“How could you tell us apart?”

. . . I asked my mother.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I used to be able to, but I can’t any more. And you two are to blame!”

“Actually,” she went on, “I don’t know if it was you or your sister that mixed me up. You wanted Lamis’s name because you thought it was prettier than yours. You’d wail, ‘Why didn’t you call me Lamis, and her Randa?’ We tried to talk Lamis into giving up her name, but she wouldn’t do it. We promised her a toy or anything she wanted if she’d agree to trade names with you, but she’d have none of it. ‘How will I recognize myself after that?’ she wanted to know. ‘You’ll recognize yourself because you’re you,’ we told her. ‘But,’ she objected, ‘when somebody calls Lamis, who’s supposed to answer? Me, or Randa? And if something happens to me, or if I die, will it be me, or Randa?’ She held onto that name of hers for dear life. But I know you two used to trade names, anyway. Don’t deny it!”

And I didn’t deny it. But one of us went up to the roof that day, and a sniper saw her. All it took was a single bullet, and she was down.

Whenever any of us tried to get to her body, chips of cement would go flying off the edges of the wall that rimmed the roof. The bullets were coming from a distance. We could see them, but we couldn’t hear them. It wasn’t until two hours later that we managed to traverse the four meters that separated us from her. When we did, her body was lying in a pool of blood, and her name lay there beside her like a little bird. I picked the name up and took it inside as they brought down the body in which the bullet had opened a window of darkness. Then I realized that names were the last thing on people’s minds, so I put it away. The weeping and wailing went on and on. Some time later a neighbor saw me crying. Since nobody could tell my sister and me apart, it looked as though I were crying for myself.

The neighbor stared at the body wrapped for burial, and suddenly out came the awful question that turned the whole world into a mass of silence.

“So who died—Lamis, or Randa?”

My mom peered at me through her tears and asked me, “Which of you was it, child?”

I said nothing.

I get up in the middle of the night and slip into the room that opens onto Amna’s side yard, the room where we spent time together all those years. I open the notebook, and I read and read until morning, amazed that we lived through all those things.

I walk down the street. A neighbor lady passes me and says, “Good morning, Randa.”

“I’m Lamis, Auntie,” I reply.

“Oh, pardon me,” she says.

A half-hour or so later, I run into her again, and this time she says, “Hello, Lamis. How are you?”

“I’m Randa, Auntie,” I correct her.

My mother’s started to worry about me. “If you keep that up, girl, you’re going to lose your mind,” she says ominously.

“But why?” I demand. “Just because I want people to know she hasn’t really died?”

“To know who hasn’t died?”

And I tell her, “Saleh’s the only one who ever knew how to tell us apart. And that’s because he was in love. By myself, though, I can’t say which one of us it was. So if you want to know which one I am, you’ll have to ask him.”

One morning an airplane hovered overhead.

It leered down at our street.

A short while later, it dropped a bomb.

We saw it coming, but it seemed to be moving so slowly that we didn’t feel the need to run for cover or drop to the ground. Then before we knew it, the blast had sent everything flying. I looked around. I couldn’t see anything, even myself. I took off running, and managed to fly through the door that led onto Amna’s yard without knowing what I’d done. Suddenly I bumped into a body. It belonged to my mother.

Not long afterward I saw her hands trying to fan the dust away, so I started doing the same. I went on trying to fan it away for hours without it going anywhere.

I heard people screaming and coming from all directions. When everything had quieted down and I got my eyes back, I saw scattered body parts suspended in the air, and nothing was left of the house but two colorless palm trees.

“The tea’s ready, Auntie Amna.”

. . .

“No, it was no trouble at all! You just take care of Nadia.”

. . .

“She knows how to take care of herself, you say?”

. . .

“Well, that makes me feel better.”

. . .

“And me?”

. . .

“Like I told you last time.”

. . .

“You still don’t believe it?”

. . .

“But really: I felt as though the night was all lit up. I went up on the roof, and I wasn’t scared. When I looked around, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The people in the streets were like fireflies. Granted, they were sad. But still, they were all glowing, and so was I. You know, Auntie Amna, when we can’t make our wishes come true, our sadness gives us the brightness we need. Otherwise, as Grandma says, our light would have gone out a hundred years ago.”

. . .

“You say that’s a big dream? No, it’s just a dream, that’s all.”

. . .

“This morning my mom asked me to write the word ‘Palestine.’”

. . .

“Yeah, I did. I wrote it. When she took the piece of paper in her hands, she ran away with it like a little girl and locked herself in the other room. When she came out again holding another piece of paper with the word ‘Palestine’ written on it, she was even more confused than she had been before. She asked me to tell her which one was in Randa’s handwriting, and which one was in Lamis’s. Then she started to cry. I told her, ‘Actually, both of them are in my handwriting.’ ‘And who are you?’ she asked me.”

. . .

“You think I should tell her the truth, then, since if I don’t tell her now, then I never will?”

. . .

“Okay, then. I will. I promise.”