He said he was sure you’d entered the final phase and he expected your heart to collapse — it could happen at any instant and carry you off — and that all my concern for you wouldn’t make the slightest difference. You hadn’t died already because your constitution was strong and your heart excellent — he’d never seen such a pure heart. He used the word pure to mean “regular” but the only true purity is the purity of love, and I’m jealous of you and of your love. I’m jealous of that meeting you had beneath the Roman olive tree when Nahilah took you to Bab al-Shams and poured her rain upon you. When I imagine that scene, I see her envelop you like a cloud and then pour her rain upon you. That is the water of heaven, and of life.

How can I convince them you’re not going to die? How can I convince myself?

Your childhood drives me crazy and crushes me; I never fathered a child and never knew the beauty that Yunes saw when his son Ibrahim’s hair covered the pillow.

Now I’ve started to understand how a man becomes a father.

Would you agree?

You don’t have to agree, Father, because you’re my son now. Let me call you “son,” please. Think of it as a game. Don’t parents play that way with their children, the father calling his son “daddy” and the son calling his father “son”? I’m the same. I carry the same name as your father: He was Ibrahim and I’m Khalil — the Companion. Ibrahim was the Companion of God, which is why we’ve named Ibrahim’s city Khalil, the City of the Companion. That’s why, too, the fiercest battles between the Palestinians and the Jews will take place in that city, and for it.

We won’t get into the complications of the relationships between fathers and sons. You know I don’t care for religious stories, and the name of the sacrifice that wasn’t sacrificed — be it Isaac, as the Jews say, or Ishmael, as we say — doesn’t concern me. Neither of them was sacrificed, because Ibrahim, peace be upon him, was able to produce a ram. The knife passed over both of their necks without a scratch, so what’s the difference?

I don’t want to discuss that now. I want you, Son, to see life with your new eyes. Start at the beginning, not at the end. Or start wherever you like. I’ve told you these stories so you can create a new story for yourself.

I can’t imagine the world that’s waiting for you. Make it yourself. Make it the way you want to. Make it new and beautiful. Tell the mountain to move, and it will. Didn’t Jesus, peace be upon him, say to the mountains, “Move!” Was he not the son who took on the outlines of his father’s image when he died on the cross?

Be the son, and let your bed be your cross.

What do you say?

Don’t you like the image of the son?

Isn’t it more beautiful than all the ones we’ve drawn during the six months we’ve spent together here? Come, let’s go back to the beginning.

You wanted the beginning, so let’s go there.

Listen, I don’t know any lullabies. Zainab does. Zainab lost her firstborn son in the Israeli air raid on al-Fakahani in ’82, and she still sings to him. I see her, when she’s all on her own, cradling her arms as though she were carrying a baby and I hear her singing:

Sleep now, sleep,

I’ll trap for you a dove.

Go, dove, fear not,

I’m only teasing my son.

Come now and sleep.

Tomorrow I’ll go to Hamra Street and buy you Fairouz, and that’ll be your sixth birthday present. Now I have to go and make you lunch, and I’ll put some orange-blossom water in it. There’s nothing like orange-blossom water. It has the most delicious flavor and the loveliest scent. I’ll put some orange-blossom water in your lunch, and your birthday meal will be delicious.

^* Ritual invoking the Presence. The da’ira al-hadra represents the circle of saints reunited in the Presence, in ecstasy.

^* Christian city in the south of Lebanon attacked in ’ 76 by the Saika, a pro-Syrian Palestinian militia, leaving approximately 400 civilians dead.

THE EXPERIMENT worked. Didn’t I tell you?

After I’d bathed you, daubed you with cologne, rubbed you with ointment and dressed you in your sky-blue pajamas, I sat you up at the table and let go of you, and you didn’t fall or slump over. You’ve regained your balance — and it’s impossible to balance if your brain is damaged. I left you alone, standing behind you without touching you. Then an idea came to me.

I stood in front of you, took hold of you just below the armpits, and the miracle occurred. It’s the first time I’ve dared to try such an experiment. There are three involuntary reflexes that newborn babies have.

The first is the gripping of the finger. We open the baby’s hand and put our finger on it, and the baby closes its palm. I’ve tried that, and it works.

The second is when we put our finger on the baby’s cheek close to its mouth, the baby will start to move its mouth toward the finger, grasp it with its lips and suck on it. I’ve tried that, and it works, too.

The third, I haven’t dared to try. I was afraid you’d fall, and your bones, which have become fragile and soft, might break.

I told Zainab about the two experiments, and she gave me a blank look and didn’t say a word. As for Dr. Amjad, you know better than I that he doesn’t give a damn. It’s a waste of time — medicine’s the least of his concerns now. The only thing that interests him about the hospital is how to steal the medicine we get as donations and sell them.

We all know he steals, but what can we do? He’s the director, so who can we complain to? Quis custodiet ipsos custodies, as they say. I’m not going to start bellyaching, this is the situation we’re in, and we have to accept it.

I can’t remember if I told Dr. Amjad about those two experiments, but I’m certain his reaction would only be scornful.

The important thing is that I’m happy, and I’m not going to allow anyone to spoil my good mood.

Today I decided to carry out the third experiment, and it was conclusive. I stood in front of you and placed my hands under your armpits and I watched you. Before I began, I raised you up a little, the way you do with babies, then I put you back in the chair and placed my right index finger under your left armpit and my left index finger under your right, and I watched you. I swear, you got up and your feet moved as though they were walking. I saw you walking with my own two eyes. Then I got scared. I grabbed you and put you back in the chair, and I saw pain invade your closed eyes. I picked you up as a mother would her baby — God, how light you’ve become — I picked you up and put you back on your bed and was overwhelmed with joy.

The third reflex occurred, which means that, from a medical standpoint, you’re a child again. You won’t progress from sickness to death, as they’d hoped; instead you’ve become a baby and are starting your life over again.

And that means everything can change.

I have to calculate how old you are now, in your new life. I’ve decided to calculate from the moment you fell into your coma, which means that as of four days ago, you entered your seventh month.

You’ve been in the womb of death for seven months, and I have to wait for your birth, which will be in two months.

So here we are at the beginning, like you wanted, and all the torments of childhood await you.

Let’s get started.

I spend my time with you, I bathe you, I feed you, and I see you changing before my eyes and feel at peace. I feel my body relaxing, and I sense that I can talk to you about what I feel and be free. You’re my son, and fathers don’t show fear in front of their sons.