Who would have thought?

The pictures of Jamal that Amna had hidden away, and which she placed in her son’s hands one morning, sparked new life in the boy. They transformed him into a new person, one we’d never known before, and would never have imagined.

He cinched his belt, combed his hair, and asked his mother, “Do I really look like him?” After repeating the question a second time, he picked up the photos as though he were going on a mission.

“Yes,” she said. “You look a lot like him.”

“What do I need to do to look exactly like him?”

“You just need to grow up a little more.”

“Is that all? I think his hair was longer than mine, so I need to grow it out. From now on I’ve got to look just like him.”

“Take care of yourself,” Amna told him with a nod.

He came and knocked on our window-turned-door.

Lamis answered. Flustered, he took a couple of steps back. I invited him in, and he made an awkward entrance. Even under the most ordinary circumstances, Lamis’s presence would have been enough to reduce him to a pool of sweat. How much more, then, now that he was all dressed up with his neatly combed hair, his trousers all belted up, and his bright, shiny face?

“I’ll leave the two of you alone,” Lamis announced, and exited the room.

I watched him follow her out with his eyes, on the verge of tears.

“Well, aren’t you looking chic, Mr. Saleh!” I said brightly.

“Lower your voice,” he whispered.

“Well, aren’t you looking chic, Mr. Saleh!” I said again, this time in a barely audible whisper.

“Do I look like him?” he asked.

“Like who?”

“My dad.”

I moved my head back slightly and took another look at him. His features tensed up as though he were waiting for a verdict that would seal his eternal destiny.

“Actually,” I said, “you do.”

“How much?”

“A lot.”

“My mom told me the same thing. But how can I look exactly like him?”

“That’s simple.”

“What do you mean, simple? Tell me!”

“You just need to grow up a little more.”

“What’s going on around here? My mom says something, and then you say the very same thing.”

“So is that what your mom told you?”

“Word for word!”

“Well, then, you should believe us.”

“But I want to look like him right now!”

Every now and then he would glance over at the door that led out to the courtyard between our houses, either fearfully, or in hopes that Lamis would appear.

“Where did she go?”

“Lamis?”

He nodded.

“She must be with my grandma, or helping our mom. Shall I call her?”

“No.”

“Why are you asking about her?”

“I don’t know.”

“But I know.”

“You know why?”

“She means a lot to you, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, a whole lot. Right?”

“Right.”

“A whole, whole lot. Right?”

“Have you seen all his pictures?”

“Whose pictures?”

“My dad’s.”

Since his question was less of a question than a way of escaping my interrogation, there was no need to answer it. He knew I knew, and that made him uncomfortable, especially when Lamis came into the room. Suddenly all eyes were on him as if he were the one who’d just walked in and not her.

A few days earlier she’d moaned to me, “Our whole life’s ruined! Things are so bad, I feel like going out in the street and giving Saleh what he wants just so he can tell me out loud, ‘I love you, Lamis!’ Only I know he wouldn’t. What am I thinking, anyway? Do I want a boy half my age to stand in the street like a cucumber vendor shouting, ‘I love you, Lamis!’? You know, Randa? It was really sort of nice when he did that before. It was cute. I admit, it used to make me mad sometimes, but now I see how sweet it was. It might be the nicest thing I can remember ever happening in our neighborhood. It wasn’t even that long ago, but he’s not a little boy any more. We’re not what we used to be. We’re not even ourselves completely. I feel as though the things we do and say, and the things that scare us, or make us happy and sad, don’t reflect who we really are.”

“Would you mind if I wrote down what you just said?” I asked.

“Go ahead. Words like these may be the only thing left in the end, I suppose.”

So I wrote what she’d said in my notebook. I also wrote, “Freedom is the only thing that brings you into harmony with yourself. Without freedom, nothing’s in harmony with itself—not the streets, or the sea, or the sky, or the morning, or Grandma’s coffee, or the flowers, or love, or life, or childhood, or old age. Even the cemetery can’t be itself around here, because it isn’t free to grow at a natural pace. It’s born and gets old the way the occupiers want it to, not the way it wants to.”

“Will they bury him here?”

“No, over there.”

“There? Why?”

“Because the cemetery’s full.”

“Full? How’s that?”

“Because there’s so much death. There’s just so much death.”

“Love him a little,” I said to Lamis.

“If it matters that much to you, then love him yourself! What’s there for me to love about him when he’s so young?”

“In a few more years he’ll be a guy, and the age difference we see now won’t be there any more. Then you won’t feel you’re so much older than he is.”

“He’s a boy.”

“He’s a little bigger than that.”

I looked around. Saleh had disappeared.

I went out in the yard and opened the iron gate that leads onto the street. I looked both ways. I saw him knocking on our neighbors’ door.

The neighbor lady came out, and I heard him asking her a question: “Have you seen the pictures of my dad?”

“No,” she replied.

“I’ll show them to you, then.”

“All right. Come on in.”

“No thanks. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

So he did his photo presentation while she stood at the door. After going through them one by one, he said, “Does he look like me?”

“Yes, quite a bit.”

“Why doesn’t anybody tell me he looks just like me?” he blurted out.

As the neighbor lady stood there perplexed, not knowing what to say, I saw him head toward the next house. He knocked again.

Everybody in the whole neighborhood saw Jamal’s pictures that day. Saleh carried them from house to house, holding onto them with the greatest of care and being careful not to let anyone else touch them. If he saw anyone reaching out for them, he’d pull them back quickly, saying, “No touching!”

After making his rounds, he came back crestfallen.

“Nobody tells me I look just like him!” he grumbled. “They all say, ‘You look a lot like him.’ So, do you think I should ask Lamis, too?”

“Lamis?” His question took me by surprise. “I wish you would!”

“Why do you say, ‘I wish you would’?” he wanted to know.

“No reason,” I said awkwardly. “I just think Lamis is the person you should have asked from the start.”

“You mean it’s too late to ask her now?”

“No, not at all. There’s no such thing as ‘too late’ when it comes to things like this. All that matters is for it to happen in the end, for you to ask her.”

“Lamis! Lamis!”

“No! Don’t call her now!”

“When should I call her, then? Lamis!”

Lamis stuck her head around the door as though she’d been standing behind it the entire time. I’d forgotten that our houses were only a couple of meters apart.

“What’s up?”

“Saleh wants to ask you a question.”

“Ask away.”

I got up to leave. As I passed her, I poked her as if to say, “Be nice to him, will you?”

“Stay here,” he said to me.

“I’m just going to the bathroom,” I fibbed. “I’ll be right back.”

I left the room and parked myself a couple of steps away from the door.

It got so quiet that if I hadn’t just left the room knowing there were a couple of people inside, I would have thought it was empty.

“How are you, Saleh?”

“Good. But not that good.”

Things got quiet again.

“You wanted to say something to me?”

“Right.”

“What is it?”

“I wanted to ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Before I ask, I have to show you the pictures of my dad. Now, do you promise to tell me the truth?”

“I swear.”

“What do you swear?”

“To tell the truth.”

“Okay, then. Now things are clear. You know, boys always play tricks on you by swearing to something without telling you what it was, and you find out later that it wasn’t what you thought!”

“Don’t worry.”

More silence. I could almost hear the photos sliding against each other. Then I heard him say, “You can hold them yourself if you’d like.”

My jaw nearly dropped to the floor.

Had I heard him right? Had he actually given somebody permission to touch his precious pictures?

“So he really does look like me? Really, really? You did swear, remember!”

“No, really. He looks just like you.”

Suddenly I heard the boy whoop as if he were watching a football game and his team had just scored a winning goal.

“Now I know why I love you so much!”

When I walked back in the room, I found Lamis alone, a somber look on her face.

“Where did he disappear to?” I asked.

She pointed to the door that led to their yard.