Two Brothers

When someone wants to hide…the night gives them shelter.

There’s no understanding the power of a mother, of Zana in particular, because she was the only one who didn’t swallow the story of the English bank. When a son’s fate is at stake, no detective in the world can find more clues than a mother.

When someone dies on the other side of the world, it’s as if he’s been killed in a war or a shipwreck. Our eyes couldn’t see the dead man. There was no funeral, no ritual. Nothing. Just a telegram, a letter.

Unlike at the top of the rubber tree, here on the ground things were less comfortable, infested with anthills, pests and tree parasites. Anthills appeared overnight, sculpting dark mounds on the wooden fence and the tree trunks. The task of destroying the anthills would always be left to me. It was quite a spectacle seeing these organised families going up in flames. What a pleasure I got from witnessing a whole hierarchy of insects turn to ash.

The ghazals are convincing, and patience is a powerful weapon…but the heart of a timid man will never win his lady.

Some of our desires are fulfilled only by others. Our nightmares belong to us

What Halim had so fervently wanted, the two brothers accomplished: neither of them had children. Some of our desires are only fulfilled by others. Our nightmares belong to us.

In a letter to Yaqub, Rania wrote what no one dared to say. She reminded him that vengeance is more pathetic than forgiveness. Hadn’t he had his revenge when he buried his mother’s dreams? She wrote that he, Yaqub, the resentful, the rejected, was also the more brutish and violent of the two, and he would be judged for that.

Only you don’t change, Omar. You’re still a wreck. Look at your clothes, your hair…the hour you arrive at home. Now you have no father, you should look for a job and stop with this idle lunacy. Your father couldn’t bear looking at you like this. He couldn’t bear watching your life thrown away.

Omar went to the funeral, but watched from afar. So distant that his brother, who hadn’t even come, seemed closer to his father’s final departure. Yaqub ordered a wreath to be delivered, along with an epitaph. “Fond memories of my father, who even from a distance, was always present.

The children had invaded Halim’s life, and he never got used to the fact. Still, they were his children and he spent time with them, told them stories. He was what you could call a father, but one who was aware that children had robbed him of a large part of his privacy and pleasure. Years later, they would rob him of serenity and good humor.

The Maronite Christian women in Manaus could not tolerate the notion of Zana marrying a Muslim. A mere tinker, a peddler, a roughneck, a Muslim from the mountains of Southern Lebanon, they’d say. Ah, these passions in the provinces. It’s like being onstage, listening to the audience booing two actors playing two lovers. The more they booed, the more perfume I put on the marriage sheets. It was a greedy and vengeful kiss, I silenced those rattling tongues…and all of Abbas’s ghazals were in that kiss.

Livia didn’t reappear. She must have gone out by the back alley. Yaqub came into the house alone, his neck scratched and full of love bites, his face still burning with passion. That’s how he left: his clothes rumpled, his face wet, and his hair full of twigs, leaves, and strands of blondish hair. He went quietly, leaving the house where he had lived with frugality and discretion. He had barely occupied the place, hardly more than a shadow.