The Testament of al-Harīqa
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1
Kamal al-Hourani was asked by the chairman of the committee to sit down, out of consideration for his condition. One of the guards brought a chair close to the witnesses’ table, while Reem remained standing beside him, gripping his hand as though she could not bear to lose him again after decades of separation. Kamal lowered himself slowly into the chair, leaning on his cane and his daughter’s arm. A faint moan escaped him—the moan of a body worn down by decades of living in the shadows. Adnan noticed the slight tremor in his hands. It was not age alone, but the weight of a moment he had waited so long to face.
The chairman asked for a glass of water, a small human gesture touched with compassion despite the formality of the setting. Then he said, “Mr. al-Hourani, take your time. Tell us what happened, from the beginning.” Kamal’s eyes wandered around the room before settling on Adnan in a long, complicated look—a mixture of curiosity, sorrow, and a silent apology—before he began to speak.
2
“In the summer of 1978, a few weeks after my last visit to my friend Tofiq al-Nabulsi’s shop, a man I did not know came to see me in Beirut. He was well dressed, self-assured, the sort of man accustomed to being obeyed. He introduced himself as ‘a friend of the family,’ but there was a threat in his voice from his very first sentence.” Kamal paused to take a sip of water. “He sat in the sitting room of my house as though he owned the place and said to me: ‘I know about the trust Tofiq is keeping for your family, and I want my share of it. Otherwise, your family will not be safe—not you, and not your daughter Reem.’ He gave me her full name, her age, and the name of her school, to make it clear that his threat was no empty warning.”
A shudder passed through the room. Adnan looked at Reem and saw her face blanch, her hand tightening around her father’s. “The man refused to reveal his full identity, saying only that he was ‘close family to Tofiq himself,’ and that he ‘deserved his share of the inheritance just as much as any outsider like me.’ That word—‘outsider’—cut me deeply, because I had always regarded Tofiq as a true brother, not a passing friend.”
3
The chairman of the committee asked, “What did you do then?”
“I went straight to Tofiq. He was silent for a long time, the color draining from his face. Then he admitted that the man was most likely Samir al-Nabulsi, the son of his younger brother, who had discovered details of some of the trusts, including mine, and had begun threatening their owners one by one.” Tofiq said something to me that day which I have never forgotten: ‘Blood does not guarantee trust, Kamal. Sometimes the stranger you choose with your own eyes is more faithful than the relative you were born bound to.’”
As Tofiq described him, Samir was an ambitious failure. He had lost most of his money in reckless speculation in the late 1960s, and his despair turned into attempts to pry into his uncle’s papers until he managed to decipher some of the ledger’s codes. He even rejected a generous financial offer from Tofiq, insisting that his family claim outweighed any assistance.
4
The chairman asked, “And how did you end up disappearing?”
“Samir brutally gave me two choices: either I pay him half the value of the trust, a sum I did not have, or he would reveal its details to the authorities at the time, putting Tofiq and my family in danger amid war and turmoil. I had no choice but to disappear, with Tofiq’s help. He arranged a temporary identity and a secret passage to South America, where I lived for many years in São Paulo under an assumed name, cut off from my only daughter, whom I left believing that her father had either disappeared or died, because that was safer for her.” His voice broke with emotion. “Every day I thought about coming back, but fear was always stronger than longing.”
5
Reem looked at her father through a flood of tears. “Why didn’t you tell me, Father? Even after all those years?” Kamal wiped away a tear with a trembling hand. “I was afraid that Samir—or those who inherited his greed—might still be watching. I chose to let you live in safety and ignorance rather than in constant fear.”
He added, “Tofiq himself was forced into hiding a short time later, when Samir escalated his threats against him directly. He disappeared for years, then secretly returned to Damascus in 1979 to formalize the new testament you found, hoping that one day the trusts would reach their rightful owners.”
6
Unable to hold back his question, Adnan asked, “And where was Hajj Tofiq after that? Is he still alive?”
Kamal looked at him with a deep, sorrowful gaze. “Tofiq died, my boy, about twelve years ago, in a safe place far away, peacefully, under care I was able to provide for him. We spent our final years exchanging memories of Damascus and the al-Harīqa market, talking about you, Adnan, through long evenings as though you were there with us. He would ask me, with a sad smile, whether I thought you would ever forgive him for his silence.”
“A few days before he died, while he held my hand tightly despite his weakness, he asked me that if I ever met you, I should tell you one thing. He repeated it three times: ‘Tell him I never regretted choosing him. And tell him that every day I lived away from him, I thought of him as my true son, regardless of what blood reveals—or fails to reveal.’”
Adnan’s tears came silently. At last, a final word had reached him from the man who had shaped his life—a word that, at least in part, answered a question of fatherhood that blood had never settled, something deeper than blood.
7
The chairman resumed control of the hearing. “Mr. al-Hourani, do you have anything linking Mr. Elias al-Nabulsi to the Samir you mentioned?”
Kamal looked at Elias for a long, penetrating moment. “Elias, Mr. Chairman, is Samir’s own grandson, the direct son of his son. I learned this a few months ago, when, from my hiding place, I followed his repeated attempts to get his hands on Tofiq’s inheritance. The first time I saw his photograph, I recognized Samir’s features immediately: the same shape of the eyebrows, the same way his jaw tightened when he spoke with passion.”
A murmur rose among those present. Elias’s lawyer tried to object, but his voice was drowned out, while Elias sat with his head bowed.
8
Kamal added, “I believe that, on his deathbed, Samir told his grandson a distorted version of the story, casting himself as the victim of a ‘betrayal’ rather than the perpetrator of extortion, planting in him a grudge and a false sense of a stolen right, until this pursuit we are witnessing today came to be—built entirely on a lie that the al-Nabulsi family passed down from one generation to the next.”
Adnan looked at Elias and, amid his justified anger, felt a measure of pity: a man who had built his life on a lie inherited from a grandfather he had never truly known.
The chairman announced his decision: “On the basis of the testimony heard, this committee recognizes the validity of the second testament, dated 1979, and appoints Adnan al-Rafei as founding director of the Amanah Charitable Foundation, while referring all matters relating to forgery and threats to the public prosecutor’s office.”
9
Elias collapsed into his chair as though all his strength had deserted him at once. Two officers in plain clothes approached him and asked him to come with them. Adnan watched, torn between relief and sorrow, as justice finally arrived decades late, while another man was led away—the victim of an inheritance of lies he had never chosen.
Adnan did not know, as he held Karim close beside him, that before Elias was finally led from the room, he would reveal one last, seemingly small piece of news—one that, only hours later, would ignite a real fire in the very heart of the al-Harīqa market.