Aziz fainted and saw nothing of the splendors he’d heard about. He regained consciousness lying in a bed. In the room were other beds, with other children in them. He thought he was lying in all those beds. He thought the excessive pain had multiplied his body. He thought he was twisting in pain in all those beds with all those bodies. A doctor was leaning over him. Aziz smelled his spicy perfume. The doctor was smiling at Aziz. Even so, Aziz was afraid of the man.
“Did you sleep well?”
Aziz said nothing. The doctor straightened up, his smile faded. He talked to Aziz’s father. Father and doctor exited the big room. Zahed’s fists were clenched. He was breathing heavily.
A few days later, Aziz was feeling better. They gave him a thick liquid to drink. He took it morning and night. It was pink. He didn’t like the taste, but it relieved his pain. His father came to see him every day. Said he was staying with his cousin Kacir. That was all he said. Zahed looked at Aziz in silence, touched his brow. His hand was as hard as a branch. Once, Aziz woke with a start. His father was looking at him, sitting on a chair. His gaze frightened Aziz.
A little girl was in the bed next to that of Aziz. Her name was Naliffa. She told Aziz that her heart had not grown properly in her chest.
“My heart grew upside down, you know, it’s pointed the wrong way.”
She said that to all the other children sleeping in the big hospital room. Naliffa talked to everybody. One night, Aziz screamed in his sleep. Naliffa was frightened. At daybreak, she told him what she’d seen.
“Your eyes went white like balls of dough, you stood up on your bed, and you waved your arms. I thought you were trying to scare me. I called to you. But your mind was no longer in your head. It had disappeared I don’t know where. The nurses came. They put a screen around your bed.”
“I had a nightmare.”
“Why are there nightmares? Do you know?”
“I don’t know, Naliffa. Mama often says, ‘God only knows.’”
“Mama says the same thing: ‘God only knows.’ She also says, ‘It’s been that way since the dawn of time.’ The dawn of time, Mama told me, is the first night of the world. It was so dark that the first ray of sunlight that broke through the night howled in pain.”
“More likely it was the night that howled as it was being pierced.”
“Maybe,” said Naliffa, “maybe.”
A few days later, Zahed asked Aziz about the little girl who had been in the next bed. Aziz replied that her mother had come to get her because she was cured. His father lowered his head. He said nothing. After a long while, he raised his head again. He still didn’t say anything. Then he bent over his son. He placed a kiss on his brow. It was the first time he’d done that. Aziz had tears in his eyes. His father murmured, “Tomorrow, we’re going home too.”
Aziz left with his father and the same driver. He watched the road fly past in the rearview mirror. His father was creating a strange silence, smoking in the car. He had brought dates and a cake. Before arriving at the house, Aziz asked his father if he was all better.
“You won’t go back to the hospital again! Our prayers have been answered.”
Zahed placed his big hand on his son’s head. Aziz was happy. Three days later the bomb from the other side of the mountain split the night and killed his grandparents.
On the day Zahed and Aziz came back from the big city, Tamara received a letter from her sister, Dalimah. She had gone to America some years earlier for an internship in data processing. She had been selected from a hundred candidates, quite an achievement. But she’d never come back. Dalimah wrote regularly to her sister even though Tamara rarely replied. In the letters she described her life. There was no war over there, that was what made her so happy. And so daring. She offered to send money but Tamara curtly refused her help.
In her letter, Dalimah announced that she was pregnant. Her first child. She asked Tamara to come over with the twins. She would find a way to bring them to America. She let it be understood that Tamara should abandon Zahed. Leave him alone with his war and his groves of orange trees.
“How she’s changed in a few years!”
There were days when Tamara hated her sister. She was mad at her: how could she expect Tamara to leave her husband? She wouldn’t leave Zahed. No. And she would fight too, even if Dalimah wrote that their war was pointless, that there would only be losers.
Zahed had stopped asking for news about her long ago. For him, Dalimah was dead. He wouldn’t even touch her letters. “I don’t want to be soiled,” he would say, disgusted. Dalimah’s husband was an engineer. Dalimah never mentioned him in her letters. She knew that in her family’s eyes he was a hypocrite and a coward. Like the bomb, he’d come from the other side of the mountain. He was an enemy. He’d fled to America. To gain acceptance there he had recounted horrors and lies about their people. That was what Tamara and Zahed believed. Had Dalimah not found anything better to do when she arrived there than to marry an enemy? How could she? “It was God who put him in my way,” she had written to them one day. “She’s an idiot,” thought Tamara. “America has clouded her judgment. What is she waiting for? For us all to be slaughtered by her husband’s friends? What did she think when she married him? That she was going to contribute to the peace process? Basically, she has always been selfish. Why bother telling her about our hardships? Who knows? Her husband might be thrilled.”
Later, in a brief reply to her sister, Tamara said nothing about Aziz having been in the hospital. Or about the bomb that had just killed her parents-in-law.
Men pulled up in a jeep. Amed and Aziz caught sight of a cloud of dust on the road that ran close to their house. The family was in the orange grove. That was where Zahed had wanted to bury his parents. He had just thrown in the last spadeful of earth. His forehead and arms were wet with sweat. Tamara was crying and biting the inside of her cheek. The jeep stopped on the side of the road. Three men emerged from it. The tallest held a machine gun. They did not head for the orange grove immediately. They lit cigarettes. Amed dropped his brother’s hand and went to the road. He wanted to hear what the three men were saying. He couldn’t. They were speaking too quietly. The youngest of the three finally took a few steps towards him. Amed recognized Halim. He’d grown a lot.
“Remember me? I’m Halim. I met you at the village school. When there still was a school.” Halim started to laugh.
“Yes, I remember you, you were the only one of the grown-ups who talked to my brother and me. Your beard’s grown.”
“We want to talk to your father, Zahed.”
Amed headed for the orange grove, followed by the three men. His father approached them. Amed saw his mother’s eyes harden. She shouted at him to join her. The men argued with Zahed for a long time. Tamara thought to herself that there was a curse on this day. She watched her husband. Zahed hung his head, looked at the ground. Halim gestured to Amed, who broke away from the arms of his mother, who was holding her two sons against her belly, to join the group of men. Zahed laid his hand on the boy’s head, saying proudly:
“This is my son Amed.”
“And the other boy?”
“Aziz, his twin brother.”
They stayed till evening. Zahed showed them the ruins of
