This is the surest sign yet. The strongest temptation.
The wrapping is terrible. His wrapping was always terrible. I look at the thing for a while and wonder if I should just throw it away. And probably I should have, because even as I pull at the string I know what it is and I know what he’s doing.
It’s a photograph of my mother. She’s twenty-five, and she’s looking down at me in my cot, in profile. You can’t really see me through the white bars, but I know I’m there and so does she because you can tell nothing else exists for her in that moment. I can imagine that. I’ve never felt closer to her. The light is coming through an orange curtain, a thin piece of fabric that I remember so vividly even while I can’t remember anything else about the room, and her skin glows quietly. She’s not smiling, because you couldn’t smile with that much love in you. The smiling would take away from it. I haven’t seen the picture before. He must have kept it with him.
My breath actually catches, like I’m about to sob, but I don’t sob. There’s nothing there. It’s a physical thing, that’s all.
There’s a piece of paper with five words written on it. In Arabic, which is cunning.
Your mother still honours you.
I screw up the paper, hold the photograph, ask myself what he’s trying to achieve, why he’s doing this. Did he bring this with him all the way just to give to me, or is this his final sacrifice, his last desperate act?
It doesn’t matter. What matters is my response, and I see now what I have to do. To resist the greatest temptation in the darkest hour requires the purest strength.
Umm Karam will understand me. She was there when Khalil died and when my father appeared, she knows I didn’t ask for any of it. The message I write to her is short but in my heart it feels like I’m crossing a chasm. I have made a mistake, I tell her. Please can I meet you later? My father should be there as well.
Because when I denounce him, it must be to his face.