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.