The funeral rites came to an end, earth was thrown over the sheikh, everybody dispersed, and Yunes returned to his cave, where he stayed for a week, never leaving it. Then Nahilah came and took you to the house. You walked behind her like a sleepwalker, and when you arrived you were a little nervous and said you shouldn’t go in, so she dragged you inside. In the courtyard, the children were playing, but you didn’t go to them. You went in and sat down in the living room; your mother came and sat down beside you, took your hand, and said nothing.

You were sitting next to your mother when you heard Nahilah’s voice calling the seven children into the house. She’d call to each of them by name, then say, “Shoo!” as though she were herding chickens rather than children. They came in and saw you. None of them came over to you, and you didn’t open your arms the way a father who sees his children is supposed to do. They came in and you stayed where you were. They came in and drew back and stood in a single row, pressing against the wall as though they were afraid of you. Silently, you got up, approached them, knelt, and kissed them one after the other. Then you stood up and left. Noor, who was fourteen, cried “Dad!” as you went away.

That was your only meeting with your children, and when you recalled it, you spoke of it as a dream — “as though it never happened.” When you told me about your father’s funeral and how you’d taken part, you said that the barbed wire and the electric border fences hadn’t stopped you from bidding him farewell.

AND YESTERDAY, I stood in your room, under the avalanche of pictures — I saw them all. I saw your children and your grandchildren with their backs to the wall, waiting for you to get up and approach them on your knees and kiss them. I heard Noor’s voice and saw your mother’s death-inhabited eyes. You told me your mother died two months after your father and that you didn’t go to her funeral.

That day, after you’d kissed them, you returned to Lebanon. You came back once more on a short visit before disappearing for more than a year because of your preoccupations and the tense situation on the border. In the meantime, everything had changed. Salem had started work with his brother Mirwan in Mr. Haim’s garage in Haifa, and Noor was about to announce her engagement to Isa al-Kashif, who worked as a construction worker before becoming a contractor in the Arab villages, and Nahilah was exhausted.

“I’m worn out with poverty and the daily grind,” she said.

You were together in the olive grove next to your cave, sitting beneath the summer moon that shed its light on the green leaves, giving them a blue shimmer. You waited for her there because she’d told you, “Beneath the tree.” You tapped on the window and were about to leave when Nahilah appeared behind the glass and said, “Beneath the Roman tree.” You thought she meant the enormous old tree with the hollow trunk, the one that yields a small fruit with a special taste.

You love olives.

All of us love olives, especially those little green ones Nahilah used to cover with coarse salt in a cloth bag and recommend you place — the moment you reached your house — in a glass jar filled with water so the salt would melt and rise, white and raw, to the top, and into which you were to throw a few bay leaves, leaving the jar for a month before eating them.

You kept those olives for celebrations. You’d celebrate with your olives in Shatila, taking a handful from the jar and steeping them in garlic, lemon, and oil, and drinking a glass of arak while listening to Saleh Abd al-Hayy singing, “My beloved, he tells me what to do,” taking your ritual to its pinnacle. You called those moments the ultimate prayer. You’d. . no, I won’t say the truth now so that I don’t spoil your memories, which you construct to please yourself. But when I listened to you talking about those Roman olive trees, planted before the time of Christ, saying they had an irradicable hidden bitterness, a bitterness that gave one an appetite for life, and then going on at length about those huge trees with the hollow trunks which they called Roman because they’re as old as the Romans, I’d imagine you with another woman. Please don’t get upset. You know I’m telling the truth, or what would the visits of those two women mean? The first I told you about. She came, and then disappeared. The second would come every Thursday at four in the afternoon. She still has a certain beauty, especially in her fine jaw and the two creases that crossed her cheeks. Her name is Claire; she introduced herself as Claire Midawwar. She came into your room and sat down. I was cleaning the mucus extractor. She didn’t pay the least bit of attention to me. She made me feel out of place, so I left the room, and when I came back an hour later, she was gone.

She continued to come at her regular time and I continued to leave her alone with you. Last week, however, she was late. Do you know why I haven’t spoken of her until today? Because she’d become a part of our life here in the hospital, a routine one pays no attention to until it stops. Last week I became aware of her because she was late, and I decided to wait for her to ask her who she was. I put on a clean white gown and thought to wear my glasses, which I usually forget in my pocket since I haven’t gotten used to the idea of putting on glasses. As soon as she entered the room, I went over to her to shake hands.

“I’m Dr. Khalil Ayyoub.”

“Pleased to meet you, Doctor,” she answered, sitting down again.

“I haven’t had the pleasure of making your acquaintance,” I said.

“I’m a friend,” she said. “An old friend.”

I got into a stop-and-go conversation with her about conditions in the city, but she didn’t seem to want to talk, as though I were stealing the time she’d set aside for you. Despite her irritation with my questions and her abrupt and evasive answers, I decided to be impertinent. I sat on the second chair and leaned forward a little as if to follow what she was saying. As soon as she saw me sit down, she put her hand on her hip as though she were about to stand up. Before the gesture could be transformed into the arch of the back that precedes the moment of rising, I got a question in. I asked her, point-blank, what her relationship to you was.

“When did your relationship with him start, Madame. .?”

I left my question hanging in the air, and the shock took the wind out of her sails. Looking at me with startled eyes, she said, “Claire. Claire Midawwar.”

“Have you known him for a long time?”

“A very long time,” she said and got up.

“Tell me about him,” I said.

She picked up her bag and said she was going. “Look after him, and may God make him well.”

Mme. Claire didn’t come that week, and it’s possible that she’ll never come back again. It’s my fault, but I couldn’t help but ask her. I saw her coming once a week and I imagined her with you, eating Roman olives dripping with lemon juice and oil.

Eating Nahilah’s olives with another woman!

I don’t understand anymore.

You’ll ask me about the French actress, I know. But no, I swear there’s nothing between us. I just felt a strange tenderness.

You’ll ask me about my visit to her at the Hotel Napoléon on Hamra Street.

I didn’t mean to visit her. I was feeling stifled here, so I went. I’m not going to tell you any more now. I’ll behave like Claire Midawwar, who went away without telling me a thing.

Tell me, is Claire the woman you sought shelter with during the Israeli invasion of ’82?You claimed that you’d fled to a priest’s house! Was she the priest? Got you! I’ve got you now, and it’s up to me to decipher what you said. Everything needs translating. Everything that’s said is a riddle or a euphemism that needs to be interpreted. Now I must reinterpret you from the beginning. I’ll take apart your disjointed phrases to see what’s inside them and will put you back together again to get at your truth.