me who keeps you entertained every evening with my stories.’
‘Your stupid stories do not entertain me. They disturb my quiet and peace.’
‘Well, you don’t have to worry about that then. I will stay silent. No one will disturb you and your big roses. Opunita is long gone. I shall never forget your joy the day they moved her and dug out her roots. Soon, I too will be gone if you keep pushing your thorny branches over my soft leaves.’
‘Sarah and Richard would never cut you down, you know that.’
Yasmina wished they would. She hoped they would dig her out and send her back to Damascus or even to Calais, to be with Layla.
Everyday after that, Yasmina longed to be seen and touched by Amal but Amal did not see her. Amal would smell Roseo, caress his petals and the tree and go on walking. Yasmina wished Sarah and Richard had never moved her out to the garden. Inside the house, the cat had always kept her company.
When Yasmina first moved to London in the middle of winter in 2015, Sarah and Richard kept her in the living room near the fireplace. She had lost many of her branches in the cold weather in Calais. The house was small and cosy but old.
The middle-aged couple would light the fire in the fireplace in the evenings. The fire made the living room as warm as the streets of Damascus in autumn. The living room had a big bookcase filled with books, one big sofa and two armchairs. The table in the middle of the room was always covered with papers, books, cups of tea and Sarah’s knitting basket.
Only a few times did Sarah take Yasmina to the kitchen to add some fertiliser and trim the dried branches. Yasmina saw her dead leaves fall into the compost bin. It was the only brown bin of the three bins in the kitchen. The compost bin felt like a grave for Yasmina. She wondered what would be buried in the green and blue bins if plants were buried in the brown one.
When spring arrived, Sarah and Richard decided to move Yasmina out to the garden to give her more soil to grow in. Sarah watered Yasmina and caressed her every day. She even spoke to her, but Yasmina could never understand Sarah. Yasmina’s branches curled up and her buds did not blossom. Sarah was so sad that she cried. That was the first time Yasmina was able to understand the English language.
‘I am sorry, we promised Layla to look after you. She’d travelled with you all the way from Damascus for you to live. Layla trusted us. We only wanted to help give you a new home and enjoy your presence until Layla hopefully manages to cross over. I can’t believe I am failing her again,’ Sarah said with tears flowing down her face.
On that same day, Yasmina talked to Opunita. Yasmina had been ignoring Opunita’s attempts to communicate for days. It felt as though all of Yasmina’s leaves and tiny branches reached out to the world seeking connection. Opunita and Yasmina became friends. They spoke all the time. Until one day, when the neighbour spoke to Sarah over the fence.
‘Your cactus has grown so big. It’s now leaning on my fence and tilting into my garden. I don’t think our fence can provide enough support.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I did not realise it was spreading over to your garden.’
‘To be honest, I have been meaning to talk to you about it for a while, to see if you could maybe cut it back, or better still, remove it altogether.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I have grandchildren, you see. They play in the garden when they visit. I am constantly worried they’ll prick their fingers on the cactus’s thorns.’
‘My husband or I can come over to your garden and cut the bits that are tilting over. But I will not chop off the entire cactus for sure. We got it from Mexico years ago. I even had to go through a lot of paperwork to get it through border control. It took a lot of effort looking after it to grow this big.’
However, Sarah had to chop Opunita down in the end when the neighbour complained to the council. On lonely evenings, Yasmina used to push one of her roots under the ground a bit further to where Opunita used to be. Yasmina hoped if she pushed some of her nutrients through, she would bring whatever was left of Opunita in the soil back to life. But, when Opunita was uprooted, the gardener they hired did a very thorough job. Yasmina chose to believe that Richard and Sarah did not really kill Opunita but rather relocated her to somewhere else more spacious and with a lot of sun.
One morning Amal did not stop by to smell the roses.
Roseo said to Yasmina, ‘See? She no longer stops to smell my roses.’
‘She was sad today. Didn’t you notice how she was walking?’
‘Of course, you know all about her personality, don’t you?’
‘I’ve been watching her for three years. She reminds me of Layla.’
‘Layla, again. Why does she never come to visit you, this amazing Layla?’
Yasmina had been waiting for over three years for Layla to visit. But Layla never visited. Yasmina constantly wondered why she could come in Sarah’s and Richard’s car from Calais while Layla could not. Seeing Amal sad that day, Yasmina remembered Layla’s tears and promises when she said goodbye.
Layla promised Yasmina that Richard and Sarah would take good care of her until she came over to London. Sarah and Richard took Yasmina in her small pot from Layla’s hands. They put Yasmina on the car’s back seat. Each of them gave Layla a hug and insisted on giving her the sleeping bag they had in their car boot.
Yasmina remembered how Sarah also cried in the car after they left Layla. Every now and then Richard held Sarah’s hand. When the car boarded the ferry, they got out of the car and took Yasmina out with them. Each of them sat reading a book and drinking tea. Yasmina sat on the table in between their chairs. The white neon lighting of the ferry’s café seating area felt artificial.
Sarah and Richard bought some food from the café at the end of the ferry ride. Sarah put the apples and the sandwiches in her recyclable shopping bag. Yasmina was surprised when she realised the small paper packages contained food in them. She had never seen a triangular sandwich in Syria, only rolled wraps. Sarah did not seem excited about the ferry food, but it was the only option. They had decided not to stop at a service station on the way back. They had left their cat alone and did not like to leave him for more than two days at a time.
Amal was not sad for too long. A few days later she got back to her routine. Every day during summer, she would pet the tree. She would then turn to Roseo to sniff his fragrant roses, whisper thanks and walk on. Roseo stopped getting annoyed by her sniffs. He even enjoyed them.
‘A smart woman this one, she appreciates my beauty and is trying to show it to me,’ he once said to Yasmina.
Yasmina kept watching Amal. Like a lover stuck in a hopeless love triangle, she suffered quietly. She felt her odourless jasmines would never attract Amal. Amal would come so close everyday but did not see Yasmina. Yasmina felt like those early days in the garden when she was unable to communicate and had lost connection with everyone. She longed for her Damascus life.
Yasmina was sent out by Amira with her youngest granddaughter, Layla, who was leaving Damascus to flee the war. Yasmina remembered the sound of explosions, the distant cries and the shelling. She remembered seeing roads with mounts of dirt and big holes in the ground on her way in the taxi. There were so many men carrying guns stopping the car every now and then. They requested to check identity cards. Many asked the passengers to get out of the car for a personal search.
Each time the car stopped, Yasmina felt Layla holding her breath. Layla only exhaled again when the car moved past the military checkpoint. One of the soldiers commented how beautiful Yasmina was. Layla was afraid. Layla feared he would take Yasmina from her. Yasmina was all Layla had of her grandmother and of her Damascus. With her bent branches in Layla’s tight hold, Yasmina learnt how fear can turn the most sacred of touches to painful ones.
Throughout the journey, Layla brushed her fingers through Yasmina’s leaves in the same manner her grandmother would stroke them. Layla gazed out of the car window until the road out of Damascus ended.
Yasmina never told Opunita about that journey. Not sharing was not intentional but rather because she did not understand most of it. She only recollected Layla’s pain and tears, the entire time they were on the road together. Layla would speak to her every night with tears in her voice. On cold nights Layla wrapped Yasmina with her scarf.
Each time they walked across mountains and valleys, Yasmina enjoyed the beautiful scenery. But her joy in nature was spoiled by her worries. She saw Layla’s sad face, and the pain and exhaustion that grew every day. There was a time when Layla had to let go of her spare pair of shoes. She was too tired to carry them, so she gave the shoes to a homeless woman in Budapest.
‘Don’t worry Yasmina! I won’t leave you anywhere. We will go together to London. You shall grow in the new home I will live in. We shall send your photos to teiteih Amira. She will be happy to see us,’ Layla used to assure Yasmina in the evenings.
It was now the end of the summer. Yasmina grew fewer jasmine buds each day. When Roseo’s rose petals all fell, Amal still paused and nodded to Roseo. Every now and then Amal would be on her way to work and wouldn’t acknowledge the tree or Roseo. However, a day or two later, Amal would go back to her caring routine.
One day, Amal paused by Roseo and whispered, ‘Thank you.’ It was when she was looking down among the bare branches that she noticed Yasmina. She gasped.
‘La ma bsadek! No, I can’t believe this. How long have you been here for?’.
Using her phone, Amal took a picture of the three jasmine flowers that Yasmina was carrying and stroked her softly. She examined her small leaves with her fingers and sniffed the jasmine fragrance that was barely there.
‘Marhaba, keefek? Hello, how are you? I used to have many of your sisters growing in my garden back home. Actually, jasmines grew all over our neighbourhood. But our jasmines are bigger and more fragrant. This is not to say yours aren’t pretty. They really are. Your faint scent smells just like the jasmines back home. Thank you,’ Amal said in perfect Arabic.
Yasmina’s leaves flinched. She could not talk to Amal. But she squeezed her entire being to exude any odour that she held within herself as a response to Amal. Amal smiled and stroked her.
‘I can’t believe there has been a jasmine vine on my way to work for years and I only got to see it now. I wonder how long she has been there for,’ Amal said to herself out loud in Arabic, as she walked away.
‘Ha, you must be thrilled now,’ said Roseo.
‘I am in pure joy. Amal turned out to be Syrian. See, I told you she reminded me of Layla. Her soft touch, warm voice and sweet Arabic words.’
‘I was surprised I didn’t understand her language.’
‘You have to feel the connection with a human to understand their language.’
‘Right. Says the expert.’
Amal reminded Yasmina of Amira. She had nearly forgotten Amira’s face and voice. In that moment, to Yasmina, all three women, Amira, Layla and Amal, felt like one. They all felt like Syria. They carried Syria’s warm fresh breeze and loving sunrays.
Autumn was in the air. Yet, Yasmina felt warm every time Amal petted her leaves and talked to her. Slowly, Amal no longer acknowledged Roseo. It was not intentional. Some days Amal did not feel great and was not present enough to connect with Roseo or the tree. On such days, she would pause, glance over at Yasmina and smile.
Like the Damascus sun, Amal brought warmth and light to Yasmina’s grey London skies. But Yasmina could never tell Amal. She could not grow new jasmines to please Amal either. She tried hard but blossoming new flowers proved impossible in the cold British winter.
However, as the days passed, Yasmina realised Amal did not need the little white flowers to pause or smile at her. It made her happy to hear Amal simply say ‘Sabah elKheir. Good morning,’ as she passed by her every morning.
Dima Mekdad, PhD, is the co-founder of Qisetna: Talking Syria, a cultural organisation that centres storytelling as a tool for personal empowerment, social engagement and cultural heritage preservation for Syrians globally. Dima is a storyteller and writer interested in the human experience and is particularly curious about connection, belonging, healing and growth.
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