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When he woke, Adam wrote an entry in his notebook, dated April 22:

This Sunday morning, a single breath of air made me realize how much I have missed my mountain all these years, and how much I want to let myself be cosseted here.

Sémi, bless her, has put me in a room that overlooks the valley. I have a little table by the window; whichever way I look, I can see only Aleppo pines, I inhale the breeze that has caressed them, and I feel I would like to stay here until the end of time. Reading, writing, daydreaming, suspended by the rounded peaks and the broad expanse of the sea.

A voice in my head keeps whispering that soon I will tire of it. That tomorrow my overweening arrogance will command me to leave just as today it commands me to stay. And I will feel an urgent need to get away, just as today I feel a need to immerse myself. But I have a duty to silence my inner Cassandra.

Emerging slowly from his comfortable numbness, he begins to leaf through the notebook looking for a story he began the previous evening, before he had been interrupted by the phone calls from Tania and from her nephew and forced to flee the capital and seek refuge with Sémiramis. The last sentence read: Six months after the death of Bilal, our ranks would suffer another defection: mine.

He copied these words onto a new page, as though the better to pick up the thread of memory.

My friends always believed that I left on a sudden impulse. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even I gave credence to the theory for a while, so as not to have to explain myself. When I was bombarded with questions, I would say that, one night, I calmly told my grandmother, who I was living with at the time, that I intended to catch a boat to Paphos the next day, and from there I would fly to Paris. In saying this, I was not lying; I was not saying anything untrue, but I was leaving out the most important part. That the decision I announced that day had been developing for some time. I would often lock myself in my room for hours with a book, then I would set it aside, lie down on the bed, eyes wide open, and try to imagine what was going to become of our country, of this region, after years of war, mentally projecting myself towards the finish line where Bilal wanted to be so he could know “the whole story.”

I was not interested in this “whole story.” However much I turned it over in my mind, all I could see around me was violence and regression. In the Levantine universe that was steadily growing darker, there was no longer a place for me, and I did not want to carve one out for myself.

It was after many months of silent contemplation, cool conjecture, and waking dreams that my decision was made. One day, it burst forth, but it had been a long time maturing. And, in fact, my grandmother was neither surprised nor saddened. I was all she had in the world, but she loved me for myself, not selfishly, and she wanted to know I had a shelter, not simply a hiding place. She gave me her blessing so that I could leave with peace of mind and no regrets.

Once I landed on the island, I presented myself at the French consulate, which had requested a letter of recommendation from my own consulate in order to grant me a visa. Ah yes, things were still civilized back then! I did not have to press my thumb onto an inkpad and leave my digital signature on the register; the letter from my consul was sufficient. He had written it in his most elegant handwriting while I sipped coffee in the corner of his office; I immediately brought it to the French consul, where I was offered another cup of coffee.

Perhaps I am embellishing events, I no longer remember the details; but I remember my feelings at the time, and the aftertaste left by the episode. No bitterness. It is in the order of things to leave one’s country; sometimes, it is necessitated by events; if not, one must invent a pretext. I was born, not in a country, but on a planet. Yes, of course, I realize that I was also born in a country, in a town, in a community, in a family, in a maternity unit, in a bed … But the only important thing, for me as for every other human being, is that I was brought into the world. Into the world! To be born is to be brought into this world, not into this country or that, this house or that.

This is something that Mourad never managed to understand. He was prepared to accept that a man might leave his native land for a time while the battle rages. But, to him, to choose to carry on living, year after year, in a foreign land, in the anonymity of a vast metropolis, was not merely abandoning his mother country, it was an insult to one’s ancestors, and, in a sense, a self-inflicted wound to the soul.

While I continued to closely follow everything that was happening in the country, I no longer thought about going back. I never said to myself, “I will never go back”; I said rather, “Later,” “Not this summer,” “Maybe next year.” Deep down, I promised myself—with a flicker of pride—that I would not go back and settle there until it was once again the country I had known. I knew this was impossible, but the condition was non-negotiable. It still is.

It is my way of being loyal, and I have never wanted to adopt another.

Little by little, my friends realized that I would not come back. And a number of them wrote to me. Some to tell me I was right, the others to lecture me.