The reconciliation happened when Dunya became the victim of her own story; when her story was transformed into a scandal, the woman fell from grace and all that was left were her two eyes suspended in the emptiness of her sand-colored face.

I believe she became separated from her own story when she agreed to participate in Professor Muna’s game. I saw her on TV; I saw how she bent over the microphone after the horrible clatter of her crutches hitting the ground. And she was lying, I swear she was lying. How can you rape a girl with a shattered pelvis? She said she’d been hit in her right thigh, meaning her pelvis, and then that she fell and they threw themselves on top of her — which is impossible. But that was the story the public wanted to hear. Rape is a symbol. I’m not talking just about Arabs but about everyone on earth. Man connects war with rape. Victory signifies the victor raping the defeated enemy’s women; it’s only complete when the women are subjected to rape. This isn’t something that happens in reality, of course; it’s a fantasy. No! God forbid — Dunya didn’t say she was raped because she wanted that. I don’t accept the superficial, simplistic point of view that so many men hold about women wanting to be raped; rape is one of the most savage and painful things there is. Dunya said she was raped to please the psychologists, the sociologists, and the journalists, who were expecting to hear that word from her. She said it, and they relaxed.

That’s the problem with the Lebanese war. It entered the world’s imagination pre-packaged as insanity. When we say that its insanity was normal, the same insanity as in any war, our listeners feel thwarted and think we’re lying. Even Boss Josèph’s story — I won’t say it didn’t happen; it probably did, and there may have been worse outrages. The issue isn’t what happened but how we report and remember it.

I’m convinced that if Boss Josèph had come to the restaurant and told the story to me, he would’ve been compelled to introduce fundamental modifications. He was used to telling it in front of people who believe that what happened in the camps was heroic. With me, however, he wouldn’t have been able to talk about heroism. He would have had to describe what he did in a cold and neutral, maybe even apologetic, fashion. And that would’ve changed everything; even the significance of that bullet penetrating the heads of two children thrown down on a table in a house somewhere in the camp would have changed.

I will never forget how the clusters of flies hovered over me and pursued me. I won’t forget the buzzing blue flies over those bodies acting as reservoirs for all the death in the world. I won’t forget how we stepped over the distended vertical bodies, holding our noses.

I told Monsieur Georges that “the first time” didn’t exist, that there was a beginning only in stories.

YOU USED to say, “Back to the beginning.” You would talk, and we’d listen. It was enough for us to hear your footsteps for “the beginning” to return, for things to get started.

Not now.

Now there’s no one, there’s no beginning.

The issue is war, and war has no beginning.

I was willing to meet Boss Josèph even though I felt no curiosity about him. I was willing to meet him because I’d learned the secret of war. This secret is the mirror. I know no one will agree with me, and they’ll say I talk like this because I’m afraid, but it’s not true. If you’re afraid, you don’t say your enemy is your mirror, you run away from him.

I agreed to meet with Boss Josèph despite the fact that I didn’t expect to hear anything I didn’t already know. The man would start — as indeed he did start — with cocaine. He’d say he took huge amounts of cocaine before going to the camp, so he’d be exonerated from responsibility for his acts. He’d say the Israelis lit the place up and that his superior, who was sitting with the Israeli officers on the roof of the Kuwaiti embassy overlooking the camp, expected something extra special from him. He’d say that when he entered the darkened camp, he was stumbling on the stones and the flares blinded him, which made him fire randomly, without thinking. When he entered that particular house and opened fire and saw people collapsing on the sofas where they were sitting, he felt a strange intoxication, and that he never meant to kill the two children but was just joking around with his buddy about the effectiveness of the gun and then he killed them, just like that, without thinking.

This is something about us that you won’t understand, Father.

You didn’t get caught up in your war the way we did in ours. You went to war, but we didn’t. Our situation was more like yours when you were in Sha’ab, except that we couldn’t withdraw. Do you remember Sha’ab after you took it back from the Jews? Did you hesitate even once? Of course not. The only time you hesitated was when the ALA informed you of the decision to withdraw before the Lebanese borders closed. Then you hesitated, but you withdrew with the rest. When you met Nahilah, you told her you’d made a mistake and asked her to stay because you thought it would be possible to correct that mistake quickly enough.

Do you remember those long months after Ibrahim died?

Do you remember how many decisions you made and how often you swore you’d stay? You lived in caves. The earth, the rocks, the trees and the wild animals were your companions, and you said you’d never leave. And when you recovered from the shock of your son’s death, you went back to Lebanon and began forging your own path as a permanent journey between the two Galilees. You’d go from Lebanese Galilee in the south to Palestinian Galilee in the north. You created your existence, like a story.

But we moved from war to war. We didn’t fight a war, Father, we lived war. For us war became numbers added to numbers.

When the Lebanese war ended, I didn’t realize it had. The war ended but didn’t end, which is why I didn’t pay any attention to the question of what and how our life would be afterwards.

My expedition to that restaurant in al-Ashrafiyyeh permitted me to meet my enemies, but unfortunately I didn’t feel they were my enemies. At Rayyis’ restaurant it was as if I were in front of a mirror and were seeing my own image. No, I’m not defending them. If the war began again, I’d fight them again. Despite that, I want to say that the real war begins when your enemy becomes your mirror so that you kill him in order to kill yourself. That’s what history is. Can you see the sordidness and inanity of history? History is inane because it dislikes victors and defeats everybody.

Take yourself. When you told the tale of your journeys and your wars, when you saw that woman kneeling close to the Roman olive tree in the middle of the red sphere of the sun, you were designing your mirror. You saw your own image in their mirrors. No, I’m not equating executioner and victim. But I do see a mirror broken into two halves, which can only be mended by joining the parts together. Dear God, this is the tragedy: to see two halves that come together only in war and ruination.

I say these things to you, and you can do nothing nailed there to your bed, which has become your ship on the sea of death. I hear you saying no and telling me the story of Nahilah before the Israeli investigator.

“I’m a prostitute. Write that I’m a prostitute, what more do you want from me?”

Please tell me that story again, I like it so much. The first time you told it to me you didn’t say the word prostitute. You said she said, “I’m a pro. .” And when I asked what that meant you burst out laughing and said, “Prostitute. You’ve always been stubborn, you don’t understand much, do you?”

I asked you, “What did she say? Did she say pro. .or prostitute?”

“She said prostitute. She said the word the way it is. A mouthful, huh?”