Текст книги "Gate of the Sun"

Автор книги: Elias Khoury

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Текущая страница: 35 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

Shams said she learned about war in Tripoli. She arrived at Fatah’s al-Zaheriyyeh office and said she’d come from Jordan to join the revolution. Mundhir, the official in charge, sent her to join the groups at Bab al-Tabbaneh, where she met Khalil Akkawi, the legendary commander who transformed the poor and the young of Tripoli into little revolutionaries and who was to die later in a savage assassination operation that greatly resembled Shams’ murder in al-Miyyeh wi-Miyyeh.

In Tripoli she also met Abu Faris, an assistant to Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir), who, before the fedayeen left the city, appointed her communications officer for Western Sector Command in Tunis, which was responsible for work inside Occupied Palestine.

Shams didn’t get on the boats with the fedayeen who left Tripoli in 1984. She said that Tunisia was too far away and she preferred to stay close to Dalal. Abu Faris gave her some money, and she came to Beirut where she joined the Palestinian command center in Mar Elias, and from there slipped into Shatila during the long siege.

Many stories are told about her during that time.

It’s said that the Shatila commander, Ali Abu Toq, slapped her in the face in front of the other fighters and told her he was the only commander there.

It’s said she succeeded in forming a network to smuggle weapons and supplies into the besieged camp.

She didn’t tell me anything about that. I knew her – we’d run into each other in Mar Elias – and I was bewitched by her. Now I don’t know, because everything I thought I knew about her evaporated when her murder of Sameh revealed her love for him.

I can say she was an extraordinary woman. She used to tour the Mar Elias camp surrounded by her young men, saying they were members of “Shams’ Brigade.”

I returned to the camp after it collapsed following the assassination of its commander, Ali Abu Toq, while Shams was transferred to the Sidon area. I returned to find the camp totally disrupted. I participated in the rebuilding of the hospital, and I grew accustomed to the new situation – which you know better than I do so there’s no need to get into that. When the fedayeen returned, they weren’t like fedayeen. I’m not talking here about the corruption and bribes and quarrels we lived through before the 1982 invasion. I know there was corruption, and we were ashamed of ourselves. But something made us capable of tolerating the situation; let’s say there was an issue that was larger than the bribe takers and the crooks. After the fall of the camp, however, everything changed.

In the past, death had been everywhere, and it was beautiful. I know we’re not supposed to call death beautiful, but there was a certain beauty there that enveloped us. In the days following the fall of the camp, however, death was naked.

I have no idea how Shams got into the camp after it fell. The Fatah dissidents ^*had taken over Fatah’s offices in Beirut, and only the camps in the south were left. Everyone knew that Shams was against the split, that she worked with Abu Jihad al-Wazir, and that she was loyal to the leadership and accused the dissidents of many things. All the same, she’d come into Shatila without anyone challenging her. She’d come to my house, and we’d spend nights together. I didn’t see her often – she was busy all the time, and I had no means of contacting her. She’d come when she wanted and would find me waiting for her.

No, Abu Salem.

No, my beloved child, I wasn’t afraid of her, I was afraid of myself. Something suddenly died inside me; when someone we love dies, something dies in us. Such is life – a long chain of death. Others die, and things die inside each of us; those we love die, and limbs from our bodies die, too. Man doesn’t wait for death, he lives it; he lives the death of others inside himself, and when his own death comes, many of his parts have already been amputated; what remains is meager.

Before Shams, I was ignorant of this. When she died, I became aware of my amputated limbs and the parts of me that were already buried; I became conscious of my father and my grandmother, even my mother. I saw them as an organ that had been ripped out of me by force.

That’s what I was afraid of, and that’s why I sought refuge with you.

I wasn’t afraid of revenge. Well, maybe I was, but it’s not important. I was afraid of dying. Shams died, and I became aware of all the parts within me that had died. I saw death creeping up on what remained of me, and then you came. I didn’t want you to die to safeguard that last piece of me separating me from my death. Now I laugh at myself: That last piece of me has become a child. You’ve become a child, Father, and your smell is like Dalal’s, or like that of Ibrahim, your eldest child who died. The decision was Nahilah’s. She’s the one who decided you shouldn’t continue calling yourself Abu Ibrahim. She said, “You’re Abu Salem and I’m Umm Salem. We mustn’t live with death – the living are better than the dead.”

Now I live with your new smell – a fresh smell that invites kisses. The smell of children invites kisses, and you invite me. I hug you and sniff you and kiss you and wrap you up in my voice.

You don’t believe me?

For pity’s sake, you must believe me! I know she loved me, and you have no right to cast doubt on it. I believed all your stories, the believable and the unbelievable ones. I even believed the story about the ice worms.

At the time, Yunes was on his way to Bab al-Shams. In the morning, he reached his first refuge, near Tarshiha, and lay down beneath the big olive tree he called Laila. He was carrying an English rifle and a bag and was wearing a long green coat.

Yunes was beneath the olive tree when the sun began to set and the reddish light started to spread across the hills of Galilee.

“I’m being unfaithful to you with Laila, my Roman lady,” he said to Nahilah.

“I want to see her,” said Nahilah.

He promised he’d take her, but he didn’t.

“Laila’s just for me. She’s my second wife. We’re Muslims, woman!”

Nahilah would laugh at the man’s childishness and say she was going to cut the tree down.

With Laila, he was Yunes.

With the tree, inside whose huge hollow trunk he hid, and in whose shade he slept. A lone tree, set off a little from the olive grove in the countryside on the fringes of Tarshiha. There he could rest and sleep, standing or lying down inside the trunk. There he would organize his thoughts, his plans, his passion, and his body.

Then the tree died.

He spoke of the tree as he would speak of a woman.

He said it died; he didn’t say they cut it down.

Why do they cut down the olive trees and plant pines and palms in their place? Why do the Israelis hate the tree of sacred light?

On that day in 1965, after crossing the Tarshiha olive grove, he felt something was missing. He felt lost and couldn’t find the tree. The paved road that links Maalot to Carmel had run over Laila.

Yunes said he felt a wild desire for revenge and didn’t complete his journey to Nahilah. He returned to Shatila, shut himself up inside, and didn’t receive visitors for more than a week. His face was waxy, the tears stood like stones in his eyes. He was in mourning for the tree.

He decided to change his route to Deir al-Asad.

That was when he discovered the route going through al-Arqoub, which three years later – after the 1967 defeat, that is – was to become the main road into Palestine for the fedayeen. The fedayeen discovered al-Arqoub, situated at the foot of Jebel al-Sheikh mountain, and learned how to travel its icy roads. It soon became known as “Fatah Land.”

Yunes said Jebel al-Sheikh had enchanted him.

The mirrors of ice.

A mountain that crowned three countries – Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. “It’s the crown of God,” he told me.

Yunes said he discovered the route via Jebel al-Sheikh, or Mount Hermon, because Laila was killed. Laila had been his landmark and his refuge. He’d spend the day inside her trunk and when night came he’d slip off toward Deir al-Asad.

“Did you know that the ice has worms in it?” he asked me.

“I discovered them myself,” he said. “I took Nahilah ten worms wrapped in a piece of cloth. They’re little white worms that look like silk worms. When you pull them out of the ice, they get as hard as pebbles. I told Nahilah they were ice worms; I put one in the water jar and asked her to wait. In less than ten minutes, the water was as cold as ice. Nahilah refused to drink it at first. She said she didn’t drink worms. Then she started asking for the worms and giving them away.”

Yunes said it was summer. “During the summer, the ice of Mount Hermon becomes like a mirror misted with breath. I slept in the old abandoned house. I don’t know what came over me that night. There was no problem with the house: It was an old house that the peasants of al-Arqoub say a Lebanese émigré returned from Mexico and built. They say the man, who was from the village of al-Kfeir, at the foot of the mountain, made a lot of money in Latin America and decided to return to his country when his wife died. He was almost seventy-five years old, and it seems that in his dotage he focused on spiritual matters, saying that on the mountain he’d be closer to God. He chose Jebel al-Sheikh upon which to build his hermitage. He built the house in the Arab style – a courtyard surrounded by five rooms – and announced his intention to found a monastery there.

“How did he find the courage to live there?

“You can’t imagine the winter on Jebel al-Sheikh. Winter there, I tell you, is absolute whiteness. Scattered ice dust swirls around and around and covers your eyes. Your bones even become blocks of ice. You become a piece of ice. I only crossed it in winter twice, and both times, when I got to Bab al-Shams, I lit a fire and Nahilah came to put my bones back in place. That’s what a real woman is, my son – someone who can put each bone back in its place, warm you up, and let you become yourself again.

“The man, who everyone called al-Khouri, ^*died before the house was finished, and the ice house became known as “the House of al-Khouri.” I don’t know if the house was called that because the man belonged to the Khouri family from al-Kfeir from which hailed many historic personages – such as Faris Bey al-Khouri, a leader of the Nationalist Bloc who became prime minister of Syria, or because he had decided to become a monk and it was given the name in honor of his unfinished monastery project.”

That summer day, Yunes reached the house in a state of exhaustion and decided to spend the night there before continuing his journey to Bab al-Shams.

“I was in my room, the only one al-Khouri had completed before he died. Sleep wouldn’t come. The August sun was burning the ice, and the ice was burning my face. I was cold and I was burning at the same time. I got up, wrapped myself in a wool blanket, and sat on the threshold above the dry ice. I could feel the worms moving over me. I must have fallen asleep. I awoke to find the ice worms, little white worms, emerging from beneath the crust of dry ice and spreading over my feet. I got up in fright and started stepping on them. On that occasion I didn’t wait for nightfall to continue my journey to Nahilah; I traveled by day and God protected me. I don’t know how I made it. Nahilah couldn’t believe that the ice was full of worms.

“A peasant from the village of Kafar Shouba told me that the ice became wormy when it got old, and that the ice worms were very useful, because they turned water cold.

“I put the worm in the jar and drank, but Nahilah refused at first. Then she started asking me for worms from Jebel al-Sheikh and would distribute them to people in the village – in those days people were poor and no one owned a refrigerator; to cool the water, they’d put it out in jars overnight. Everyone started calling the ice worms ‘fedayeen worms.’ The whole village knew that I visited my wife in secret. They knew, but Nahilah, God protect her, didn’t tell even the children about the cave until the end of her life.

“Salem spoke to me by telephone – you know, over there they can call us, but we can’t call Israel.

“Salem said his mother’s health was improving and that she’d confided the secret and asked him to go to Bab al-Shams. She told him to visit the cave often to keep it neat and clean. ‘Don’t let the sheets, towels, and blankets get moldy. It’s your father’s village, ask him what he wants you to do with it. His home must be kept neat. And when I die, take everything out and close up the entrance with stones. We cannot let the Israelis in there; it’s the only liberated plot of Palestinian land.’

“After her death, Salem called me to say that he’d gone into Bab al-Shams, and wanted to know what to do with the things he found. He called it Bab al-Shams on the telephone! No one knew the name of my village except the two of us. There we were on our own, like Adam and Eve, and now along comes Salem and blurts it out!

“He told me about Nahilah’s death and then asked me about the cave. I couldn’t breathe.

“He said, ‘May God compensate you with good health, Dad,’ and then he asked me what to do with my things.

“I said I didn’t know.

“He said he’d carry out Nahilah’s wishes.

“I didn’t ask him what her wishes were. I found out forty days later. Salem called and said he’d closed the ‘country’ with stones. He said he’d gone at night with his son, Yunes, and Noor’s son, Yunes, and Saleh’s son, Yunes, and Mirwan’s son, Yunes. . they’d gone and closed the country. They’d taken everything out and had divided the things up among them.

“Salem told me, and I didn’t manage to utter a word.

“At that moment, I felt my life had ended. Four young men had divided up my clothes, my blankets, my cooking pans, and my books, and closed the country I’d created for my wife.

“Salem said he’d asked the children to keep the secret of the cave.

“‘It’s Yunes’ secret. Leave Yunes in the whale’s belly,’ he told them, ‘and after three days, or three years, or three decades, your grandfather Yunes will emerge from the whale’s belly, just like the first Yunes did, and Palestine will return, and we’ll call the village that we’ll rebuild Bab al-Shams.”’

“No,” said Yunes to those who came to pay him condolences, “she isn’t dead.” But he knew deep within himself that the story was over.

In this last period, he recounted fragments of his stories about Laila, the Roman lady, and the Yemeni woman.

He said the Yemeni woman was wrapped in the red of the sun.

He said he saw himself, with his beard and his rifle that he carried like a prophet’s staff, within the circle of sun stretching over the olive groves that extend from Tarshiha to the sea.

He said he became frightened when he saw her kneeling.

He said he hid in the trunk, and all he heard was the word Elias.

He said he emerged from the belly of the olive tree and looked for her.

You are Elias, Yunes. It’s a new name to add to your others.

I told you the story, my son, so you won’t forget that Elias is one of your names. Elias is the prophet of fire, the one who never died. He is the only man to have ascended to Heaven without experiencing death.

Death, as you see, is not a requirement.

Please listen to me.

I know you’re tired.

I know you want to die.

No.

You just have to look at yourself to know that your death would be as harrowing as the death of a child; there’s nothing crueler than a child’s death.

Do you want to die as Ibrahim did?

If only she were here! If only Nahilah were here, she would dress you in Ibrahim’s clothes and keep you from dying the way your son died.

But Nahilah isn’t here, and I don’t know what to do. Still, please, try to get through this seventh month with me, and afterward everything will start anew.

But you aren’t listening.

I know you never obeyed anyone but that woman called Nahilah. Where am I supposed to find Nahilah?

Salem told you that in her last days she couldn’t lie flat or her lungs would fill with fluid. She’d sit with her basket of flowers and water next to her. Every day she’d ask Noor’s son, Yunes, to go and pick fresh flowers. She’d sit him down beside her and ask him to write out names. She’d put all your names in her basket and recite from the Surah of Light:

God is the Light of the heavens and the earth;

the likeness of His Light is as a niche wherein is a lamp

(the lamp in a glass, the glass as it were a glittering star)

kindled from a Blessed Tree,

an olive that is neither of the East nor of the West

whose oil wellnigh would shine, even if no fire touched it;

Light upon Light;

(God guides to His Light whom He will). ^*

“Don’t forget, children. Recite the Surah of Light at my funeral. I always see him surrounded by light. Come, Yunes, and sit beside me. Ibrahim is waiting for me. We are all descendants of Ibrahim, children. Come, Yunes. Come, Ibrahim.”

Nahilah saw her son, Ibrahim, in the form of a man called Yunes, and saw her husband, Yunes, in the form of a child named Ibrahim.

You’re his son, not mine, so why are you tormenting me?

Please. I’ll go to your house now and will bring back the photos. I’ll hang them on the walls of this room. We’ll leave the drawing of the Divine Name in Kufic script in the center, and we’ll arrange your photos around it. Your photos around the Name, and all of you around Yunes.

I’ll go get the photos, and we’ll tell the whole story.

The story will be different.

We’ll change everything.

I’ll hang all the photos here, and we’ll live among them.

I’ll take down a photo from the wall and will hand it to you, and you’ll tell a story. Then I’ll choose another photo and a new story will come. Story will follow story.

That way we can compose our story from the beginning without leaving a single gap for death to enter through.

^*Literally: The People.

^*Allusion to the Jordanian army, which would recruit heavily from the Bedouin tribes.

^*Hope.

^*Military allies of Syria that had split off in 1983, after the PLO’s forces left Beirut.

^*Priest.

^*Koran, Surah XXIV, 35.

NOW I STAND.

I’m alone and it’s night.

I stand and speak my last words with you. Talk is no longer possible. The speaking’s done, the talk’s run out, the story’s closed.

I stand, neither weeping nor laughing.

As though your death were in the past. As though you died long ago. As though you didn’t die.

I stand, without sorrow or tears.

I stand before this grave. I stand before the mosque turned into a grave by the siege. I bear witness that you placed your head in the earth, closed your eyes to the dust, and left for a distant place.

What then?

Tell me.

Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t we agree that we had to get through this seventh month? I told you if we succeeded in getting through the seventh month, we’d have outrun death.

Didn’t we agree to buy life with these long days and long nights spent in this hospital room, as we told stories and remembered and imagined?

I told you it would cost seven months, and we’ve made a dent in the seventh month, and your child-features are beginning to take shape. I told you it was the beginning: “We’ve reached the beginning, Father, and now you’ll become a son to me.”

Why did you do this to me?

I never intended this to happen.

I decided to leave you for an hour to go get the photos so we could start the story over again. But I didn’t make it back until morning. I saw Zainab waiting for me at the door of the hospital. She ran toward me, laid her head on my shoulder, and wept.

I asked her what was wrong, and she shook her head and said, “A heart attack.”

Zainab wept, but I didn’t.

Amjad wiped his tears as he gave directions for the burial, and I stood there like a stone. As though it weren’t me.

Please don’t reproach me – you know what happened to me.

I walked in the funeral procession like a stranger, like any one of the dozens who were there. They put you in the hole, they covered you with earth, and no one came forward to say a word. They looked at me, and I lowered my gaze. I was incapable of looking, incapable of speaking, incapable of weeping. It was as though a veil had descended over my eyes, as though I saw without seeing.

I had to wait three days before I found within myself the courage to stand before your grave, in this rain, the night of the camp covering me and granting me speech.

Now I stand, not to apologize but to weep.

I swear the only reason I left was to go to your house and get the photos. I thought I’d go and get the pictures of you and Nahilah and your children and grandchildren, and we’d begin the story. I felt my memory had dried out and my soul had gone dead, and I thought that only the pictures could renew our story.

I’d go to the photos, put them in front of you in the hospital room, and we’d talk.

I thought instead of talking about love, we could talk about the children and grandchildren.

I thought we could tell their stories one by one. That way, with them, we’d make it through these two remaining weeks of our seventh month in death’s company and make it into the pains of childbirth.

Isn’t that the law of life?

Didn’t we agree we’d try to reach the depths of death so we could discover life?

No, I won’t leave you on this terrible night.

I thought I’d go for an hour and come back, and I didn’t come back.

Forgive me.

Please forgive me.

I left you with the story of Nahilah in her last moments, as she spoke with you and with Ibrahim, calling you Ibrahim and calling him Yunes, her children and grandchildren around her, weeping.

No. I didn’t mean to leave you with death, because it was your duty and Ibrahim’s to guard Nahilah and accompany her on her final journey.

I wanted a different story.

I wanted to tell you that I believed you when you said you didn’t stop going over there after the night of the Roman olive tree, when your wife sat you down and recounted her reality; when she told you that over there you’d become the Jews’ Jews, and over here you were the Arabs’ Arabs.

I believed you, I swear.

I don’t want you defeated and discredited.

I believe you.

After the night of the Roman olive tree, you absented yourself for nine months. Then you resumed your old habits, continuing your journeys over there despite all the difficulties. You didn’t stop going over until after 1982, or, in other words, until after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when movement inside Beirut became impossible and the trip from Beirut to Sidon a reckless adventure.

That was when you stopped going across Jebel al-Sheikh and they started calling you. You’d talk to them and promise you’d all meet soon in Cyprus or Cairo. That meeting, however, kept getting postponed, as if neither of you wanted it – as if both of you’d agreed, without a word, to avoid the danger of a meeting outside the place you’d created for your meetings. One time it would be you that put it off, another time it was Nahilah, and then she fell ill.

I wanted to talk about this series of visits over there and your trip with Nahilah to Acre, when you went to the Abu Daoud restaurant in the Old City and ate fish and drank arak. It was there that you said to her, as the alcohol went to your head, “It’s like they weren’t here and had never taken our country. Acre’s still Acre, the Jazzar mosque is still where it’s always been, the sea and the sea bass and the red mullet and the black bream are still the same. I really feel like going home with you and staying there. What can they do about it? Let what happens happen.” When you returned at night, you slipped into Bab al-Shams and spent the night there and forgot your talk of all the different kinds of fish and your plans to stay at home. She left you in the morning and returned at nightfall to accompany you to the outskirts of Deir al-Asad, as she always did.

I was going to tell you about Noor and her son, Yunes, who excelled in his studies in Acre and went to the University of Haifa to study engineering; and about the second Yunes, Salem’s son, who is studying business management at Tel Aviv University and is getting ready to marry a Christian girl from Nazareth from the Khleifi family. You blessed the marriage; you told Salem his grandmother used to put an icon of the Virgin under her pillow and that you saw no harm in that, but that the thing that matters is for us to get married and have children.

I was going to tell you about the second Yunes, how you told him that God had blessed us by multiplying our descendants: “Here we are, thrown out of our country in ’48, and with only a hundred thousand of us left over there. The hundred thousand have become a million, and the eight hundred thousand who were thrown out have become five million. They bring in immigrants and we have children, and we’ll see who wins in the end.”

I was going to tell you the stories of the photos, photo by photo, story by story, moment by moment, so we might fool time and not let it kill us.

It’s my fault.

Dear God! How did it happen? How did I let it happen? How did I fail to notice? How could I have gotten drunk?

I left her in the morning and told her I had to go to the hospital because my father was sick. She said, “Go. I know all about it.”

Apart from that one sentence she didn’t say a thing. And we spent the whole night eating and drinking and making love.

What came over me?

Did her ghost come to liberate me, and to let you die in peace?

If only she were here, if only Umm Hassan were here – but she died before you and me. If Umm Hassan had been here, the funeral would’ve been different. She would’ve stood and lamented and made everyone weep.

They carried you, and we walked behind them, and they started dancing. The only ones to walk behind your bier were the men of the camp’s Sufi brotherhood. They remembered that your father had been a Sufi of their order, so they carried your bier – turning, singing, and dancing. Your bier flew on top of their raised hands and they turned and sang their hymns.

And I walked.

I didn’t sway or sing or weep.

I walked like a stranger, as though you weren’t my father or my son, as though I hadn’t been with you on your secret journey to your secret country.

They carried you and flew with you, singing hymns for the family of the Prophet, and I stood rigidly by.

I was like one who doesn’t see.

The taste of that woman was in my soul, the smell of her on my body, her voice enveloped me.

And now you’re dead and departing.

Would you like to know what happened to me? What’s the point?

Would you like to hear a new story that even its narrator and hero doesn’t believe?

We’d decided to stop telling such stories. We’d decided we wanted stories as real as reality.

That’s why I went to your house to get you the photos and spread them out in front of you in your hospital room or hang them on the walls and show them to you.

But I failed.

I didn’t get to your house, and I didn’t get the photos.

I know you want to know, but I feel ashamed. Instead of mourning you and opening my house to receive condolences, I spent the last three days looking for her.

I didn’t go to the hospital, and I didn’t receive condolences along with Nurse Zainab and Dr. Amjad. Instead I roamed the alleys of the camp like a lost soul and whenever I caught sight of a woman’s shadow, I’d run and catch up with her and would look at her for a moment before continuing, the disappointment etched on my face.

I know they think I’ve gone crazy.

I know what they’re saying.

They’re saying Khalil Ayyoub lost it after Yunes died. But no! Well, yes, they may be right. I’ve lost it; yes, definitely, lost it all.

I spent three days searching, I didn’t sleep for an instant. I was like someone who’s lost his mind. How could she have disappeared? Where had she gone? What was her name? I don’t even know her name. I asked her – yes, I did ask. But I don’t remember what she said. Did she answer? I don’t know.

Maybe she didn’t answer. Maybe she smiled, and I nodded my head as though I understood.

For three days I forgot that you were my father and my son. I forgot your death and your life and ran after the ghost of a woman whose name I don’t know.

Now I’ve come back to you.

Forgive me. Pardon me.

I know you’ll understand my situation and will accept my apology. After all, you too, spent fifty years running after the ghost of a woman.

Do you know how I returned to my senses?

What saved me was this terrible idea that it was her – yes, her – who had come to force me to spend the night away from you, to steal you from me.

When this terrible idea came to me, I relaxed a little and fell asleep. Then I got up. It was night, and the rain was drumming on my window, so I decided to come to your grave and tell you everything.

I decided it was time for me to weep, mourn, to be unconsolable.

I decided you were dead and that I’d go on with my life without you, without the hospital and without our stories, of which we’ve only told fractions.

You remember.

When I left you it was seven in the evening, the last of the shadows were disappearing from the horizon. I went to your house for the photos. On my way, I stopped in front of a shop and bought a bag of bread and a little halva thinking I’d have the halva for dinner with a glass of tea.

I took the bag and continued on my way, and there, about fifty meters from your house, I saw her. She was wearing a long black dress, her head was covered with a black scarf, and she had a suitcase in her hand as if she were traveling.

She stood, suitcase in hand, and didn’t turn around, as if she were a photograph. When I got close to her, she turned her head in my direction.

“Good evening,” she said.

“Good evening,” I answered.

“Do you know the house of Elias al-Roumi?” ^*

“Elias who?”

“Elias al-Roumi,” she said.

“There’s no one named Elias in the camp,” I told her.

“Yes,” she said. “Elias al-Roumi.”

“So far as I know, there’s no one by that name.”

“Where are you from?” she asked me.

“From here, from the camp,” I said.

“From which village?”

“From al-Ghabsiyyeh,” I said.

“I could tell by your accent,” she said.

“But I don’t have a Ghabsiyyeh accent.”

“Yes, you do,” she said. “You do without knowing.”

“Maybe,” I said. “That must be my grandmother’s influence.”