I never could keep him for long, never could tie him down to my routine, my simple way of life. Not that I minded so much; I knew what I was doing when I married him. I always knew that there was too much of the gypsy in him, the wanderlust was too strong to resist, not that he tried very hard. If there is one thing that I regret it is that I agreed to have children with him. It seems so long ago now but the memory is still vivid; he seemed so desperate, I had never seen pleading in his eyes like that before. It scared me; if I'm honest, I think I agreed because I was afraid of the consequences of refusing. Having children was never that important to me, not when I was young anyway, now, of course, I wouldn't give them up for anything in the world. Back then, however, they were never a consideration, not for me the incessant ticking of the biological clock that drove my friends into the beds of any man who showed an interest. I'm not saying, mind you, that he is a bad father. He dotes on his children and they on him. I think that makes the leaving worse. They know. They're so young but already they know that he will not stay for long and I know. I know that I'll have to pick up the pieces, the tantrums, the fights, the dashed hopes because they really had believed that this time would be different, that this time their Daddy would stay.
 
He left early this morning, whilst I was still asleep. He never says goodbye. He says that it's bad luck and on this point, as with so many others, he is obstinate, unflinching. I used to try and catch him out, set my alarm at 4am reasoning that he wouldn't be able to leave without saying goodbye if I was awake. It never worked, somehow he always managed to distract me at the crucial moment and then, when I turned around, he would be gone, without a word. I stopped trying in the end, I might as well have tried to stop the sun rising in the morning (although around these parts you could be forgiven for thinking that the sun never rises at all). We stayed up all night last night, the calm before the storm. It's always a bad sign when he wants to stay up and talk and cuddle and nothing more. It's as if he wants to let me down gently from the passionate to the platonic and into lonely nights between cold sheets. He was in a strange mood again, we normally just make small talk about the little things in our lives, nothing serious. He doesn't like to talk about what he does away from home, doesn't like to share the fervour and the strain of the part of his life that I have no stake in. Last night was different, he wanted to talk about everything under the sun, big things, little things, anything, an ominous sign I thought. It wasn't until later that I began to worry more than usual. We were lying in bed, wrapped in companionable silence, both breathing softly in unison, when he sat up suddenly, stretching. He had that intense look on his face, far away from me, buried in his own particular dreams and then he came to back me and breathed,

'I miss you, you know?'
'Miss me?'
'Yeh, you know, when I'm not here, at home. I miss you.'
'So stay for a while then. We miss you too, all of us.'
'Yeh, I know babe.'

Noncommittal as usual, no change there, he rarely commits to anything at all, in fact.
'So will you?'
'Will I what babe?'
'Stay.' 'I can't, not now when...'
'When what?'
'Well, when things are getting...Look, I can't talk about it, OK? I just can't.'
'Can't what, talk about it or bring yourself to stay with your wife and kids for more than a week?'
'Come on babe, don't lets fight, not now.'
'Well, when can we fight then? 'cos we never get round to bloody discussing anything sensibly do we?'
'Don't swear babe.'

The latter phrase slips out of his mouth almost absent-mindedly. He hates it when I swear so I try not to, we have little enough time together as it is, I don't like to waste it arguing but I was so angry. I left it there, no point in pursuing the matter further and turned away from him, pretending to sleep, angry with resentment. He woke me some time later, in the small hours of the morning. At that I worried, he never wakes me, normally he slips out of bed and pads around the house doing God knows what. I wasn't expecting to see him again for some time, according to the script when we do fight he's gone the next morning, vanished in the night. Of course I then beat myself up for weeks afterwards, imagining him dead in some foreign land with a final memory of me snapping and whining at him. These fears always come to nothing, he reappears nonchalantly after a few days, weeks, sometimes months, pretending nothing untoward ever happened. I'm never sure whether he truly forgets so quickly, whether he runs off in a fit of pique or whether he only pretends and really counts the grudges up, harbouring them close to his skin. He woke me to say goodbye; of all the things he could have said, he chose to say goodbye. That choice haunts me to this day, it's as if he knew he had reached the crux of matters. That's all he said, 'Goodbye' and I, well, I merely smiled with the fuzziness of sleep and murmured in reply, 'Goodbye, babe.' A strange reversal of roles that left me bemused when I woke, an acrid taste in my mouth and a new weight on my shoulders.

I carried on as normal, what other option did I have? The children were terrible in the days after he left, whinging, whining and fighting. The youngest began wetting the bed again, for the first time in years I was up in the night changing sopping sheets. The elder two changed from that day forward. I think they realised then, in that instant, that they would never have the perfect family that we dreamed of, that we read about in stories at bedtime. Somehow, they all knew, almost as if they had been there, with me, heard him say goodbye and understood exactly what that meant.

It was a long time before I saw his face again. I heard reports on the news of course, reports of guerrilla skirmishes and demonstrations, of victories and defeats. I hated to watch the news. I admired him in a way for following his dreams, for doing what he believed was right, but the things they did. In the name of God, Allah, it does not matter what name you give Him but oh, the things they did. I could not watch, could not allow myself to think about him in that way, leading his band of, well, he calls them crusaders. I call them murderers, there seems very little difference to me between a murder and a crusade, both, it appears, end in death and bloodshed. It had never been so terrible before, they started out as earnest young men fighting for what they believed was right and proper, they very rarely made the news in those days. Somehow, somewhere along the line, everything changed, they became darker, angrier and from then on, the conclusion was inevitable. At least they allowed me to bring the body home for burial in the end. At least I and the children were able to look upon his face once more; a face for once free from anger, from hatred, from the all-pervading cause. In that instant, I loved him more than ever. You may think that's terrible, that I could be so much in love with someone who did so many terrible things. You have that right but he never shared that side of himself with me and so I still love him and I will continue to pray that before he died he repented and found redemption. I pray also for my children, that they will be able to bear the knowledge of what their father was and what he became and what he did.