“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.