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They lifted the siege and he went back to his house, but he remained on my screen. He gave me a Samsung computer, the best in the world, according to him. I see him and talk to him on my screen, the biggest screen, every day. I complain about loneliness and he complains about love, and I laugh. I have told him many times, to placate him, that this time is not our time and we are too old for love and such matters. But he insists and says, “You are alone at home and I am alone, and you won’t find anyone to love you more than I do.”

I say yes, I would—if I had a son or a daughter, they would have loved me more than a man would. Motherly love has no end. Even my uncle the poet said that. My uncle the poet was moody and changeable, searching for meaning in his life. He was looking for a party or an ideology that would fill his heart, something firm and genuine and stable like the tender love of a mother. However, no party, no ideology, and no man’s love are as unwavering and genuine as the compassionate love of a mother.

His face on the screen was filled with cracks and wrinkles, but his eyes were truly like jewels. The green visible under the glasses looked like diamond, sapphire, and emerald. Why do we get old, except for our eyes? I like the eyes of men, women, and donkeys. The eyes of the donkey are beautiful, but why do we swear by the eyes of the gazelle? God places His secret in His weakest creatures—isn’t this what we say? And I say He places beauty in ugliness and in the eyes of the donkey.

He said, “I wish I were a donkey.”

I laughed, looking at the screen, and he, too, was laughing. Then he said, “One day I will bring you the eyes of a donkey to keep you company, and fill your world with tenderness and the compassion of a mother.”

He did, in fact, surprise me in the spring, after I had completed the house renovations and filled the garden with jasmine and planted rose bushes all around, attracting the goldfinch to my window. I was playing cards in the courtyard with Yasmine and her friend Saad, enjoying the warmth of the sun and listening to the Path of Love station, telling us about a blockade here and another there. It did not make a difference because we had gotten used to it and because the siege did not stop us from living and dreaming, falling in love and getting married. He brought me a pony that reminded me of the shahba and he brought me the most beautiful gift: children who filled my house and my life. How did it happen? We were playing cards in the courtyard, as I said earlier, when the door was pushed open and I saw Rabie enter with a small pony, a few weeks old, a face like a full moon, and two amazing eyes, the color of ebony. He said, teasing, “This is to fill your heart with a mother’s compassion and remind you of your youth and days passed.”

Yasmine laughed and Saad rushed to the pony and began playing with it as if he were a lamb. I was not happy because I thought he was making fun of me and rejoicing at my infertility and the emptiness of the house. But soon after that, I was surprised by a large contingent of visitors, young and old, women and men, babies and pregnant women. He introduced them to me, beginning with the oldest, and then the younger ones, all the way down to those still nursing. Yasmine and I were stunned, hardly believing what we were seeing and hearing.

He began by introducing me to two mature men, in their sixties, and said proudly, “These two are Hasna’s twins. This is Wahid and this is Abdel-Qader. All those are Wahid’s children and the Qahtan family. These are Wahid’s children and his grandchildren, and the children of Abdel-Qader and his grandchildren. Count them, Nidal, and count in God’s name for fear of the evil eye and the eye of the Jews.”

I shed tears of joy. I was moved, but I did not count them. People in our country have up to ten or even twenty children. I was afraid of the evil eye and the eye of the Jews. This is what we know, and we hear on the Path of Love and the news broadcasts, and many newspapers in Tel Aviv, the city that the Arab General Commander and the rescue army believed they could crush.

As for us in this siege, we wait for nothing but new births: one this month, and three more the next month, and another ten that same month. Sometimes we are surprised by the birth of twins. As always, we name the children after their grandfather or grandmother: Wahid, Widad, Nidal, and the favorite name is Abdel-Qader. With the birth of every child, I go with Rabie to Zanaba, the most fertile of our villages in terms of new births. We offer gifts for the newborn and visit Abu Kamal with the children and place flowers on his tomb. We recite the Fatiha and remember the decent men whom we loved and who loved us, and who live with us even after their deaths.