Aleppo Dreams by Susmita Bhattacharya

She rushes out of her nightmare, into the silence of night. She gasps, as though fingers are closing around her throat. Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel the peace. Push away the images. She tries, like she tries every other night. But the dreams of her first husband trample her sleep. The bombs falling through the air. The rubble. The smell of gunpowder. The blood. Her mind always ricocheting between what was and what is. Breathe in. Breathe out. She wants to reach out for his hand. But she lets him sleep. He should not be drawn into the unbearable layers of her past.

He feels her breaking out of her dream. She is gasping. Moaning. Gagging. He knows that she had stood there, bathed in her husband’s blood, screaming like an animal. That was years ago, before he married her. And he wonders if he should have married her at all. He cannot take this anymore. They have escaped, but cannot escape the haunting of her husband. He feels her reach out for him and then her hesitation. He moves away. He cannot comfort her. His life too has been riddled with loss.

They resort to sleeping separately. First, he on the floor and she on the bed. Then to different rooms. He claims her dreams keep him awake and he cannot concentrate on the present. She agrees, and is relieved. It is time to move on, but she is fettered. She has nothing to offer him. Together they have memories of trying to forget their individual pains. Together they left their country and struggled to gain a new identity. But they have no identity. Only a past. Only a story. Only a dream.

Then one day, years later, he will dream. He will dream of paradise. The streets of Aleppo alive with celebration. The arghul filling his heart with the music of his childhood. Men dancing the dabka, swirling, kicking and clapping. Their energy thrusting into the air. The smells of sheesh kebabs and shawerma spilling out of cafes and driving him closer to ecstasy. Bakalava, like only his mother could have made, dropping bit by bit onto his hungry, greedy tongue. And he will see her in this dream. Gliding in swathes of cloth, her laughter tinkling and merging with the sweet giggles of his daughters, the husky guffaws of his mother, the laughter of his first wife. Her voice long forgotten. Their warm breath will caress his face and he will reach for her. But find emptiness. She is long gone. And he?  His body will not be strong or young. It’ll be just like a pressed leaf. The memory of youth. Only the skeleton and veins will remain.

First published The Lampeter Review, 2014