All’s well.

I say “all’s well” because I know you’re in a place that’s relatively safe from all those smells, because soap, insecticides, cologne, and powder fill your room with the aroma of paradise.

Of course, everything’s relative. It’s a relative aroma in a relative paradise in a relative hospital in a relative camp in a relative city. That’ll do.

Everything is relative. Even the Arabic calligraphy that I’ve hung on the wall above you is relative, since it isn’t a work of art in the precise meaning of the term, though it is beautiful. I brought it from my house because Shams refused to take it. A beautiful work with the name of the Almighty written in Kufic script. I like that script. I see its angular forms as redrawing the boundaries of the world, and I see it curving and rounding everything off. It’s true it’s not a curved script, but everything’s round in the end. Allah in Kufic lettering is above your head because Shams didn’t grasp the picture’s artistic value when I offered it to her. She looked at it with something approaching revulsion, said, “You want to make me into one of those women who cover their hair?” and laughed treacherously.

When Shams laughed, she laughed treacherously. I would smell the scent of another man on her breath and “avert my gaze” as they say. I would feel that I was with her and not with her. I would see them all hovering around the two of us and I would try to push them away so I could see her. Then I would forget them, and the betrayal, when I slid into her undulating body.

Shams laughed treacherously.

We were at my place, I told her I had a gift for her. I went to the bedroom to get the canvas rolled up in white paper. She tore off the paper, full of curiosity. Then the picture with the Kufic lettering shone out.

“Beautiful. A beautiful work,” I said. “Don’t you love Arabic calligraphy?”

She looked closely at it, read it carefully, then pulled back.

“You want to turn me into one of those women who cover their hair?”

Shams thought I was prodding her to believe in God and gave me a lecture on her personal view of the divine and of existence. I’ll spare you her theories about the united nature of existence and how God is present in everything and so on.

She didn’t take the picture because she imagined I wanted her to adopt the head scarf in preparation for marriage. She spoke of her conviction concerning the liberation of women.

I can assure you that such thoughts never had crossed my mind! I bought the thing because I love Arabic calligraphy, that’s all, and I wanted to give her a nice present.

This drawing, my dear Abu Salem, cost more than fifty dollars, and it’s the most beautiful thing in my house. Shams didn’t take it and I didn’t hang it up because it wasn’t for me. I said to myself, I’ll hang it in the living room when Shams comes and lives with me. But she died. I therefore decided I deserved the present and ought to hang it on the wall above my bed. Then things heated up: There was talk of a list of people to be killed and of Shams’ relatives seeking revenge. Apparently my name was at the top of the list. So I forgot about the drawing, and everything else.

But then, after having put you to bed and cleaned everything up, I went home to get a few things and remembered it. Something told me that it belonged here. Allah in Kufic letters wraps you in its aura and protects you.

I didn’t bring the map of Palestine or the posters of martyrs. Nothing. Those don’t mean a thing here. Do you remember how we used to tremble in front of those posters, how we were convinced that the martyrs were about to burst through the colored paper and jump out at us? Those posters were an integral part of our life, and we filled the walls of the camp and the city with them, dreaming that one day our own pictures would appear on similar ones. All of us dreamed of seeing our faces outlined in bright red and with the martyr’s halo. There was a contradiction here to which we paid no attention: We wanted to have our faces on the posters but also wanted to see them — we wanted to become martyrs without dying!

Tell me, how were we able to separate the image of death from death? How did we attain this absolute faith in life?

All that I know is that after the massacre I grew to hate the posters of martyrs. I won’t tell you what happened, about the swarms of flies that almost devoured me — it’s not the right moment for those sorts of memories. They need the right moment. We can’t just toss off memories like that, we don’t have the right to remember any which way.

I brought you the picture, saying to myself that the name of Allah in Kufic lettering would remain however circumstances and conditions changed. The photographs and posters were ephemeral, but the name of the Almighty will be eternally present before our eyes.

You don’t like the word eternally. You used to say, “What small minds the Jews have! What is this silly slogan of theirs — ‘Jerusalem, Eternal Capital of the Jewish State’! Anyone who talks of eternity exits history, for eternity is history’s opposite; something that’s eternal doesn’t exist. We even ate our gods. During our Age of Ignorance, we — we Arabs — would model gods out of dates and then eat them, because hunger is more important than eternity. And now they come and tell us that Jerusalem is an eternal capital? What kind of shit is that? It’s foolish — which means that they are becoming like us, defeatable.”

You said we’d never defeat them: On the contrary, we needed to help them defeat themselves. No one is defeated from the outside; every defeat is internal. Ever since they raised the banner of eternity, they’ve fallen into the whirlpool of defeat, and it’s up to us to keep them going in this direction.

You didn’t tell me how we were supposed to keep them going. So far, the only people we’ve helped to defeat have been ourselves — carpeting our land with our blood for the Israelis, so that they could walk over it like victors.

Things have changed, Father.

If you’d become sick, God forbid, ten years ago, I wouldn’t have brought you this drawing. I would have hung a map of Galilee above your head, to show how proud I was of you. You are the pride of us all. You made our country that we’d never seen come to life within us; you traced our dream with your footsteps.

Now it’s not the dream I put up but the reality.

Allah in Kufic lettering is the one absolute reality we can depend on.

No, I won’t let you speak.

You’re in a mysterious place now and approaching the moment when nothing but faith can help you. Please, don’t blaspheme. You’re a believer, your father was a Sufi sheikh.

You’d like to say — though I won’t let you — you’d like to say that someone who’s lived your life can depend on nothing and that even gods change; our forefathers used to worship other gods.

Be quiet, please — I don’t want to listen to your theory of temporariness. It’s time for the temporary to become permanent. It’s time for you to relax. I’ve had enough of your theories, but you don’t care. I believe you’re lying. You, too, are sick of the temporary and can’t take it anymore. The proof? May I remind you of Adnan Abu Odeh?

I know you don’t like to recall this affair because it scares you. Have you forgotten the day you came back from visiting him, trembling, and came to ask me for sleeping pills?

You came to me, doubled over, as though you were looking for death. Why don’t you want to face the truth? Why don’t you admit you feared for your life and not Adnan’s? And why, after I gave you those pills, did you go back to mocking everything?

Heroes aren’t supposed to behave that way.

A hero has to remain a hero. It’s a crying shame — you all abandoned Adnan, forgot him, and all you remember now is his legend. As for the man himself, he went to his fate without anyone batting an eye.