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Mustafa was waiting for me in the hotel room with many suggestions he had about how he was planning to help my kids, but I still had Elsa's sweet voice ringing in my ears, and I wanted to hear nothing else.
"What happened at the hospital?"
I didn't want to answer. I wanted to savor this moment in paradise for as long as I could.
"I want them back. I can't just give them money. I have to be their father again."
"I am not sure you can do that, my friend," Mustafa said with one hand on my shoulder and a look I saw many times before when I eventually admitted he was right every single time.
"Why not? I'm innocent, God knows I am. You know I am."
"Yes, but that's as far the tiny list of those who know you are goes. To them, you are still the murderer who got caught cheating on their mother. Then he committed murder and abandoned them. There is no way you can change that. But what changed now? What happened at the hospital?"
I told Mustafa what happened. We didn't say a word for a little while, but the sound of reason had to resonate back in Mustafa.
"Still, that changes nothing. There is no way you can prove your innocence. You heard what Tony said. All the evidence incriminated you. If we had but any hope, I would tell you to pursue it, but I can't see any."
"Do we know that?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I wasn't here to defend myself, and the police heard only one side of the story. What if we can open the case again and have the police investigate the crime again? I'm not the weak man I was back then. I am not afraid of the Rachidy family now."
"Are you crazy? You are lucky this file is closed now."
"We could see a lawyer and reopen the case."
"You might throw away your company and everything you have worked for back in Germany."
"I don't care if I lose everything if it means I get to hold my kids one more time and not cower behind a damn column not daring to take two steps and tell them how much I love them."
"What if you open the case and you lose again? What happens then? What about your other family who loves you and waits for your return? Pam suffered as much as you did. You can't do that to her." Mustafa kept talking me out of making this stupid move, and I knew he made sense with everything he said, but nothing could ever be sensible after what happened today. He spent the entire night talking me out of it.
"Ok, I know you're right, as usual, but let's just get the file and show it to a lawyer and see what he tells us about it. We won't mention who this case belongs to and we won't do it here in Lebanon. We will ask our lawyer back in Germany, and if he says it is a hopeless case, I promise you, I'll drop it." I was not sure if Mustafa agreed with me when he said it was a good idea or if he was too sleepy and tired to argue with me.
"We'll do it without risking anything, I promise."
"But you have to tell Pam about this. Don't ask me to keep such a secret from her."
"I'm not, but let's ask the lawyer. He might tell us there is no hope, and we can forget about the whole thing, but if there is any hope, I will talk to her before I do anything, which I will."
Mustafa yielded because he knew me well and he knew I was not going to change my mind no matter what he said.
We both went to bed, but I didn't close my eyes for one minute that night. Even though we still didn't know if there was any hope, but hope had crept like a plague into my head.
The next day, we thought about how we could acquire the case files, and I thought of Tony as the guy who already showed how much he hated me.
"You wouldn't want me to call that creepy guy again. For God's sake, he might sniff you out the next time I bring him to this hotel."
"Well let's use that to our own advantage. He suspects I might be alive somewhere and that I have sent you to do this thing for me."
"How on earth is that to our advantage?"
"Call him and tell him you want proof I was guilty. Don't mention if I am alive or dead; feed his inquisitive nature and his sense of being the world-class detective who got stuck in small cases all his life and make him feel he has a lead onto something big, and he will do anything you ask him to do. Ask him to bring you the case files because you can't believe what he told you about me but tell him you will help my children, anyway. Make him feel he is the one who enlightened you about it and he will tell you everything he knows. Of course, you will need to offer him a large sum of money to seal the deal. Everybody wins. What do you think?"
"God. I'm glad you're my partner. Sometimes, I hear a demon talking and look up to see it's you, but you have a point. This might be the best option we have but remember, you promised to drop it if it is a hopeless case."
"You have my word."
Mustafa met with Tony, and the plan worked the way we wanted. It didn't take Tony more than two days to get a copy of the original case files including the police report and the transcripts from the court hearing where I was sentenced to life. Mustafa came into the room with a box full of my case files. We finally had something meaningful to do during our stay in Lebanon. I asked Mustafa to have the files copied and sent to a famous criminal lawyer we knew back in Germany, and while the lawyer's office said they would get back to us in a week, we had nothing to do but go over the files ourselves and what seemed to be a bitter reading of a case of injustice at first turned out to be a reading of a case full of lies and I didn't have to wait for the professional opinion of that big shot lawyer from Berlin.