Текст книги "Gate of the Sun"

Автор книги: Elias Khoury

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

“The officer ordered Tanios to walk in front of him. He walked until they reached the sycamore tree at the edge of the square. There the officer fired a single shot from his revolver. Returning to the little clump of people, he ordered them to get into a truck. Everyone rushed toward the truck; not even Father Jebran looked back at his dead nephew. But before the priest reached the truck, he fell, striking his head on a stone. He started bleeding, and the blood seemed to rouse him from his stupor. He stood, or tried to stand, staggering as though he were about to fall, and then regained his balance. Instead of continuing his dash for the truck, he turned and walked back to the tree, where he knelt and started to pray.

“The truck took off, and no one knows what happened to Father Jebran. He wasn’t seen again. He didn’t catch up with everyone at al-Jdeideh, and no one saw him at the village of Kafar Yasif. Maybe he fell near his nephew. Maybe they killed him. We just don’t know. Some say he went to stay with the Shufani family (who were distant relatives) in Ma’aliyya, where he changed his name and stepped down from the priesthood.

“The old people were dumped at Kafar Yasif, and the priest disappeared.

“When the Israelis entered al-Birwa, they blew it up house by house. They didn’t take our clothes and rags. They were like madmen. They blew up the houses and began bulldozing them; they trampled the wheat and felled the olive trees with dynamite. I don’t know why they hate olives.”

Actually, why do they hate olives?

You told me about Ain Houd and the peasants they chased out of their village, which was renamed En Hud. The peasants wandered the hills of Jebel Karmal, where they built a new village, which they named after their old village.

You were telling me about them because you wanted to explain your theory about the secret population that stayed behind over there.

“I wasn’t the only one,” you said. “We were a whole people living in secret villages.”

You told me how the Israelis changed the original village into an artists’ colony and how the peasants live in their new, officially unrecognized village with no paved streets, no water, no electricity, nothing. You said there were dozens of these secret villages.

And you asked yourself why the Israelis hate olive trees. You mentioned how they planted cypress trees in the middle of the olives groves at Ain Houd, and how the olive trees were ruined and died under the onslaught of the cypresses, which swallowed them up.

How can they eat without olive oil? We live on olive oil, we’re a people of olive oil, but them, they cut down the olive trees and plant palm trees. Why do they love palms so much?

“Poor little Tanios,” Nuha’s father went on. “They killed him right in front of us, and God, what a sight he was. He arrived in the square all puffed up in his uncle’s cassock. The uncle was short and fat, but Tanios was tall and slender. Tanios went out with the priest, in his short cassock that ballooned out like a ghost. We could see his legs, covered with thick, curly black hair. He had to take off the cassock and was shivering as he walked; then we heard the fatal shot and everything went dark. Sweat filled our eyes, and we could hardly see – when you’re scared, you sweat an incredible amount. Sweat was dripping into our eyes, and Father Jebran wiped the blood from his forehead. He knelt in front of his nephew’s body under the tree, made the sign of the cross over the thin young man, then stretched his arms out under the tree as though he’d become a tree himself or as though he were crucifying himself against the air, while the village collapsed.”

Tell me, Yunes, how, why, did you believe Mahdi? Did you have to believe him?

We shouldn’t have believed him, you’ll say. “We believed him because we had no choice at the time. Only the priest suggested reconciliation with the Jews, but who could guarantee that it wouldn’t turn out with us as it did at al-Kabri? The priest said he’d be the guarantor, but he wasn’t even able to save his nephew’s life.”

Nuha, who told me the story of al-Birwa, wouldn’t accept this. Nuha was different from Shams and would only allow me a small peck on the corner of her mouth, whose taste I’d steal as I listened to the endless story of al-Birwa.

One time she said she’d seen the rags in a dream.

Another time she said that Father Jebran had put the cassock on Ahmad Yasin, the grain measurer, who hadn’t withdrawn with the others because he wanted to steal one of the harvesters the Jews had left behind on the threshing floor, and that the officer recognized Ahmad and ordered him to take off his cassock and killed him. And that the priest didn’t go back to the body under the tree but that an Israeli soldier pushed him and he fell and his head was cut open, so they dragged him away and killed him as well as Ahmad. And her grandmother, who witnessed the scene, swears that Father Jebran didn’t have a nephew named Tanios and that the young man disguised in the cassock was the son of the grain measurer.

“Al-Birwa, it’s gone,” said Nuha. “All I see are the shadows of the houses drawn in my grandmother’s eyes.” This grandmother was the cause of all their trouble. “She turned my father into a stone. She killed him, killed everything inside him. Like all the mothers who kill their sons, out of love. I lived with him. He lay there in our house like a stone.”

Nuha said her grandmother walked and walked until her feet were swollen. When the truck dumped them in al-Jdeideh, she refused to enter the village and started searching for her children. She got down from the truck and walked. She went to al-Damoun and from there to Sekhnen and from Sekhnen to al-Ramah and then on to Ya’thur. In Ya’thur she found her son and his family, and they crossed over into Lebanon, where she found her four other children.

Her grandmother walked alone, entered the villages and slept in the open. She entered the villages a stranger and left them a stranger, and all she ate was bread moistened with water. She ate so she could walk, and she walked so she could look, and she looked but she didn’t find.

Nuha said the pain etched on her grandmother’s face frightened her. A woman etched with pain and stories. “She didn’t love us; she loved only my father. She seemed in a perpetual state of shock that he was still alive. Every day – every day, I promise you – she’d squeeze him to make sure he was still among the living. She didn’t want him to work; when they settled in the camp near Beirut and he found work in a chocolate factory, she refused. ‘You stay in the house and we’ll work,’ she said. ‘You’re the pillar of the house; it will fall down without you.’ My mother couldn’t understand her mother-in-law – a woman stopping her son from working, not wanting him to leave the tin shack, so that no harm might come to him while we were all dying of shame and hunger? He’d sit next to his mother and they would listen to the radio and analyze the news and whisper to one another. She’d make plans, and he’d agree with her. Then they decided to go back to al-Birwa, and so we returned.”

The story as Nuha related it to me was as distorted as her grandmother’s memory. Nuha was a child and her grandmother an old woman. The child couldn’t remember, and the old woman couldn’t speak. The grandmother would raise her hand and point upward as though invoking the help of mysterious powers and all Nuha would see was dust.

“I was two years old,” she said, “so I can’t remember anything. I remember vague images, an old woman speechless in the house, my father looking at her with hatred. My father hardened into stone. He would enter the house in silence and leave it in silence. My brothers and sisters and I called him the Stone, that’s what he was. My father spoke in ’68, after his son died in Ghour al-Safi in Jordan during the battle for al-Karameh, but his speech was shrouded in silence. He spoke like someone who never spoke, and he would never raise his voice, as though he were afraid of something. My father tried several times to work. He tried at the soft-drink factory. Then he became a taxi driver, but they put him in jail because he didn’t have a work permit. He tried to get that impossible permit, but didn’t succeed. As you know a Palestinian can only work clandestinely in Lebanon, and a driver can’t work clandestinely. He loved to drive. Since he was a child he’d loved cars, but it was difficult for him to buy one, so he decided he’d work as a driver. He wasted his time running around in pursuit of a work permit that never came. We only survived because it was easier than dying.

“My mother worked as a seamstress. She wasn’t a very good seamstress, but she managed to make a living with the women in the camp. She sewed a little and earned a little, and we survived. The Stone would leave the house every morning and not come back until evening. He wouldn’t speak to us, and he’d even refuse to eat with us. My mother had a relief card so she’d go at the beginning of each month to get flour, milk, and cooking oil from the agency. But he wouldn’t touch it. I don’t know how he got by. He wouldn’t ask my mother for money, and he didn’t steal like most of the men in the camp did. He’d get up at dawn, drink his coffee before we woke up, and leave for the day. My mother would beg him to taste the food she’d prepared, but he’d flatly refuse. He’d turn away from her, open his newspaper, and read. My father wasn’t illiterate, he was semiliterate and could sound out words. He’d learned to read from the newspapers. He’d sit and read in silence. We’d see his lips moving but couldn’t hear a sound. He would read without a sound and speak without a sound and come and go without a sound.”

“I heard the story just from my grandmother,” said Nuha. “I thought she was rambling like all old people, but it was the truth.”

“We went back, my love, but it was hopeless,” she told me. She said they’d demolished al-Birwa and she couldn’t stand to live in any other village, so she decided to move back to Lebanon. Her son left them in the fields outside the village and went to Kafar Yasif; then he came back to tell them that they should all go there.

“But I couldn’t agree to live in Kafar Yasif; I wanted al-Birwa. I said we should go back and live with the people of al-Birwa that were left, go back and cultivate our land. What were we supposed to do for work in Kafar Yasif? Your father said he’d met Sa’ad’s son who worked in the building trade, and he’d promised him a job. I said no, and I picked you up and started walking. Your mother caught up with me with your brother, Amir, leaving your father standing there. He screamed at us; he wanted us to stay with him, but we left. We found him again here in the camp. I thought he’d stayed behind. I said, ‘Let him stay, it’s his destiny, but I can’t,’ and your mother caught up with me, and he screamed at us, but we couldn’t hear his voice, as though it couldn’t make it out of his mouth. I think he caught up with us, and when we got to the camp he went into the bathroom, then he left the house and turned into stone. Our feet were sore, and all we wanted to do was sleep, but he went out. I was right. I mean, how could we go back to al-Birwa when al-Birwa no longer existed? What were we to do? Go to another village and become refugees in our own country? No, my dear.”

Nuha said she’d pieced the story of their return together from scraps of stories. She could picture the scene as though she were remembering it herself. Going back, her mother told her, was difficult, but people did return. “Suddenly, all the members of a family would disappear, and we’d know they’d returned. Your father was like a madman, hunting for scraps of news and abusing your mother. One morning in April of ’51, he told us, ‘Come on, we’re going back.’ We didn’t take anything with us. We returned as we’d left, with nothing but our clothes, two flasks of water, a bundle of bread, some potatoes, and some boiled eggs. We got a taxi to Tyre and another to Rimeish, and from there, we started our march to al-Birwa. Going back was easy. We went around the villages and walked in the rough. The Stone walked as though on the palm of his hand – he’d stretch his hand out in front of him and read from his palm, he said everything was written there. We walked behind him in silence, your grandmother carrying you, me carrying your brother, and the Stone walking ahead of us. Finally we arrived. We’d walked the whole night and arrived at dawn. At the outskirts of the village, he told us to wait under an olive tree.

“There, the Stone started walking in an odd way. He bent over as though he were getting ready for a fight and started leaping until he disappeared from our view. Your grandmother went crazy. She started to go after him, but he waved her off, placing his finger on his lips to ask her to be quiet. Then he disappeared.

“And us, what were we to do? How could I wait when I had this half-paralyzed old woman with me? Suddenly the strength left your grandmother. All the way there, she’d been like a horse, but at the outskirts of the village her knees gave out and she collapsed, dripping with sweat. She was carrying you in her arms and the sweat dripped onto you. You started crying, and I took you from her and gave you my breast. No, you weren’t still breast feeding, you were two years old and I’d weaned you more than a year before, but for some reason, I took you from her arms, wiped the old woman’s sweat off you and gave you my breast. You stopped crying and fell into a deep sleep.

“The Stone returned.

“The sun was starting to set and your grandmother was sitting on her own under an isolated olive tree. Upon seeing her son, she struggled to stand up but couldn’t, so she crawled. We helped her to sit up; her eyes fixed on her son’s lips.

“We sat around him. He drank some water, ate a boiled egg, and asked us to wait for him before making his way toward the olive grove and disappearing again.

“He came back the next morning and said he was going to Kafar Yasif.

“We understood.

“The old woman bowed her head and began sobbing. I tried to question him. I asked him about my father’s house – I thought, Never mind; if our house has been demolished, we can go and live in my father’s house. ‘Listen, woman,’ he said, ‘I’m going to Kafar Yasif.’ And we understood. I said to him, ‘They demolished all the houses, right?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’

“When I heard the word yesI fell to the ground. I couldn’t see; everything had gone black. The Stone tried to bring me around.

“He explained everything to me.

“‘Al-Birwa is dead,’ he said. ‘You stay here, I’ll go.’

“He didn’t wait for nightfall. He said he’d go, and he went. His head must have been hurting him because he kept putting his hands to his temples and pressing. He ordered us not to move from where we were.

“We waited for three days and nights. April was cold, and we had only brought two woolen blankets. The four of us slept under them, the old woman shivering and talking in her sleep. We weren’t hungry. I had brought some bread, and your grandmother gathered thyme and some seeds from the land that we ate also.

“On the third night, the old woman disappeared.

“I woke up and didn’t find her with us under the blankets. I looked everywhere, but she’d disappeared.

“The Stone came back to tell us that we had to go to Kafar Yasif in the night, everything was arranged. Al-Birwa had been completely demolished, and the Jews had built the settlement of Achihud on top of it. Kafar Yasif was the only solution.

“I told him about his mother’s disappearance.

“‘She’s over there,’ he said. ‘I know her. I’ll go and get her, and don’t you move from here.’

“I wanted to tell him not to go, but I didn’t dare. How can you tell someone to abandon his mother? I begged him to wait for night to fall, but he didn’t answer. He left and didn’t return until sunset. He said he’d seen her and that she’d refused to come back with him. She was sitting alone on top of the ruins.

“A ruined village, and a woman sitting on top of the remains of her house, and a man trying to persuade her to go with him, and her stubborn silence. He talked, and she remained silent. He’d ask her to come with him, but she’d pay no attention.

“He said he’d told her about Kafar Yasif, that he’d found a house and that everything would be all right. She continued to refuse.

“He slept with us that night, got up at dawn and brought her back. He brought her back like a prisoner and said, ‘Let’s go to Kafar Yasif.’ I started getting ready. I folded the blankets and was checking around the huge olive tree among whose roots we’d been sleeping when I heard the old woman say, ‘No.’ She picked you up and started walking in the direction of Lebanon.”

Nuha said her grandmother had told her about three young men who’d approached her and how they’d pelted her with stones. She’d told them she was so-and-so, the daughter of so-and-so and that this was her house, so they pelted her with stones.

“‘I told them I was staying.’

“‘I told them this was my house, why did you destroy my house?’

“‘I told them they were stupid because they’d cut down so many olive trees.’

“‘I told them these were Roman olive trees. How could anyone dare cut down Christ’s olive trees? These were Father Jebran’s olive trees.’

“‘I told them lots of things.’

“She said she told them she didn’t care – ‘You took the land – take it. You took the fields and the olives and everything else – take them. But I want to live here. I’ll put up a tent and live here. It’s better than the camp. The air is clean here. Take everything and leave me the air.’

“The three young men backed away and started throwing stones at her.

“‘They were afraid,’ she said.

“The stones started raining down on her and piled up around her and she became a bundle of wounds.

“She said they spoke Arabic to her. They spoke like the Yemeni headman she’d met in ’47 when she wandered into the Jewish settlement near Tiberias by mistake.

“‘At first they came over to me and seemed kind. They weren’t aggressive. But when I told them I was so-and-so, daughter of so-and-so, they began inching away. They drew back one step for every one of my words. Then suddenly they all bent over as if they’d received some kind of signal and the stones started raining down.’

“The old woman sat under the olive tree and my mother went to get a rag and a flask of water so she could clean her wounds. At the same time the Stone was telling them about Kafar Yasif and the house Sa’ad’s son had found and the job in his workshop. He said, ‘We’re here now and we can’t go back to Lebanon.’ He said, ‘We’ll live in Kafar Yasif, then we’ll see.’ He talked and talked and talked; the old woman sat on the ground looking into the distance. She didn’t tell them what had happened to her. She didn’t say she’d tried to talk to the Yemenis. She didn’t say she’d talked about a tent she was going to put up in the ruins of al-Birwa. She was like a tree with its branches broken. Suddenly she got up, picked up two-year-old Nuha, and set off in the direction of Lebanon.”

Nuha’s mother said she’d caught up with her mother-in-law. “I took your brother by the hand and we started running after her. The Stone stood like a stone. And we found ourselves in the camp.”

What do you make of Nuha’s story?

Naturally, Nuha didn’t describe her grandmother as looking like a tree with its branches broken. I added that detail to describe the old woman, both her psychological state and her bleeding wounds. Nuha wasn’t that troubled by the story; she just told it to me in passing when she was explaining her own situation. She doesn’t believe in the possibility of our returning to Palestine. “If we go back, we won’t find Palestine, we’ll find another country. Why are we fighting and dying? Should we be fighting for something only to find ourselves somewhere else? It would be better to marry and emigrate elsewhere.”

She cried a lot when her grandmother died. She told me how her father started to speak after his son was martyred in the battle of al-Karameh. She said that even though he didn’t talk, he didn’t stop fathering children.

“Wouldn’t you agree that the man was a bit strange – not talking to his wife but sleeping with her every night?” I tried to ask Nuha about her grandmother’s story, but she said she didn’t know and didn’t care. Nuha loved Egyptian soap operas and said she had to get out of this cesspit – that’s what she called the camp. Her father, whom I met numerous times at their house, was very nice to me. He was a strange man, eyes hanging vacantly in his face, always clicking his prayer beads and talking about everything. He knew a lot about agriculture, medicine, politics, and Palestinian history. He talked to me a lot about my father, about how his death had been his first calamity in the camp.

In fact I wanted to marry Nuha, but then I don’t know what happened. I started to feel stifled when I was with her. We couldn’t find anything to talk about. She’d tell me about her soap operas and their heroes and I’d get bored. Even my desire for those little stolen pecks started to fade.

I never told you the story of Nuha and her grandmother before because I thought it wouldn’t interest you. You didn’t talk much about the past except incidentally; the past would come up in the form of illustrative examples, not as lived reality. Then you were transformed into the unique symbol in the stories of the camp people, the symbol of those who kept slipping back there. You know you weren’t the only man who’d go over there and come back. Thousands went, and maybe some of them are still going over now. I know of at least three cases of married men whose stories are like yours. They go over, leave their women pregnant and come back to the camp. The story of Hamad intrigued me. I’ll tell it to you later; I’m tired now, and the woman of al-Birwa has wrung out my heart.

The first time I heard the story from Nuha, it made no impression on me. I was absorbed by the story of the Stone and paid no attention to the grandmother. Now it occurs to me that this woman (who was called Khadijeh) was remarkable. I wish I’d known her better. I only saw her once, when she was sick. A woman I saw only once but whom I found more beautiful than her granddaughter who tried to seduce me into marriage.

I forgot to mention that Nuha was white, whiter than any woman I’ve ever seen. Her skin was so white, the whiteness almost seemed to be bursting out from inside her. She thought she was beautiful just because she was so white. She was a bit short and plump, but her whiteness made up for everything.

I was taken by her whiteness, I won’t deny it, but I never discovered beauty until I met Shams. I discovered then the secret of the color of wheat. Brown tinged with yellow is the highest color because its nuances are infinite. Nuha’s whiteness, on the other hand, blocked my spirit – no, I’m talking through my hat, saying anything that comes into my head. Please don’t believe all that. . I have nothing against white, but I did suddenly stop loving her. All my feelings evaporated, and when I looked at her I could no longer see her. I only felt something for her at the stadium, when I stood there with hundreds of fedayeen waiting for the Greek ships that were to take them from Beirut into their new exile. I searched for her but couldn’t find her. Do you know what that feels like – to leave when there’s no one to bid you farewell? I searched for her and didn’t leave. I went back home, not because she didn’t come and not because I wanted her; I went back because I felt the utter nonsense of it all. Everything had become absurd, so I couldn’t bring myself to go away with everyone else; a journey has to be more than just a journey, and I noticed, after the siege and the defeat, that I wasn’t capable of such things, so I went home and never saw Nuha again. I forgot her. I forgot what that girl I’d loved looked like. Now, when I try to recall her, I see her as a blurred image, a shapeless woman. I see her white face, and I see her lips quivering on the verge of tears, and I see her grandmother Khadijeh.

I think that I fell in love with Nuha in the image of her grandmother.

Try to imagine with me the woman of al-Birwa.

A woman walking alone through the rubble of her village looking for the stones that were once her house. A woman alone, her head covered with a black scarf, hunched up in that emptiness that stretches all the way to God, among the hills and valleys of Galilee, within the circle of a red sun that crawls over the ground, passing slowly and carrying with it the shadows of all things.

All the woman saw was shadows. She was alone. They came and she spoke to them. It may be that she didn’t say the exact words her granddaughter related. Maybe they didn’t understand her language.

Nuha said they were Yemenis, and Yemenis understand the Palestinian dialect, or a lot of its words anyway. But probably they didn’t understand a thing. When she spoke they were terrified, because they thought she was a spirit who’d come out of the tree, and they started to throw stones at her. They were just adolescents, so they didn’t call the Border Guard from the kibbutz that had been built on top of al-Birwa.

Maybe. I don’t know.

Anything’s possible.

But why wouldn’t she agree to go to Kafar Yasif?

Was it because. .?

She probably regretted it afterwards, that must be why she didn’t tell her story to anyone, unlike Umm Hassan, who never stopped telling people the story of the woman of Wadi Abu Jmil.

The woman of al-Birwa said nothing.

And I’m telling you now to prove that you weren’t the only hero, or the only living martyr.

Don’t worry, you’ll die in peace. But I want you to know before you die that this protracted death of yours has turned our life upside down. Did you have to sink into this death for your memory, and mine, and everyone else’s, to explode? You’ve been stricken with a brainstorm, and I’m stricken with a storm of memories.

You’re dying, and I’m dying.

God, it’s not about Shams, or Dr. Amjad, or this Beirut that no longer looks like Beirut. It’s to do with me staying here and starting work in the hospital tomorrow. Don’t be scared. I won’t leave you. I’ll continue to work with you as usual and tell you stories and give you the latest.

Think about me a bit, and you’ll see I can’t take it anymore.

True, nobody cares anymore, and nobody believes anyone. Those who got used to me as a doctor will get used to me as a nurse. But me – how can I adjust to this new me that I’m being forced to accept?

We’ll find out tomorrow.

But before tomorrow comes, I want you to tell me who the woman of Sha’ab was.

I want the story from you. I’ve heard it dozens of times from different people, but I’m not convinced. In the Ain al-Hilweh camp I got to know Mohammed al-Khatib, who claimed that the woman of Sha’ab was his mother, Fatimah. Then I met a man from the Fa’our clan who said his mother, Salma, was the woman of Sha’ab. And then, of course, there’s that legend about the woman called Reem, to whom the story became attached.

Let’s go back to the beginning.

You went back to Ain al-Zaitoun only to find the village demolished. At that point you were with Abu Is’af on a mission to carry weapons to Galilee from Syria. I don’t want to hear now about the humiliations you suffered trying to find weapons and about how Colonel Safwat treated you like shit, saying you weren’t a regular army and that he wasn’t about to throw away the few weapons he had on peasants who were known for their cowardice and slyness.

That was how the “general of the defeat” – as he’d become known to the fighters who withdrew to Lebanon to the beat of the Arab leaders’ mendacious war drums – talked to you.

You returned, you and Abu Is’af, empty-handed. You left Abu Is’af in Sha’ab and continued on to Ain al-Zaitoun, discovering that the village had fallen without a shot being fired to defend it, and that your friend and twin Hanna Kamil Mousa had died crucified on an oak tree.

You all ended up in Sha’ab, and you only left after the whole of Galilee had fallen.

Now tell me about the woman. I know that the story of Palestine of your generation is a rough one, and that we can find a thousand ways to tell it, but Sha’ab, and that woman, and the men of Zabbouba: I want to hear about them from you.

You left Ain al-Zaitoun and went running to Sha’ab. You told me you ran there even though you went by car. What matters is that you got hold of a house in Sha’ab because the headman, Mohammed Ali al-Khatib, gave it to you, telling you he’d built it for his son, Ali, and that he considered you another son.

Sha’ab became your new village and it was there that you saw the miracle.

I don’t want to hear the history of the village, because I’m not interested in the brawl that broke out between the Fa’our and Khatib clans in ’35 and how it grew during the great revolt of ’36 when the Khatib clan avenged the murder of Shaker al-Khatib by killing Rashid al-Fa’our, headman of the eastern quarter, and how all of you – you were still very young – took action. You came with the revolutionaries and imposed a settlement, which was concluded on the threshing floor, where they slaughtered more than forty sheep and people came from all the neighboring villages to eat and offer their congratulations.

I don’t want to get into the labyrinth of families and subclans of which I understand nothing. I know you always cited the example of the Sha’ab settlement when you were conducting training courses for fighters. Instead of theorizing about the Sha’ab war, as we did, you’d tell stories and cite examples. And instead of asserting that the family and tribalism had to be transcended, you’d explain to the fighters how you succeeded during the Revolution of ’36 in fusing families together, and you’d cite the example of Sha’ab.

You’d tell them about the moon.

Your moon wasn’t the full moon of my mother’s; yours never became totally full. I think I read the fable of the moon in a Chinese book translated into Arabic, but it sounded more beautiful coming from your mouth than from any book: “The moon is full only one day a month. On all the other days it’s either getting bigger or smaller. Life’s the same. Stability is the exception, change the rule.” You’d ask the boys to follow the movement of the moon on training nights so they could get some practical political culture instead of book culture, which goes in through the eye and out at the ear.