THE TESTAMENT OF AL-HARIQA
CHAPTER FOUR
1
A full week had passed since the night Hajj Tawfiq had given Adnan the key to the back door—a week that had seemed quiet on the surface. Yet Adnan felt, with an instinct that grew sharper by the day, that this calm resembled the stillness before a storm in the old people’s stories: a silence charged with an expectation no one could see, but everyone breathed.
Hajj Tawfiq had become increasingly preoccupied with his secret messages. He read those that arrived away from Adnan’s eyes, then burned them, as was his habit, in the little copper ashtray. But for the first time he had also begun entrusting Adnan with real responsibilities: sometimes he left him to receive small traders on his own and negotiate prices for medium-sized shipments; once, he even allowed him to sign a receipt for goods received. Adnan could scarcely have imagined such a thing two months earlier, when he had been nothing more than a frightened boy standing before the door of a shop he knew nothing about.
One of the relatively quiet evenings that week, as the two of them were closing the shop together, Adnan asked, with a growing boldness born of their deepening trust: “Hajj, how long exactly have you known Kamal al-Hourani?”
Hajj Tawfiq stopped what he was doing for a moment and looked at Adnan for a long while, as though weighing whether the time had come to share part of that old story. “More than thirty years, Adnan. We were young men then, both dreaming of becoming great merchants. Damascus and Beirut were much closer to each other in those days than they are now—trade flowed constantly between them, families from the two cities intermarried, and friendships crossed the borders with little difficulty.” He smiled faintly, sadly. “Kamal was the more ambitious of us, and the more daring when it came to risk. I was the cautious one, the man who calculated every step twice before taking it. That balance between us was the secret of our success as partners in those years, until our paths divided and each of us began building his future in his own city.”
“And did you stay in touch all those years?”
“Intermittently, as old friendships tend to be when distance comes between people. A letter here, a visit there, news of a marriage or a birth arriving weeks late. But the real bond between us—the one distance and time could not erase—was always there, even through our longest silences.” He paused, gazing absently into the space before him. “That is precisely why it pains me to see him now like this: desperate, afraid for his daughter’s future, forced to ask me for something I know he hates asking of anyone, let alone an old friend.”
One morning in early October, Adnan entered the shop early as usual and sensed something different in the air from the very first moment. Hajj Tawfiq had arrived before him, which was unusual in those days, and was standing by the front door, watching the alley outside with unmistakable anticipation, his hands clasped behind his back in a way Adnan had never seen before.
“Good morning, Hajj.”
Hajj Tawfiq turned slightly too quickly, as though Adnan’s voice had caught him by surprise, even though he knew exactly when the young man arrived every day. “Good morning, Adnan.” He paused, then added in a tone he tried to make as ordinary as possible: “The visitor I told you about may come today, or tomorrow. Kamal. Kamal al-Hourani. His daughter may be with him.”
It was the first time Hajj Tawfiq had spoken the man’s full name so plainly, and Adnan felt a particular weight in the way he pronounced it, as though every letter carried decades of memories tangled equally with love and pain.
“Do you want me to be here when he arrives, Hajj, or would you rather I keep busy with something else?”
Hajj Tawfiq thought for a moment, then answered: “No. Stay. I want you here—to watch, to learn. But as I told you before, don’t speak about anything concerning the shop or me except within the ordinary limits of the work. Listen more than you speak.”
2
The two visitors arrived, if one may call it that, in the very middle of the day, when the sun stood high and its gentle autumn warmth filled the market’s alleys with a soft golden light. Adnan heard the wheels of a taxi stopping near the market entrance, an unfamiliar sound in those narrow lanes where cars did not usually enter, followed by tired footsteps approaching slowly through the crowd, as though their owners carried the weight of a long, arduous journey far greater than the mere geographical distance between Beirut and Damascus.
Kamal al-Hourani was a man in his late fifties, relatively tall and impeccably dressed, but with a style utterly different from Abu Nidal’s gaudy flamboyance: quiet, assured elegance, a dark-gray suit of fine cut that nevertheless bore the traces of a long journey, thick white hair carefully arranged, and deep brown eyes carrying the look of a man who had seen much in his life—perhaps more than he had ever wished to see. Adnan noticed that, despite the man’s outward elegance, his hands trembled almost imperceptibly, and that he held a small leather case tightly beneath his arm, as though it were the most precious thing he owned in this world.
Beside him stood a young woman in her early twenties, tall and slender, with long black hair tied firmly back and sharp, intelligent eyes that moved swiftly from one detail of the shop to another, as though she could store everything in her memory faster than any ordinary visitor. She wore a simple, elegant dress, but her face carried the same fatigue as her father’s—a fatigue born of a long, difficult journey, and perhaps something deeper than travel alone.
Kamal al-Hourani stopped for a moment on the threshold, looking into the shop as though summoning old memories that were struggling within him between longing and pain. Then he finally stepped inside, his daughter immediately behind him.
“Tawfiq.”
It was the only word he said at first, merely a name, yet his tone carried more than any long sentence could have held: surprise, though he had known he would find Tawfiq here; longing; and something else, akin to an old caution that had never quite healed.
Hajj Tawfiq rose slowly from behind his desk. “Kamal.” His voice was not much warmer, but neither was it cold. It sounded like the voices of two men who knew that what lay between them was far too complicated to be reduced to a warm welcome or obvious reserve.
3
Kamal al-Hourani sat in the chair reserved for important customers, while his daughter remained standing, looking around with open curiosity until her eyes finally settled on Adnan, standing in his usual corner. She studied him a moment longer than necessary, as though trying to understand exactly who this young man was, then gave him a small, polite smile before turning her eyes back to her father.
“It’s been a long time, Tawfiq,” Kamal said, letting his gaze travel around the shop, examining every shelf and every detail with the look of a man remembering a place he had visited many times in another life. “It hasn’t changed much, thank God.”
“Men change more than places, Kamal. You’re the best example of that, with all that white hair.”
Kamal gave a short laugh, but it did not quite reach his eyes. “And so have you, my old friend.” He looked at his daughter, then back at Hajj Tawfiq. “This is my daughter, Reem. I don’t think you’ve seen her since she was a little girl—if you ever saw her at all.”
Hajj Tawfiq looked at the girl for a long moment. Something strange mingled in his gaze: admiration, and something deeper that seemed to Adnan closer to sorrow. “Welcome, my dear. You’ve grown so much since the last time I heard about you from your father.”
“Thank you, Hajj Tawfiq. I’ve heard a great deal about you from my father, all my life.” Reem’s voice was clear and self-assured, bolder than Adnan had expected from a girl her age in those days.
“Kind words. I hope so,” Hajj Tawfiq said with a faint smile, trying to lighten the already charged atmosphere.
“Most of them, at least.” Reem answered with a small, sly smile that held a striking intelligence. Adnan noticed it at once, with quiet admiration from his corner.
Kamal relaxed slightly in his chair, as though his daughter’s words had eased some of his visible tension. “Tawfiq and I were partners once, long ago, back when we were young and had nothing but ambition.” This time he addressed Adnan, as though he wanted to explain to him—or perhaps to himself—the nature of the bond between him and Hajj Tawfiq. “I came from Beirut in those days to learn the cloth trade from my uncle, who owned a shop here in Al-Hariqa market, while Tawfiq was working in the neighboring shop. We became friends, then partners in some major deals between Damascus and Beirut. I brought in the goods from the ports, and he sold them here, with his knowledge of the local market.” He smiled, a little sadly. “They were good days, before life scattered us, each of us in his own city, each of us with his own burdens.”
“They were good days indeed,” Hajj Tawfiq agreed quietly. But Adnan noticed that something in his eyes, when he said it, was more complicated than simple nostalgia—something closer to the caution of a man remembering that old friendships sometimes come with complicated debts, financial or otherwise.
4
After these cautious courtesies, Kamal al-Hourani lowered his voice slightly and glanced toward Adnan for a moment, as though wondering whether he could speak freely in front of him.
“He’s been working with me for months. You can trust him as you trust me,” Hajj Tawfiq said, catching Kamal’s glance quickly.
Kamal shook his head, unconvinced, or so it seemed, but continued in a voice lower than before. “Tawfiq, you know why I came. Things in Beirut… they’re no longer bearable.” He paused, as though the words that followed cost him twice the effort to utter. “I lost two of the three shops I owned there. They were burned to the ground in the latest fighting, along with all the goods I had accumulated over twenty full years. I was forced to sell the third for a pittance to a man who took advantage of my desperation, because I needed cash, and I needed it quickly, to get my family out of the neighborhood before the road was completely cut off.” He looked at his daughter for a moment, tenderness mingled with deep pain in his eyes. “All my family and I have left is a little of what I gathered over a lifetime. Most of it is here, with you, and has been for a long time.”
Hajj Tawfiq paused and looked at Adnan, then at Reem, then back at Kamal. “Let’s discuss this somewhere else, Kamal. Not here.”
“Why? Don’t you trust this young man of yours? You just said he’s trustworthy.”
“Trust is one thing, caution another entirely, my old friend. The fewer people who know the details of this matter, the better for everyone—including you and your daughter.”
A hint of irritation appeared on Kamal’s face, but at last he nodded, acknowledging the logic in Hajj Tawfiq’s words. “All right. Where can we talk?”
“Come with me to the back room. Adnan, stay here. Take care of the shop and the customers if anyone comes, and don’t let anyone into the inner passageway, whatever the reason.”
5
Hajj Tawfiq and Kamal al-Hourani withdrew into the back room, leaving Adnan and Reem alone in the front of the shop. The silence was awkward at first, until Reem broke it with a direct question Adnan had not expected.
“How long have you been working for Hajj Tawfiq?”
“Since late last summer, about four months.”
“And do you like working here?”
Adnan smiled, slightly surprised by the directness of the question. “Yes. I actually like it very much. Hajj Tawfiq can be a difficult man sometimes, but he’s fair, and I learn a great deal from him every day.”
Reem nodded, her eyes roaming the shop once more before returning to him with an assessing look Adnan was not used to seeing in a girl her age. “Do you know why we came today?”
Adnan hesitated before answering cautiously. “No, not exactly. Hajj Tawfiq doesn’t share every detail of his personal life with me.”
“Good.” She said it in a tone where relief mingled with something else Adnan could not quite identify. “It’s better that it stays that way, at least for now.”
“Is everything all right?” Adnan asked, driven by a curiosity he could not suppress despite all Hajj Tawfiq’s warnings not to involve himself in matters that did not concern him.
Reem looked at him for a long moment, as though weighing whether she could trust this strange young man she had known for only a few minutes. “My father is a good man, by most measures. But he is also desperate these days, and a desperate man sometimes… does things he would never do under other circumstances.” She stopped, as though suddenly regretting that she had said more than intended. “Don’t worry about what I said. I’m only tired from the long journey.”
Adnan tried to ease the tension he felt he had caused with his question. “Is the road from Beirut long? I’ve never traveled there.”
Reem smiled faintly, seeming grateful for the change of subject. “Long and exhausting, especially these days. The roads aren’t as safe as they used to be. There are so many checkpoints, and sometimes a journey that once took three hours takes an entire day.” She looked away for a moment, as though recalling images she did not want to share in detail. “The Beirut I knew, the one I grew up in, hardly exists anymore. Whole neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, and so many friends—I no longer know where they are, or whether they’re even alive.”
Adnan felt a little embarrassed that a simple question had opened the door to pain far deeper than he had expected. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stir painful memories.”
“It’s all right.” She smiled sadly, but genuinely. “Sometimes it’s good for someone to ask instead of everyone avoiding the subject for fear of embarrassing me. You’re kind, you…” She stopped, as though only now realizing that she did not know his name.
“Adnan. Adnan al-Rafi’i.”
“Adnan.” She repeated the name quietly, as though committing it to memory. “It’s a beautiful name.”
Adnan smiled with slight embarrassment. “Thank you. My mother chose it.”
“My mother also liked names with meanings.” She said it in a faintly sad tone, without explaining further, and Adnan sensed another story hidden behind that short sentence, perhaps another painful one. This time he did not dare ask.
6
Several long minutes passed, seeming to Adnan far longer than their actual length, before Hajj Tawfiq and Kamal al-Hourani emerged from the back room. Kamal’s face now carried a tension that had not been there when he entered, while Hajj Tawfiq appeared calm on the surface. But Adnan, who had begun learning to read the smallest details of his teacher’s face, noticed a hidden strain at the corner of his mouth and in the way his hands were clasped behind his back.
“So this is all you can offer me now?” Kamal asked in a voice slightly louder than Adnan had expected, carrying disappointment mixed with suppressed anger.
“This is all I can offer you for now, Kamal. The circumstances are more complicated than you imagine, and what has been entrusted to me is not mine alone to dispose of as I please, even though I fully understand how desperate your need has become.”
“Entrusted?” Kamal repeated the word with unmistakable bitterness. “Tawfiq, I’m not asking you for charity, or even a favor. I’m asking for what I know you have, what I entrusted to you myself years ago, when I was the one who could give, not the one standing before you today in need.”
“And I have never forgotten that, Kamal. Not for a day. But the matter is not as simple as you imagine.” Hajj Tawfiq lowered his voice further, as though afraid Adnan might hear him even though the young man stood only a few steps away. “There are circumstances, and there are other people whose interests are tied to this matter—people whose rights I cannot simply ignore because your need has become urgent.”
“What other people? What exactly are you talking about?”
“I can’t tell you now, Kamal. Believe me, if the matter were entirely in my hands, I would give you everything you needed at this very moment, without hesitation. But I am entrusted with more than your interests alone.”
Kamal fell silent, apparently trying to absorb the meaning of this cryptic answer, before asking in a sharper voice: “Does this have something to do with… that man? The one who used to visit you in secret, back when we were young?”
Hajj Tawfiq visibly flinched. It was the first time throughout the entire conversation that his composure broke. He glanced quickly toward Adnan, as though checking whether the young man could hear this particular part of the conversation. Of course, Adnan could hear every word perfectly from where he stood nearby.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about, Kamal,” Hajj Tawfiq replied quickly, trying to make his tone firm, though it carried an unmistakable confusion he could not quite conceal.
Kamal studied him for a long, suspicious moment, as though he did not believe the sudden denial. Yet he did not press further, perhaps because he too had noticed Adnan and Reem nearby, or perhaps because, with the wisdom of a man tired of confrontations, he had decided to postpone that part of the conversation.
“Give me some time. A week, perhaps two, while I put a few things in order,” Hajj Tawfiq added, trying to steer the conversation back to its original course.
Kamal looked at him for a long time, apparently trying to read in his old friend’s face whether he was sincere in his promise or merely stalling him for another reason—a reason he had not yet revealed. At last he nodded slowly, though his dissatisfaction was written plainly across his features.
“Two weeks, Tawfiq. No more. Beirut won’t wait for us, and I have no patience left for more delays.”
“Two weeks. I promise.”
7
Kamal turned toward his daughter, his tone sharper than anything he had used during the visit. “Reem, let’s go. We have a reservation at the hotel. We need to get there before evening.”
Reem rose from her place, but paused for a moment and gave Adnan one last look. It held something mysterious he could not fully interpret then: a mixture of warning and concern, and perhaps something warmer that she had not dared express openly.
She stepped closer to Adnan under the pretext of fixing her shoelace. As she bent down, she whispered quickly, in a voice barely audible and meant for him alone: “Be careful of him.” Then she straightened at once and turned toward her father as though nothing had happened, leaving Adnan standing there stunned, unsure exactly what he had heard—or whether she meant her father, or someone else entirely whose name had never been spoken during that tense encounter.
Before she went out the door, while her father was saying goodbye to Hajj Tawfiq with a cold, formal handshake on the threshold, Reem quickly extended her hand toward Adnan, as though bidding farewell with the courtesy of any well-mannered visitor. When her palm touched his, he felt something small slip from her hand into his: a little folded note, carefully creased. He hid it immediately in his fist without letting anyone else in the shop notice what had happened.
“It was a pleasure meeting you,” she said in a perfectly ordinary voice, as though nothing unusual had just passed between them.
“And you,” Adnan replied, his voice slightly awkward as he closed his fist tightly around the little note, trying not to show any reaction that might attract attention.
Kamal al-Hourani and his daughter left the shop and quickly disappeared into the market crowd, leaving Adnan, at least in his eyes, with far more questions than answers.
8
Hajj Tawfiq closed the door behind them and stood silent for a long moment, looking out into the alley through the small glass pane in the door, as though making certain they had truly gone. Then he turned toward Adnan, his face suddenly looking ten years more exhausted than it had that morning.
“Adnan, I want you to understand something important.” He sat in his chair behind the desk, moving with a slow, heavy motion Adnan was not accustomed to seeing in him. “What you saw today, and what you heard, even if only in part, must remain between you and me. Not Hasan, not any other friend from the market, and not even your mother in the village when you write your next letter to her.”
“I won’t tell anyone, Hajj. I promise.”
“I know that. Otherwise I wouldn’t have let you remain in the shop during the visit.” He gave him a long, weary look. “Kamal is, at heart, a good man, Adnan. But war and despair sometimes change even the best of men, and make them do things they would never have considered under other circumstances. I understand his desperation, and I truly sympathize with him. But what he is asking of me is not mine alone to give him, no matter what price he—or I—may pay because of this delay.”
Adnan still did not understand the full dimensions of what was happening, but he understood with growing clarity that the coming two weeks would bring a tension the shop had never known before: tension between two men who had once been friends, and between a shared past filled with secrets of which only the barest few had been revealed to Adnan, while most remained buried deep, waiting for their moment to come into the light.
9
That evening, after the shop had closed, Adnan found himself, as he had in recent days, staying a little past the usual hour to help Hajj Tawfiq put the final affairs of the day in order. He noticed that the old man was more distracted than usual, opening his ledger without actually writing anything in it, as though his mind were somewhere else entirely.
Hajj Tawfiq asked him, in a voice marked by obvious fatigue, to fetch some empty boxes from the back storeroom. As Adnan headed there, he caught, from the corner of his eye, Hajj Tawfiq moving toward a dark corner of the shop behind a large pile of heavy bolts of cloth that were rarely moved. He bent slightly, as though checking on something hidden there, with a quick, cautious movement, then turned back swiftly when he heard Adnan’s approaching footsteps.
Adnan said nothing about what he had seen and did not ask. But he stored that dark corner behind the heavy bolts of cloth in his memory, realizing with growing certainty that the small wooden box whose delivery he had witnessed with his own eyes only a few weeks earlier might still be there, somewhere very close to him every day—far closer than he had imagined—hidden among cloth and dust, waiting patiently for a moment no one yet knew when it would come, or who would finally arrive to claim it.
“Hajj, may I ask you something?”
Hajj Tawfiq slowly raised his eyes. “Go ahead.”
“Who was Kamal referring to when he spoke of that man who used to visit you in secret?”
Hajj Tawfiq was silent for a long moment, looking for an instant as though he were considering a quick lie. Then he sighed deeply and seemed to decide to tell at least a small part of the truth. “Kamal knows some details of my earlier life that most people don’t, because there were certain years when we were very close. But even he doesn’t know everything, and I have no intention of telling him—not now, at least, and not under these circumstances.” He looked at Adnan for a long moment. “I know your curiosity is growing every day, Adnan, and that is only natural after everything you’ve seen and heard in recent months. But I’m asking you once again to be patient. Time will reveal everything—or it will reveal nothing at all. Either possibility is completely beyond my control.”
On his way back to his room that night, Adnan passed Hasan’s shop, which was still open despite the relatively late hour, since its owner liked to receive late customers coming in from outside the market.
“Adnan! Where have you been all day? I heard some strange visitors came to Hajj Tawfiq’s shop today.” Hasan spoke with unmistakable curiosity as he arranged several boxes of buttons on his shelves.
“Old friends of Hajj Tawfiq’s, from Beirut,” Adnan answered cautiously, remembering Hajj Tawfiq’s warning not to reveal any details.
“I heard the man was a big merchant there, and that he lost almost everything in the war.” Hasan shook his head sadly. “God help the people of Beirut. The news coming from there is more terrible every day. I heard Abu Salim say that half of Beirut’s well-known merchants have either fled to Damascus, to Cyprus, or to any safe place they could reach.”
“Do you know anything specifically about the al-Hourani family? Have you heard their name before?”
Hasan thought for a moment, trying to remember. “The name does sound somewhat familiar… I think my uncle, who sometimes trades with Beirut, mentioned it once or twice. A major cloth and textile merchant, with considerable influence in the Beirut market before the war. But I don’t know anything more than that, my friend.”
Adnan thanked his friend and continued on his way, but he had not gone far before he came across Abu Salim, the spice seller, sitting on his usual wooden chair outside his shop, drinking one last cup of tea before closing for the day.
“Adnan! Come, sit for a minute.” Abu Salim called to him in his familiar, friendly voice. “I heard guests from Beirut visited Hajj Tawfiq today. Is that true?”
Adnan sat beside him for a few moments, cautious as always when dealing with the curiosity of the market people. “Yes. Old friends of his.”
Abu Salim nodded with the wisdom of a man who had spent many years in that market and seen every kind of person and every kind of story. “Listen, my boy. I don’t know the details of what is happening, and I don’t want to know them; it isn’t my business. But after all these years in this trade, I know one thing: when a man who was once wealthy, who has suddenly lost everything, comes to an old friend who still possesses what he himself has lost, the outcome is rarely peaceful, no matter how good the two men may be at heart. Despair, Adnan, changes the balance of everything—even the deepest friendships.” He took a sip of tea and looked at Adnan with tired, wise eyes. “Advise your master to be careful, if the distance between you and me allows me to advise him through you.”
Adnan promised to pass on the advice, though he knew inwardly that he would not, afraid of opening the door to questions from Hajj Tawfiq about the source of such a concern—something the old man had not yet revealed to him in full.
Adnan returned to his room that night, and the first thing he did after closing the door behind him was take out the little note Reem had given him. He unfolded it with fingers trembling slightly from sheer curiosity and anticipation.
The handwriting was small and elegant, written in obvious haste but with a confident hand: “My father is more desperate than he lets on, and he may do things he would never have done before. Don’t easily trust everything he tells you or Hajj Tawfiq. I’ll try to come back and speak to you alone if I can. There are things Hajj Tawfiq needs to know, but I cannot say them in front of my father. Reem.”
Adnan read the note once, then again, trying to grasp its full implications. Why was she warning him about her father in this secret way? What did she know that she could not say in front of him? And did she mean that Kamal al-Hourani might pose a real danger to Hajj Tawfiq, or was the matter far more complicated than that?
Adnan folded the note carefully and hid it in his inner pocket, beside the small copper key that still hung around his neck beneath his shirt. He sat on the edge of his bed for a long time, rereading the last sentence of the note: “There are things Hajj Tawfiq needs to know, but I cannot say them in front of my father.” What, exactly, did Reem know that she could not reveal in front of her father? Was it connected to a plan Kamal was devising, something beyond a simple request to reclaim what had been entrusted to him through ordinary means? Or did it concern something else entirely, something personal, with nothing to do with the box or the money?
Adnan tried to remember every detail of that brief encounter: Kamal’s sharp look when he mentioned “the man who used to visit Hajj Tawfiq in secret”; Hajj Tawfiq’s obvious confusion when he denied knowing anyone like that; Reem’s strange sadness when she spoke of her mother without explaining further; and that whispered warning whose full meaning Adnan still could not grasp: “Be careful of him.” All these small details now seemed to him like pieces of a puzzle far larger than he had imagined at the beginning—a puzzle in which the past tangled with the present, friendship with possible betrayal, and paternal love with something darker still, something Adnan could not yet name.
As he lay on his bed that night, trying unsuccessfully to sleep, he felt that, against his will, he had now become the bearer of two secrets rather than one: the secret of the mysterious wooden box, still hidden somewhere he did not know, and the secret of the little note written by a strange girl he had met for the first time in his life, yet who, despite the brevity of their encounter, seemed to carry a genuine and heartfelt concern—not for her own interests, but for a kind-hearted old man she knew only through her father’s old stories.
Adnan also thought, with a measure of self-surprise, about the strange feelings the girl had stirred in him during their brief meeting: admiration for her keen intelligence, a deep curiosity about the story carried in her sad eyes, and something else, lighter and warmer, that he had not yet dared to name clearly even to himself—something like a small hope that she would keep her promise and return to speak with him again, despite all the danger and uncertainty surrounding that possible return.
Before finally slipping into sleep, Adnan summoned once more the image of Hajj Tawfiq standing in that dark corner behind the heavy bolts of cloth, bending cautiously to inspect something he could not see clearly. Yet he knew, with a certainty the heart could not mistake, that the object was none other than the wooden box itself, still there, alive in its hiding place, waiting with a patience beyond measure, while the threads of a story far too large for a twenty-one-year-old boy to comprehend gathered around it day after day, no matter how alert or intelligent he might be.
As sleep finally approached, Adnan wondered what would happen if Kamal al-Hourani learned the whole truth. Would he remain the good man Hajj Tawfiq had described with such genuine affection, or would despair, as Abu Salim had warned, drive him to do something he would never have considered under other circumstances? He wondered, with deeper unease, what Reem knew about her father’s true intentions, and what had driven her to warn a stranger she had only just met instead of trusting her silence, as everyone around her seemed to do.
Adnan did not know, as he finally sank into a troubled sleep filled with overlapping faces—Hajj Tawfiq, Kamal al-Hourani, Reem, and that cursed wooden box—that the coming two weeks would bring surprises far deeper than he expected, nor that the girl who had whispered only two words to him at the shop door would, without his knowing it yet, become a thread that would never be severed from the fabric of his life—a thread stretching across long decades and distant continents, only to become tangled again on a day the young Adnan could not even begin to imagine, forty-five full years after that autumn afternoon when he first met the strangers arriving from a burning Beirut.