PART NINE
30
Chapter Thirty: Emerging into Life… Anew
It was a warm evening of early autumn when the small gathering convened in the living room of Mr. Ahmad’s house.
We sat in a circle of soft light, spilling from a side lamp resting on a table of aged walnut wood.
Muna was flipping through a small book she had not yet finished, while her father sat in the armchair, skimming a newspaper, barely reading anything beyond the headlines.
Muna lifted her eyes suddenly, as if she had remembered a question long postponed, and said in a calm voice, yet with a clear hunger for understanding:
“Numan… when did you leave the prison? And how?”
He paused for a moment, then looked at her father, and said in a low but steady voice:
“I left on Wednesday, the sixteenth of November, nineteen seventy-four… it was the thirtieth of Ramadan, a day that coincided with the fast and the approach of Eid. A day I will never forget, a day that felt like a threshold—between a life whose doors had been closed to me, and another that opened… though not entirely.”
Muna raised her eyebrows in mild astonishment and spoke, her tone touched with emotion:
“Just before Eid?! My God… and how was the release?”
“They presented me to the first investigating judge at the Justice Palace in Damascus. After reading the file, he looked at me for a long while, then said, with a cold seriousness, ‘I do not want to see you here again.’ Then he handed me my ID card… and cleared my way.”
Mr. Ahmad lowered his gaze, a trace of reflection in his eyes, as if recalling a distant memory, and said with a probing tone:
“And did it end there?”
He answered, drawing a deep breath, as if summoning each minute into his lungs:
” No… the judge told me, ‘Before you reach home, you must visit your party branch in your city, and submit a request to join the Ba’ath Party if you want to secure your own protection and your future.’ ”
Muna gasped softly, her voice barely a whisper:
” And… did you do it? ”
He smiled faintly, then continued:
” I was in the courthouse, and my grandfather, my mother’s father, was waiting for me as if he had arrived before knowledge itself reached my place. He never let go of my hand, and he walked me through the streets of Damascus like one escorting a child through a storm. He paid the bus fare, and my hand never left his until we got off. And he led me to my father’s shop… everyone welcomed me with a joy beyond words. ”
Muna closed her eyes for a moment, trying to imagine the scene, then asked:
” And your meeting with your mother? ”
His voice dropped, almost instinctively, as if he were reliving the trembling of that moment:
” She was waiting for me at the door, and the moment she saw me, she surged toward me like a flood breaking the dam of restraint. She held me close, pressed my face into her palms, her eyes raining longing and prayers upon me…
She embraced me, and she wept. She wept as if to reassure herself that the dream had returned. ”
He went on:
” I stepped out of the Damascus Palace of Justice, my breath hesitant, as if asking permission to leave. The air felt heavy, not from density, but laden with the memory of days that bore no resemblance to any others. In the waiting hall, crowded with pale faces, I spotted him… my mother’s father.
He stood there, at the doorway, steadfast as a patient mountain, leaning on a hidden staff of prayer, his eyes outpacing my steps, receiving me before I arrived.
I moved forward with faltering steps, my own echo filling the hall, as one who has yet to believe that he has truly survived. ”
Moments before that, I had been standing before the first investigative judge in Damascus. A man in his mid-fifties, whose face betrayed neither harshness nor cheer. He looked at me as one might gaze upon a ghost returned from a lost destiny.
He asked me to step closer to the edge of his desk, and said, “I don’t want to see you here again.” Then he extended his hand, and in it lay my personal identification, held between his thumb and forefinger as if restoring a breath to its owner after strangulation.
He returned it to me with care, speaking face to face, as if to hear himself before letting me hear him: “Before you reach your home, you must review the Party branch in your city, and submit an application to join the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party.”
He fell silent, then added in a quiet voice—heavy with meaning, vibrating between rebuke and warning, his eyes roaming the small courtroom empty but for the two of us, and fixed intently on the locked door behind me: “If you want to secure your life… and your academic, professional, and social future… there is only one path, my boy.”
His voice struck me like a stone sinking into a deep well. I met it with a silent gaze, neither accepting nor rejecting—only the quiet of someone who knows they are still at the heart of the storm, and that survival does not mean freedom, only a brief truce.
My grandfather, who held my hand as though gripping a long-awaited dream—or a fear he dared not lose. He spoke little, and words were unnecessary. His hand alone, tight around mine, said everything.
He held it the whole way, never letting go, as if afraid I might vanish suddenly, like dreams dissipate at dawn, while I struggled to convince myself I was no longer in the prison.
When we reached the city, he guided me to my father’s shop in the market. The place buzzed with customers—men waiting for their turn for the holiday shave, my father hunched over the chair, scissors in hand. Then he looked up… and saw me.
He froze for a moment, then smiled as he never had before. He threw the scissors aside and ran toward me, embracing me like never before, his voice trembling as he apologized to his customers: “Forgive me… our celebration begins today.”
Grandfather accompanied us to our nearby home, and there, at the door… my mother waited, her heart leading her steps.
The moment she saw me, her voice rose in a wail… not an ordinary cry, but a sound that emerged from her depths like the call to prayer on a rainy night; a summons that opens the doors of the heart and nourishes memory.
She embraced me, pressing my face between her palms, as if reassuring it that it had returned, that it had not vanished completely… and her eyes unleashed showers of longing and prayer, as though cleansing me of some ancient fear.
Suddenly, the ululations erupted from the throats of the women in my grandfather’s house, like bells of salvation ringing across the entire neighborhood. My mother’s relatives rushed out from the kitchen, abandoning pots, dough, and preparations, joining in the ululations. My aunt held me close, repeating, “He’s back… Numan is back, by God, he’s back!”
My grandfather’s house was not large enough to contain all that joy. It spilled onto the sidewalks, rode the fragrant smoke, and drifted to the doors, asking permission… “Neighbors, Numan has returned.”
Hands set tables for iftar, hearts prayed with happiness, and I… I tried to believe that I had truly returned. As if fragments of chains still lingered in my soul… not yet removed.
Before the call to Maghrib and the breaking of the fast, I recalled the sentence the judge had spoken, and the ones he had not… the ones I found in his tone, in his gaze, in the way he held my identity card.
I turned to my father, my voice seeking permission as one might when moving from joy to duty: “Father… the judge instructed me to report to the Party branch in Douma before returning home.”
He said nothing. He merely held my hand, just as my grandfather had, and we walked together. The road was familiar; the branch lay not far from my grandfather’s house.
But… when we arrived, the doors were closed, the place empty.
One of the neighbors approached us, his face suddenly brightening with a hint of joy. With a smile he said,
“Tomorrow is Eid, Abu Numan… the office will be closed. They’ll return after the Eid holiday.”
I glanced at my father. He let out a long sigh and spoke in a tone threaded with both caution and surrender:
“Everything has its time… and today, my son… today is yours. Come, let us hurry back, for only a few minutes remain before the Maghrib call.”
Yet even as he spoke, I still felt as though I had not truly left the prison… though I was no longer fully inside it either.
After Iftar, while the muezzins’ voices floated across the horizon, as if hanging a new star in the sky of Eid, my father quietly excused himself to return to his shop… The customers, neighbors, and some friends had not yet departed, each frozen in their place as if awaiting their turn in the long Ramadan and Eid nights of conversation, barbering, and tea.
I did not know then that the shop had another heart… a heart that beat with life for others on its figurative side. It was the small eatery owned by my father’s friend, Abu Rashid Al-Joban, who they called “the Wazir”—not for any closeness to power, but for the artistry of his hands, arranging plates and decorating the tables with a finesse that seemed almost ceremonial.
Abu Rashid—with that light beard and his deep, resonant voice—would prepare the Iftar table and carry it like a masterpiece, placing it in my father’s shop for everyone seated there to enjoy, without ever relinquishing his own turn, nor missing his share of the stories and presence that filled the room.
And the tea cups? Ah… that is another story altogether…
My father’s tea, of a single soul, was brewed slowly, as if it were a ritual of love. The fire burned gently, the water poured at confident angles, and the tea leaves were added at a moment that felt almost like an incantation. And everyone who drank from that tea would speak as though acknowledging an eternal truth:
“However much tea you drink, you will never taste one like the tea made by Numan’s father.”
“It was a phrase everyone repeated, as if it were a collective decree that could not be overturned. Along with it, they praised the plates of ‘Abu Rashid,’ their arrangement, and the harmony of their components: the white cheese, the jam, the dates, the olives, the slices of eggs, the toasted bread, and the delicate sprinkle of thyme at the edges. And the plates of hummus and fava beans, in their order and variety—sometimes alone, sometimes together.
That was my father’s shop during Ramadan… a circle of friendship, a table of generosity, a gathering of stories… and everyone knew they would wait for the blessed month to return, swearing that the pleasure of hearing these tales again was no less than experiencing them the first time.
With all the courtesy I could muster, I excused myself to return home, seeking the refuge of my own room… Oh, how I longed for that intimate meeting with water, that sweet stillness in clean clothes, and a bed that resembled tenderness. Every cell in my body cried out: sleep… a long sleep, as if to silence the voices still trembling within.
My mother wanted to accompany me, as she always did whenever I was absent for an hour, but how could I allow that after I had been away these days and the ten nights? I insisted she stay, brushing her hand as I spoke:
“Stay with your father, your siblings, and the women… I just want to bathe, to doze, and I think my sleep will last until the second day of Eid, the day after tomorrow.”
And by sheer fortune, my mother did not come. Had she seen what happened, had she heard what was said, she would not have slept that night.
When I opened the great door of the house, the scent of damp earth drifted toward me, mingled with the echoes of children laughing in the courtyard. It was as if the house, in all its corners, tried to embrace me in its arms, like a parent welcoming back a child long delayed.
My cousins’ children ran toward me, little faces bright with Eid smiles, the songs of childhood chasing my steps. Before I could smile at them, before I could kneel to gather them in my arms, another door opened, unexpected, unbidden.
My grandfather stepped out.
His face, as I had never seen it, was grim, like a summer storm hiding thunder, veins on his neck throbbing with fury, and his gaze descending upon me like an arrow, released from a bow of terrifying silence.”
Before I could ask, or even prepare myself, his hand struck my face.
A slap… not on the face, but on the soul.
A slap that awakened in the depths of me an old memory… the slap of the “Political Security Building.”
I did not fall. I merely staggered a step, as if the ground beneath me had tilted. My head spun, and all that lived in me that could speak fell silent, as if my own voice had been afraid of itself. Every sense within me hushed, refusing utterance.
I do not know… was the slap a question, and was my silence an answer that healed nothing, satisfied nothing, eased nothing?
Before I could ask, “Why?”, my uncle, Abu Salah—my grandfather’s younger brother—appeared, suspicion etched lightly on his face, as he gently held my grandfather’s hand, concealing a storm eager to roar.
“Calm yourself, my brother… let us understand what happened in his absence,” he said.
Then he leaned toward me, searching my eyes as if for a single drop of remorse, and spoke in a voice striving to mend what had cracked:
“Step forward, Numan… kiss your grandfather’s hand, and apologize. Not for yourself, but for the consequences your absence has imposed on us.”
I stood there, as if dragging a mountain of unanswerable questions. I hesitated, each step a struggle. How could I apologize for a sin I had not committed, and carry the burden of a fear implanted in me?
Yet, I moved forward. My eyes cast downward, my steps heavy with the weight of an entire people’s guilt. I reached out my hands, kissed my grandfather’s hand, and whispered, my voice strangled by shame:
“I apologize to you, grandfather…”
He did not answer.
The hand I had been holding slipped from mine, as if renouncing me, and then he shouted, his voice shattering the walls of the house:
“Not an inch of this home remains untouched—troops have trampled it, their dogs have ransacked it… they respected neither house, nor people, nor women. They terrorized your mother, frightened your sisters, and our children cried, their screams rising from the horror of seeing their belongings scattered, their toys torn, and the pounding on the doors… Eyes remained fixed on me, as if waiting for an explanation, or a verdict. Even neighbors and passersby stopped to watch from afar, each one asking, still asking, ‘What have we done…?’ And all of this… because of you!”
Then my uncle, Abu Salah, gently took my grandfather’s hand and placed it upon my head, as if mending what had been broken. He brushed my face with it and spoke, his voice threaded with sorrow:
“You must apologize to your mother, your grandfather, and everyone in this house, Numan… The terror they lived through in those hours cannot be repaired by all the time in the world. This pain is not from you—but it rests upon you. They saw what happened here, so how could they even imagine what happened to you? You cannot grasp what your absence did in their eyes. We tried to stay away from politics, chasing only our bread… so what drove you to walk into the fire?”
I stepped closer to my grandfather again, my eyes lowering as if carrying the weight of a sin—both what had happened… and what had not. I extended my hands and kissed his, rough hands that testified to years of labor and hardship, and said in a low voice:
“Forgive me, Grandfather… I did not know I had hurt you. I never meant to. I wasn’t lost—but the fear I lived through there was greater than me. I understand now how much you suffered, how much I burdened you… yet I never meant it.”
Then he fell silent, turned his back, and walked, sliding my grandfather’s hand along to his room.
I followed them with my eyes, my chest heaving. I wanted to scream: “I never meant to hurt you…”
But silence after a slap resembles a shy prayer, too timid to even hear itself.
I sat on the edge of my bed, and my father’s absent face shimmered in my mind, as if it were whispering to me:
“All of us are wounded, my son… but we do not hate those we love. We reproach them, only so they do not harm themselves or us again.”
I drew the curtain across the window, shed the shirt of the prison, and stood before the mirror…
Who is this staring back at me?
He does not resemble me.
Yet… in his eyes lingered the remnants of the Numan I once was.
Then my grandmother entered, seeking to console me, her hands brushing away the weight of my pain, each step she took on the floor as though carrying a handful of serenity. She sat beside me, gently wiped my face, and said:
“I have prepared the bath for you, my beloved grandson… rise and cleanse yourself, let sorrow fall away with the water. The house without you felt as though it had no soul.”
“I will turn a new page… for my mother, for you and grandfather, for my father, and for myself.”
After my bath, when I had prepared myself to sleep, a light knocking on the door foretold an unexpected visit. No one in the house knocked like that… except him.
My uncle entered—Abu Salah, as we call him—the only intellectual in the family, the former official who once held the post of Director of Post, Telegraph, and Telephone during the French occupation of Syria and beyond, a man who had witnessed politics and tested politicians.
His face always carried the traces of a bygone era, shadowed by a quiet pride in that time, and by the tales of connections and rituals whose full truth we could hardly grasp.
He stood at the edge of the bed, casting a long gaze upon me, as if turning my face over in the light of memory, and spoke in his heavy, deliberate voice:
” I want to talk to you… about what happened, and why you were taken. I came today just for you because I know my older brother well, I know how he thinks! How he acts! And I feared he might harm you—not because he hates you or bears you ill will, God forbid, never that. But he is a man who has been used to chasing the means of his living from the first hours of dawn to the end of every day. And he has been so since I first became aware of him in our father’s house, may God have mercy on him.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing the folds of the cover as if arranging some inner order after the chaos, while he took his place on the small chair by my desk. From the pocket of his jacket, he drew a pack of hand-rolled cigarettes, rolled one, handed it to me, lit another for himself with a calm, measured display, then exhaled the smoke into the room as though tracing an old biography.
” Did you expect this to happen to you?” he asked, turning his gaze away as if he did not want to see me broken.
” What do you mean?” I asked, trying to appear steadfast despite the numbness still coursing through my bones from the nights before.
” I mean… your growing passion for books, for words, for poetry… all these stories come at a cost, and you have paid the first installment.”
He paused for a moment, then fixed his eyes on me as if measuring the age of fear in them, and added:
” You know, back in the days under the mandate, we knew when to speak… and we knew when to remain silent. In the days of France, the laws were clear, the soldiers were clear, even the prisons had their order. But today… you no longer know where anyone begins, or where they end.”
I wanted to say something, something to defend myself or the dream I carried like a fragile thread through the labyrinth, but words betrayed me, just as my body had betrayed me those nights when it slipped from my control and remained wrestling with shadows in silence.
” So, uncle… you think I made a mistake?”
I whispered, as if seeking absolution rather than an answer.
He smiled—or so I thought—and said:
” No, my son, you did not err… but you dreamed. And dreams these days have become crimes. I do not blame you. I only want you to wake, to understand that the world is not always like the books, and the people around you are not poets. We live in a time where one must hide their heart as carefully as one hides a weapon.”
Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he rose, exhaling a final cloud of smoke into the ceiling, and said before leaving:
” Sleep, and try to forget… for it is remembrance that breaks the soul, not the blows.”
I remained alone, watching the smoke of his cigar dissipate into the room’s air, asking myself:
Was I dreaming… or did I simply not know how to hide my heart?
But after he left, he returned again. He stood at the doorway, staring into the shadows creeping across the corners of the room, then walked slowly back to the chair, sat, and crushed the cigarette butt into a glass ashtray, as if it were the remnants of his old desk at the post office.
” Look, Numan…
We are not the first to be dragged to prison, and we are not the last who will dream, but this country… life in this country is not comfort; it is one obstacle after another. Not because there are no good people, but because there is no hope for life except behind high walls.”
I looked at him, and he continued as if a river had opened within him:
” Do you remember when you were little and asked me about our history? I used to tell you: our history is weary, worn out by a people who cannot hold firm, who cannot unite, who do not know how to govern themselves. We shouted for independence, but when the occupier left, we returned to fighting—over the flag, over the chair, over the word.”
He paused for a moment, then spoke in a quieter, less angry voice:
” This sentence?
The sentence I was imprisoned for?
This is not a sentence. It is layer upon layer, wall upon wall, that returns you dead while you walk. Everything in it is built on fear, on obedience, not on conviction. They do not want people who think—they want people who walk… walk, stay silent, applaud.”
He sighed slowly and turned his face away, as if he did not want to hear his own voice:
” This country will become a museum of wires, a graveyard of ideas. I, my son, I have come to hate myself for ever believing that culture could save. I worked with books, with the post office, with the telephone, and in the end? I became a witness to the extinction of the free human being.”
” So, uncle… what are we to do?” I asked, feeling myself sink into the weight of his great question.
He lifted a finger, as if delivering a piece of wisdom:
” We choose… we choose to live rightly or to live safely. But to have both? That has become impossible. And do you know what is most painful?
Because if you choose to live rightly, you must decide how to pay the price alone. And the rest… the rest will blame you, or remain silent, or turn their faces away as if they never knew you.”
Something stirred in my chest—a mix of sorrow, confusion, and anger. I said to him:
” But we are young! We have no right to be crushed like this at the first confrontation.”
He looked at me for a long while, then spoke with a sudden gentleness in his tone:
” Yes, you are young. That is why hope can still remain with you… but be careful of two things. First, those behind you—your family, your relatives. And second, do not let this hope turn into illusion. Do not live to die with your dignity, but to die if it is required for you to live with dignity. The difference, though slight… is fundamental.”
Then he finally rose and stood by the door, before speaking his last words:
” This country has no place for those who scream. Its place is for those who survive—and keep their families safe.”
He left the door ajar, as if inviting me to choose between leaving or staying.
I remained seated, motionless. It was as if my uncle had left the room, yet the echo of his voice lingered between the walls, tapping at my mind, waking something long dormant within me.
” Do not live to die with your dignity, but to die if it is required for you to live with dignity…”
The phrase spun around me like a whirlpool, dragging me down into a chasm of questions.
Had I been deluded, thinking dignity could only be bought with honesty?
Was it permissible for me to live a quiet, conditional life, free from outcry… and still claim that I remained upright?
I looked at my hands… still trembling.
The warm bath had not yet erased the chill that had crept into me during those long nights in the cell.
But it was my heart that trembled most.
A heart that had thought it would find solace in a dream, only to encounter yet another trap.
Was I truly free?
Or was I merely a boy who chose to be honest, to prove to himself that he existed?
I used to think the walls between me and the world outside were solid, clear, visible…
But now I see deeper walls, stretching within:
The wall of fear, the wall of doubt, the wall of what my uncle said tonight…
For the first time, I feel I do not know which path is right for me:
To walk the tightrope between dignity and safety, or to cut the rope itself, and fall?
But fall where?
Do dreams and questions, I wonder, deserve imprisonment?
Or does real life begin only when we stop dreaming, and start acting?
And is action… a single act, or many choices, all incomplete, all taking pieces of us?
I closed my eyes and lay down.
I heard my grandfather’s old voice in the stories… my father’s weary voice on his last visit… my mother’s voice at every return… and my own voice, when I had sworn, there in the dark, that I would not break.
Tonight, I swore nothing.
Tonight… I only listened. Yet… with all that I am… I did not sleep.
31
Chapter Thirty-One – Review at the Branch
The holiday passed as a dream drifts through a summer night—light, fleeting, waving from afar, and then gone. Not even a full month had slipped by since it ended, precisely on Sunday, the seventeenth of November, nineteen seventy-four, when a policeman arrived at our door in the city of Douma.
My grandfather sat in his small shop, adjoining his room, slowly peeling a ripe pomegranate. The officer stepped forward, holding an envelope. My name and address were scrawled across it in bold, slanted letters. The pomegranate slipped from his hand, and he asked in his deep, guarded voice:
“What’s this about?”
The officer responded with a curt sentence and walked away without a glance. I opened the envelope, trying to suppress a quiet anxiety that began creeping through my pulse, and inside, I read:
“YOU ARE TO REPORT TO THE POLITICAL SECURITY BRANCH IN DAMASCUS, FOLLOW-UP DIVISION, ON THE SPECIFIED DAY AND HOUR.”
I exhaled and turned to my grandfather. He shook his head slowly, then said, his voice trembling slightly:
“You must go… how many times like this have there been?”
From that day on, the summons became a monthly visitor that never missed its mark. Every time, I would halt whatever work or study I was doing and stand before the branch at eight in the morning, waiting at the gate, where the assistant would cast a fleeting glance at my face, ensure I had arrived, and leave me standing there without a word.
In the first three years, the sessions often ended at two in the afternoon without anyone calling me. I would enter the office of the first assistant myself and ask:
“What am I supposed to do? The day is over.”
He replied with a single word that captured all the absurdity:
“Go now, and we will summon you next month.”
With repetition, the First Assistant and some of the guards came to know me. They would nod for me to enter the guard’s room, or a side room where I could sit, especially on the bitter winter days or the scorching summers of Damascus. Fear had grown into habit, and habit into a tedious ritual, as if my life itself beat in the rhythm of these summons. I had come to sense their absence and track their passage.
If a summons was delayed, I would ask every member of the family:
“Has anyone received the summons this month?”
If they denied it, I would go to the branch myself, without invitation, afraid that someone had taken it, signed in my place, and forgotten to inform me.
In the summer of 1977, after receiving my general secondary school certificate, a summons came that was different. It was not like the previous ones. That time, the First Assistant looked at me with new eyes and handed me a small slip of paper:
“These are three names from your city, known for their affiliation with an opposition party… I want you to approach them, show loyalty, and ask to be included in their ranks.”
I remained silent. I knew that in this room, silence was not cowardice—it was the only means of survival. I took the paper without a word and left the branch in haste. The first moment I reached Douma, I went straight to the Arab Socialist Baath Party branch. My previous application still lingered in my mind, hanging in the air.
In the office, I checked my request. Comrade Abu Ma‘rouf was flipping through some papers without attention, and I said:
“Has my request been recorded? I submitted it months ago.”
He replied, with a tone free of any regret:
“It got lost… write a new one.”
Then he added, as he always did, with a dry laugh:
“Don’t worry… it’s simple!”
Just as he had always done whenever I came to him to ask about my request to join the party ranks.
I was never enthusiastic about the party—not its ideology, nor its principles, nor its goals. All I wanted was one thing: to get a party number, a simple proof I could show to the First Assistant at the Political Security branch, hoping it would spare me the monthly summons and its consequences that disrupted my studies, unsettled my calm, clouded my stability, and corrupted my behavior.
At the end of each visit, I would return weighed down by questions, walking the streets of Douma with a thousand unspoken words inside me, and a thousand fears, each unlike the other.
Years passed, yet that summons… had not passed.
Nor was I ever accepted into the party ranks, for I became certain that Comrade Abu Ma‘rouf tore up my application after I left his office. Once, I returned less than a minute later, only to see him tossing a shredded paper into the wastebasket. A quick glance at the other papers on his desk showed everything else as I had left it—except for the one that had fallen upon him.
Mr. Ahmad shook his head slowly, and after a pause, he said:
“Freedom, Numan, is not merely an escape from walls and ceilings… it is the return of the soul to those who love it.”
In the evening, after Numan had gone to his room to rest for a while, Muna remained behind, arranging some papers on the table, while her father stood by the window, gazing at the shadows stretching across the walls in the glow of the setting sun.
Muna spoke softly, as if to herself:
“…It is as though he has crossed an invisible boundary… Numan.”
Her father turned slowly, approached her, and sat opposite at the table. He rapped his hand gently on the wooden edge of the chair and said:
“His story… it takes time to be fully understood. It is not easy for a young man his age to go through what he has endured… and yet remain upright, clear-eyed, and truthful in his words.”
Muna paused a moment, then lifted her eyes toward him, her voice reflective:
“Dad… do you think he fears… love?”
Mr. Ahmad smiled faintly, tilting his head just slightly, and said:
“He does not fear love, my daughter. He fears only that he might do it wrong… or that it might come to him while he is lacking—lacking strength, lacking clarity, lacking reconciliation with himself.”
Muna whispered, her gaze drifting to where Numan had been sitting moments before:
“It is as if he is trying… to love me without diminishing himself or his family.”
Her father rose, standing behind her, and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder:
“And that, Muna… is what makes him worthy of you. Love is not merely passion or emotion; it is a choice… a capacity to endure distance, and the purity of vision.”
Muna nodded slowly, then spoke in a voice that carried as much hope as certainty:
” “I want to be his safe space… when he is afraid, and his calm face when he is unsettled.” ”
Mr. Ahmad laughed, his tone warm with unmistakable paternal tenderness:
” “Then you love him… with clarity, honesty, and wisdom.” ”
Muna smiled shyly, a smile like quiet gratitude, and added as she rose to straighten a cushion on the sofa:
” “Love, Father, grows in me every time I hear him tell me something he had kept hidden… as if he opens a window in his heart and invites me inside.” ”
Her father stepped closer and said:
” “Help him complete his journey… and if he stumbles, remind him that he has never walked alone.” ”
Night in Mr. Ahmad’s house felt still, as if listening to the pulse of some unseen presence.
In the softly lit corner, where Muna’s room glowed under the gentle light of a bedside lamp, she sat on the edge of her bed, flipping through her notebook without reading. Her face tilted toward the window, yet her eyes sought something deeper than the scene outside… she was searching within herself.
Suddenly she rose, as if she had heard an inner call that could no longer be contained. She left the room and walked toward her father’s library on the lower floor. She knocked lightly and entered.
Her father was at his desk, reviewing some work. Seeing her, he raised his eyebrows:
” “Muna?! You’ve left your room at this hour?” ”
She stepped forward hesitantly, her voice mingling uncertainty with hope:
” “Father… may I speak with you?” ”
He set aside the papers and gestured to the chair across from him:
” “Of course, my daughter. Is something troubling you?” ”
She sat down, and for a moment, silence settled over her features. Then, as her fingers clutched the edge of her coat, as if seeking in its fabric the words she longed to speak, she whispered:
“Father… I… I love him.”
His eyebrows rose slightly, yet he did not seem surprised, as if he had always known. He nodded gently and murmured:
“Numan?”
She nodded in return, her voice barely a breath:
“Yes… but I… I don’t know how to tell him. I think he feels it… yet he is afraid.”
Mr. Ahmed exhaled slowly, a soft smile touching his eyes, full of quiet tenderness:
“And you? Aren’t you afraid to speak what’s in your heart?”
She shook her head, a faint whisper escaping her lips:
“No, I am not afraid. I am shy. It’s as if what I feel is greater than myself. As if a secret has grown in my chest, and I do not know how to let it out.”
Her father took her hand, his voice warm and steady:
“Then let us tell him together… in a way that is truly yours. Let me invite him tomorrow for dinner at a restaurant you choose. I will open the door, and you must enter with your heart.”
Muna gasped, surprised by his initiative, then smiled, a tender mixture of love and shyness lighting her expression:
“Do you think he will accept it? I mean… that I love him?”
Mr. Ahmed smiled, his confidence deep and reassuring:
“If you were not in his heart, he would never have allowed himself to see you with all this nobility. He is afraid, yes… but fear often precedes love, until one proves oneself.”
Muna fell silent, then whispered softly, almost like a prayer:
“Perhaps the time has finally come…”
Her father replied:
“Rather, it is the heart that longs. And that is truer than all the clocks in the world.”
32
Chapter Thirty-Two – A Mirror for Confessions
The next evening, after everyone had finished dinner, Mr. Ahmed said:
” We were thinking of having dinner at a restaurant tomorrow. How about you two choose it together and let me know?”
Then he excused himself, leaving the door slightly ajar. Muna sat across from Numan. Her eyes searched for a sentence unspoken, yet hinted at. Her hands clasped in her lap, as if guarding a secret that had long awaited confession.
Numan, seated at the edge of his chair, still hesitated to meet her gaze directly. The air was still, the warmth from the old fireplace flowing with the soft light that filled the study, which had now become a mirror for revelation, rather than for knowledge.
Muna whispered, her voice almost a breath:
” Didn’t you once tell me… that freedom is the first dream of anyone who has lost it?”
He nodded, silent.
She smiled, adding in a voice deep with a long exhale:
” Freedom, Numan… is not stepping beyond walls and ceilings… but the return of the soul to those who love it.”
Numan sighed, as though something within him had loosened. This time, he looked at her without barriers, then said:
” I thought I had once escaped from myself… but I was only searching for it somewhere else…”
Muna was silent for a moment, then, with a subtle spark in her eyes, she asked:
” Where?”
He answered her, his voice carrying all he had never said before:
” I found it… in the warmth of my mother’s care, and here, in your gaze, in the nuances of your voice when you speak of literature, and when you speak to me with honesty, in your concern for me, and in hers, and in the silence you both share, when silence is kinder than any word.”
Her lips trembled, then she murmured:
” So… do you trust me?”
He replied:
” I trust you both… and myself, if I am near either of you.”
In the room, now steeped with the scent of books and a new pulse of life, Muna sat across from Numan, her hand still brushing the edges of an open book, as if preparing it to witness a conversation rarely spoken aloud.
A quiet settled. Only Numan’s hesitant breathing broke the stillness, as though he were searching for the right way to say
” I love you”
without tripping over the weight of the words.
But Muna chose to break the silence, her tone calm yet flickering with a shadow of unease:
” I wonder… can anyone who loves, in a country like this, truly be free?”
Numan lifted his head toward her, surprised by the question, then said softly:
” I love your question, Muna, but it is more painful than it seems… because love here… begins in whispers, afraid to announce itself… just as we are with opinion, with dreams, with the simplest forms of life.”
After a moment of silence, Muna spoke, as if testing the impact of his words:
” Everything in this country, even love, requires permission, approval, or caution… we live in a circle… like a prison circle, but without walls.”
Numan nodded, his voice carrying a trace of weariness:
“Freedom, Muna, is not measured merely by stepping out of a prison… but by stepping out of your fear. And I… even now, I still hold a large part of that fear within me.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then said:
“Yet you came out, you spoke, you returned to your lessons, to writing, to your mother… Doesn’t that mean you’ve begun to free yourself?”
“I try,” he replied, “but the road is long. I am the child of a world that sees questions as threats, and thinking as disobedience. I grew up never hearing of the government or security, but when I grew older, I found that those who speak of them… disappear.”
Muna turned toward the window:
“And they still disappear, Numan… in body, in voice, in dreams. But if we don’t speak what we feel today, when will we?”
He moved closer, his voice dropping to a whisper, as if delving deep into his chest for words buried long ago:
“Sometimes… I feel that speaking the truth in a land like ours… is a kind of act of love.
Because you love yourself, and you love this land, and you refuse to see all this beauty buried in silence.”
Muna fell silent, a mournful note lingering in the quiet. She breathed deeply, then spoke, her tone stretched across long distances of pain:
“And I love you… because I’ve seen you love the truth, despite your fear.
We both know that love without freedom… is not love at all, but a lost longing, wandering without a path.”
Numan raised his hand toward his cheek, as if trying to touch a memory—or an old vow. Then, with eyes shimmering with the past, he said,
“Did you read what I wrote to you that day… both prose and poetry?”
Muna nodded, a quiet spark of remembrance in her eyes. He continued, as though probing a wound that had never healed:
“That day… I felt that I could not understand you the way I ought to have.
I could not write to you, ‘I love you,’
even though you were in my heart, in my mind, in every corner of what I can only call existence.
I found myself on the edge of an abyss when you left me, when you ran from me.
Love, Muna, is a decision,
and we must not run from it, nor abandon it,
no matter the reasons, no matter what circumstances demand.
I do not wish to reproach you, nor to blame you…
Yet I was the one more worthy of reproach, more deserving of blame.
I am the one who spoke too much, and yet failed to say what truly mattered,
the day you told me you wore that dress for me… only for me.”
Muna remained silent throughout his words, listening with her heart rather than her ears. Slowly, her features shifted, a point of light growing in her eyes with every confession he laid bare.
When he finished, she stepped closer, a gentle movement, and sat near him on the far edge of the sofa. She said nothing at first, extending her hand toward his, closing it over his with a tender firmness. Then she spoke, her voice steady, calm, as if the words themselves were meant to heal rather than accuse:
“Numan… I never intended to punish you.”
“I just wanted you to see me the way I see you.”
“I needed you to say what you just said… but that day… that day, your silence felt like a door slamming shut in my face.”
She sighed, then added, her voice weaving through reproach and longing:
“We could have been whole, Numan. We could have faced fear and suspicion, and chosen love… if you had told me that day, ‘Don’t leave.’
But you didn’t.
And I… I was a girl, more afraid of silence than I was of rejection.”
Her voice softened, as if she were calling forth the memory of her own heart, and she said:
“Do you know? Love, for me, is not promises, nor gifts, nor scented letters…
Love is that moment when you tell someone: You don’t fear with me, and you don’t let me fear with you.”
She held a brief silence, then met his gaze as if questioning him:
“So… today, do you love me enough for us to begin?”
Numan recoiled slightly, as though searching the depths of himself for an old answer, one that had survived estrangement and fear.
He studied her face. He saw it as he always did—still, vast as the desert plains, yet concealing a long-held thirst.
In a low, steady voice, neither reverent nor feigned, he said:
“Yes. I love you… and I have waited too long to say it, but I never once waited to feel it.”
He steadied his voice, then added:
“I was afraid to tell you, afraid it might change something in your eyes.
I wanted to keep you as you were in my memory: pure, close… yet distant enough to spare me the pain.”
Numan glanced up at the ceiling for a long moment, as if weighing everything that had been lost. Then he turned back to her:
“Now I want you close, and I do not want fear to steal us again.
If you are asking me, ‘Do I love you enough to begin?’
Then I say: Yes. We begin—even if the wind is at our backs, and the road ahead is long.”
The room seemed to shrink around them, pressing in on both their hearts. Muna rose slowly, stepped toward him, and laid her head gently on his shoulder. She said nothing, and he did not speak, yet his heartbeat shifted.
In that instant, love was no longer a question, nor an answer…
It had become a silence that felt like a beginning.
Suddenly… there was a soft knock at the door.
Numan stiffened, and Muna lifted her head quietly, as if they had both returned, in a single breath, to the surface of reality.
Her father’s voice—Mr. Ahmed—sounded at the door, dignified as always, yet tinged with a note of anticipation:
“May I come in?”
They exchanged a fleeting glance. Then Muna, composed, said:
“Please, Father.”
The door opened. Mr. Ahmed entered, his eyes carrying all that could not be spoken. He sat in the chair beside them, scanning their faces, and said:
“I heard a fragment of what was said, but I did not come to interrupt. I came to listen… until the last word.”
They all fell silent for a few long moments. Then Numan spoke, meeting her father’s gaze with all the weight of his heart:
” I love your daughter, Mr. Ahmed, and I have told her so. This is not whispered talk hidden in shadows; this is a choice I mean to follow through to the end.”
The man studied him quietly, as if emerging from deep reflection, and then spoke in his calm, deliberate tone:
” Love, my son, is not in what we say, but in what we do when the moment comes—when it demands of us a sacrifice.”
He turned toward his daughter:
” And you, Muna, are you ready for that moment? Do you understand the path you are choosing?”
She nodded softly:
” I do, and I am afraid… but I want to walk it with him.”
A pause. Then he said:
” Have you considered that in this country, love may not be allowed to reach its end safely? That many before you lost everything because they spoke a word into the wind, or refused to bend when they must?”
Numan’s voice was calm but unmistakably clear:
” And shall we remain silent? Bend only to survive? Then let us die with a word that resembles us—it is better than a life wrapped in quiet.”
Mr. Ahmed looked at him long and hard, as if recalling a youth far behind him, and then spoke in a voice that seemed to lay down a final testament:
” Then walk this path… but do not forget: love is pure only when it survives fear, and truth is true only when we pay its price.”
Each month, he was startled by the same silent card:
“You are to report to the Political Security Branch in Damascus, Follow-up Section. On the specified day and hour.”
The card arrived in a brown envelope, unsealed, unsigned, undated… as if it had traveled from a time outside the calendar.
Numan understood that the circle had not yet closed, that the door first opened on the night of the initial interrogation remained ajar for him each month, with the same cold smile, and the same unspoken question, cast at him like a gaze:
— “Are you still thinking?”
In each visit, he would sit in a room whose walls exuded an old dampness, where fear seeped through like a faint scent from plaster untouched by paint for decades.
He sat opposite the same man. The investigator, whose quiet smile never faltered, would ask, with all the courtesy of routine: about his life, his studies, the unfolding of his thoughts.
— “Have you read any new books, Numan?”
— “I… read a book about silence.”
— “Good. Silence is an art… and you know that some arts save their practitioners.”
The meetings repeated, like exercises in endurance and adaptation. The man asked the same questions, rifled through his file as if leafing through private diaries.
At the close of each session, he uttered the same sentence, as if a window were opening to threaten and remind:
— “We love those who think… but we watch those who think too much.”
On his way back, Numan walked among the crowd, carrying in his chest something that could not be spoken. He watched passersby smiling, listening to the singer blaring from an old car radio, and he wondered:
“Do all these faces, too, receive silent energies, as if some decree of fate were whispered to them?”
During his next monthly visit, the investigator’s familiar smile was absent. He seemed to have awakened from a sleep heavy with files, confronted instead by harder questions. He leafed through some papers before raising his eyes, speaking in a muted tone:
“Numan… what is the nature of your relationship with a Lebanese family living in Damascus?”
Numan froze for a moment, as if he had not quite heard the question. He tried to recall: Which Lebanese? When? In what context?
“I mean,” the investigator continued, “according to the information, you are nearly residing in a house in the Mezzeh district, and there is a connection between you and a young Lebanese woman… her name, Muna? Does that strike you as unusual?”
“Muna?… Yes… She lived with her family in the house where I rented a room after enrolling at the university.”
The investigator raised his eyebrows:
“She lived there… or were you corresponding?”
“I don’t send her anything… She would sometimes leave books on the table, and we would converse… Once, we read The Plague by Camus together… then she traveled.”
The investigator leafed through a paper, then tapped his pen on the table:
“And are you aware that one of her relatives was a journalist in Beirut? And that he had connections with suspicious entities?”
Numan remained silent. He felt that anything ordinary could be twisted into suspicion. He swallowed slowly and replied in a clear tone:
“Sir, I am only a student… I dream of a book and a future. That was a conversation in a shared courtyard, nothing more.”
The investigator closed the file with a quiet finality and, gazing at it, said, “We believe in coincidences, but we prefer to be certain.”
Numan stepped out that day as if carrying a live ember within him. The question had struck like a hidden trap, and deep inside, a faint voice echoed:
“So… even the words you spoke on the stairs, the laughter that flickered between two books, the visit that appeared at the end of a mild winter… all of it is being recorded?”
The café was warm, humming with muted conversations, steam rising from cups like the sighs of weary places. Muna sat opposite a small window, waiting for Numan to return from his meeting, watching passersby with a restless gaze. She had learned from her father, sparing the details, that something had happened to Numan during his last visit.
Numan entered with hesitant steps, as if unwilling to make a sound, or awaken the question in her heart that he knew would come, inevitably.
She lifted her eyes and studied him for a moment, then whispered, “Was it brief?”
He forced a smile, sat down, and shook his head without meeting her gaze. “Brief… and cold.”
Seconds of silence stretched between them. She stirred her spoon in the cup and said, “My father told me… a black mark appeared in your file.”
His voice trembled as he replied, “Perhaps… but it is not from me.”
She looked at him sharply, her eyes a mixture of worry and reproach. “A mark not from you? Then from whom?”
He bowed his head, speaking in a calm tone, “Muna… there is nothing between us but a friendship of books… she stayed in the house herself. We talked, we read.”
He paused, then continued, looking into her eyes, “I was thinking of you, you… not of them.”
She slowly withdrew her hand from the cup, turning her gaze away. “But they do not trust the heart. They search through names, visits, and books, and turn every simplicity… into a thread in a web of suspicion.”
He spoke with a sad tone, “This country does not fear hatred… it fears love… especially when it crosses its borders.”
She fell silent, her eyes now fixed on him with a look that blended tenderness and fear, as if asking without words: Will they let us build what we imagine, or will it be torn down before it begins?
Muna stretched her hand toward his, stopping just short of touching it, letting her fingers hover close, as if asking permission to come near.
“Numan… I do not want you to feel that I am judging you, or tracking your steps. I only… feared for you.”
He looked at her long, as if searching for a new way to speak the truth, then whispered softly, “And I… feared for us.”
Her lashes fluttered, and she asked gently, “Feared what?”
“That we might become like so many… loving each other, yet afraid to say it aloud.”
Muna sighed, then whispered, as if surrendering an old secret, “Love in our land… must be brave. Otherwise, it breaks halfway.”
After a pause, she tried to laugh, failing just slightly, “Even my father, with all his calm and awareness… could not hide his worry when you came to the house after that visit to the security branch.”
Numan smiled, though the smile carried a bitter edge.
“He’s sharper than we think. He knows when to stay silent, and when to speak. Perhaps he wants me to talk more… so he can understand more.”
“Or… to see if you deserve to remain in my life.”
Muna held his gaze for a long moment, then murmured:
“And I… I see that you do. But you must open your doors to me, just as you opened your heart to this country.”
He sighed softly, then said:
“Then come… and see how I have hidden all my pieces within you. How I wrote of you, even at the height of fear. Come, ask me… and I will tell you everything.”
Her fingers trembled slightly over the table—not from fear, but from longing to touch a hand that was true.
Outside, the rain had begun to fall lightly, glinting on the café window like delayed tears.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ahmad sat at his desk, gazing at an old photograph taken in France, standing before the university gate, clad in a heavy coat and dark glasses. From his eyes back then shone a trace of stubbornness and genius. Beside the photograph lay a black leather journal, old-fashioned, filled with what he had written in the years following his return.
Muna tapped the door lightly, then entered without waiting for permission.
“Good evening, Papa.”
He lifted his head slowly, gesturing with his hand toward the chair opposite him:
“Evening of clarity, Muna… please, sit.”
She sat, hands folded in her lap, eyes flickering with slight hesitation.
“We’ve spoken much about Numan… but I think now I must tell you what I have never said before.”
Mr. Ahmad closed the journal and set his glasses aside.
“You are free, my daughter, but I hope… that you are also honest with yourself.”
“I love him, Papa.”
He remained silent for a moment, as if he had anticipated those words long ago, then said,
“I know.”
Muna hesitated, yet continued,
“But I still see a shadow of doubt in his eyes… some trace of fear. I do not know if it is fear of me, or fear for me.”
Her father smiled softly.
“It is not fear of you, but fear for your fortune. He comes from another world, one where feelings are shown only on paper, or in a hidden corner. By habit, he speaks only when he must.”
“But he speaks to me, writes to me… then suddenly falls silent… and then writes even more.”
“That, Muna, is because he loves you in a way unlike our time.”
She was quiet for a moment, then said,
“He has been summoned again to the political security… the same old questions, but this time, about me.”
“And surely he has been asked about me as well, perhaps. It is not strange, Muna. This country does not love those who think… nor those who love.”
Muna gazed into her father’s eyes, then asked quietly,
“Do you approve of my relationship with him?”
The man lowered his gaze for a moment, then answered, as if probing his own heart for the right words:
“If you want the truth: it does not matter whether I approve… as long as you see in him a man who will honor you and help you grow. But I ask only one thing: do not leave him alone in the moments when he feels that no one is with him.”
Muna smiled, reaching out her hand to her father’s.
“That is what I wanted to hear… and what I want to do.”
The light gently retreated from the edges of the room, while a silent, profound dialogue unfolded between father and daughter—one that needed no further words.
33
Chapter Thirty-Three – Searching for an accusation
The investigator flipped through the papers slowly, fixing Numan with a gaze laced with suspicion:
“All right, Mr. Numan, we want to speak frankly. With Muna? What do you usually talk about? Love? Or something else?”
Numan hesitated for a moment, then said steadily:
“We talk about everything… about books, studies, about our homeland, and what is happening around us.”
The investigator raised an eyebrow, a hint of mockery in his tone:
“Your homeland? Which homeland do you mean? Yours? France? Or those who dream of ruling from across the seas?”
Numan said nothing. The investigator studied him carefully, then asked:
“Does Muna speak of her father? What does he think of us? What does he believe about us?”
Numan tried to regain his composure, answering calmly:
“Mr. Ahmad is an educated man. He has his opinions, but he does not speak against the homeland.”
The investigator laughed coldly:
“He does not speak… but you hear, and you write. Right? You record his thoughts and send them abroad?”
Numan shook his head in denial, but the investigator pressed on:
“And her cousin in Lebanon? What does he do? With the militias or the embassy? And her maternal uncle who owns a printing press? Do you print pamphlets… or romantic novels?”
Numan spoke quietly:
“I do not know the details of their family, and it is none of my concern.”
The investigator stood and stepped closer, his tone barely concealing a restrained anger:
“But you know, and you speak, and you record everything. That is what has been written about you: a sharp memory, retaining what is said, transmitting it with literary skill! Excellent.”
He pulled a sheet from the file and read in a deliberately cold voice:
“In one of your meetings with the young lady, you expressed your belief that speaking the truth in this homeland has become an act of love, because you refuse to let beauty be buried in silence… You love beauty very much, don’t you?”
Numan replied in a low voice:
“I spoke those words to her… not as a publication, not as a statement.”
The investigator laughed mockingly:
“No need to publish; your presence, your words, and hers—that is publication itself… it is the disease.”
A moment of silence fell, then he asked in a lighter tone:
“One last question for today… if you were forced to choose between her love and your loyalty to the homeland, what would you choose?”
Numan looked at him steadily and said with conviction:
“If loyalty means lies, then I am fit neither for love nor for the homeland.”
Silence settled again. The investigator returned the file to its place, tapped his fingers on the table, and said firmly:
“We are done for today, but we will meet again soon, next month. Or perhaps sooner—do not forget.”
Numan returned home late, his steps heavy with the weight of what he had heard, his eyes shadowed with deep unease. He entered Muna’s room, where she sat by the window, gazing at the garden in an uneasy silence.
Muna looked at him, a faint smile brushing her lips, then asked in a hesitant voice:
“How was the interrogation?”
Numan drew a deep breath and sat beside her, reaching for her hand and holding it gently in his, his tone tender yet pained:
“It was as I expected… questions about you, about your family, about everything… about the country, our words, about… every detail.”
Muna’s lips trembled slightly, and she placed her hand over her heart, asking:
“Were you afraid? Did they say anything about us?”
Numan gave a faint smile and replied:
“Fear… it’s there, but the fear of losing each other is greater. They doubt everything, even the truth itself, but we cannot.”
Muna looked at him, her eyes glistening with tears, and whispered:
“I’m worried about you… and about us. What if I can’t protect you anymore?”
Numan brushed a quiet tear from her face and said:
“What if I can’t protect you anymore?”
Muna sighed deeply, her voice firm:
“Will you promise me… you won’t leave me, no matter the consequences?”
Numan squeezed her hand and said:
“I doubt my ability to promise you… just as I doubt our ability to face everything together.”
Silence fell between them, heavy yet intimate, filled with the shared weight of a world that demanded a cruel price for love.
The pace of the interrogations escalated with each visit, like a relentless wave, rising in intensity and force. In the last session, the investigator began with a look marked by suspicion:
“Numan, tell me about Muna’s father… How was his work in Beirut? And what changed when he moved to Damascus? Why?”
Numan drew a slow breath, answering with an attempt at calm:
“Her father worked in a private family company as an insider. He moved to Damascus for purely family reasons.”
The investigator continued, jotting notes in his notebook:
“And what about his monthly income? Did his standard of living change after the move?”
Numan shook his head slowly:
“The income changed slightly, but not significantly.”
Then the investigator’s tone sharpened:
“Do you know that the house contract is in your name? That vast sums are paid and collected without clear justification? How did you get this money? Where did it come from?”
Numan felt his heart race, his voice trembling slightly:
“I… I haven’t used that money. I don’t know its exact source, but it comes from Muna’s father’s work in contracting and construction.”
The investigator returned to those accusations, speaking calmly as if delivering a veiled indictment:
“These charges are not simple. They could bring harm to you, your family… and even Muna’s family.”
At that moment, Numan thought of Muna’s father—the wise man who bore so much weight in his life.
Numan called Muna’s father, trying to explain the situation and seek his counsel. The two men met quietly under a dim light, amidst whispers of worry and the fear of what the future might hold.
Muna’s father spoke with firmness:
“These situations are dangerous, Numan, but patience and wisdom are our weapons now. Do not let your heart betray you, and do not reveal everything you know!”
Numan replied:
“I feel the noose tightening around us more and more, but I will not give in.”
Muna’s father affirmed:
“We must protect ourselves and our families. There is no room for rashness, no talking to those who do not understand.”
Numan smiled faintly, aware that the battle of truth and love would not be easy, and that it demanded a patience and resilience without limits.
34
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Escape
One evening, Numan and Muna’s father sat in a dimly lit room, where the soft glow of a lamp mingled with heavy shadows that draped the space. The father drew a deep breath before speaking:
“Son, I am not afraid for myself, but I have never been more afraid for you. These people… you cannot know how they pry, nor what they are seeking!”
Numan looked at him with questioning eyes:
“Does what they claim put you in the line of suspicion?”
Muna’s father answered, his voice grave:
“Without a doubt. Every move, every transaction, is watched closely. Especially the sums that are transferred or spent.”
“And what about the contract in my name?” Numan asked, his worry evident.
“The contract is no shield. But we must be cautious, for every paper, every signature, can be used against us.”
Numan nodded, then said with resolve:
“We must prepare ourselves for any confrontation, and stay in constant contact. We cannot let fear and doubt control the course of things.”
Muna’s father smiled, extending his hand in a silent gesture of agreement:
“Our pact is true, Numan. We will face this together, and we will endure.”
Numan felt the beat of his heart slow, as these words restored a flicker of hope in the darkness of the unknown.
Numan sat in the interrogation room, the air thick with tension, as the investigator waited, his face stern, carrying a mixture of challenge and cunning. The investigator began flipping through papers slowly, then spoke in a low, pressing tone:
“Mr. Numan, we have new information about Muna’s father’s work, the reasons for his move from Beirut to Damascus, and his monthly income. Can you explain how you managed the contract in your name? And where did you get such a large sum of money?”
Numan breathed slowly, striving to maintain his composure, and answered steadily:
“The contract was arranged for the housing of Mr. Ahmed’s family. As for the money, it comes from his personal account and from family support through his cousin.”
A mocking smile appeared on the investigator’s face, and he asked:
“And what about your connection with Muna’s family? What are the political orientations of those who remain in Lebanon?”
Numan nodded silently, then replied:
“There is no family relationship between us, and I know nothing of their political positions, as I do not involve myself in their affairs.”
The investigator’s tone sharpened, his gaze fixed on Numan:
“These matters are important to us. Every word you withhold counts against you. Do not underestimate us.”
At Muna’s house, her father and Numan gathered around the table. The air was thick with tension, and worries seemed to hang over them. Her father spoke with gravity:
” We must be ready. The questions are mounting, and the danger grows. We have to protect each other.”
Muna looked at Numan with a warm, steady gaze:
” We are with you, Numan. Do not fear. We will become one family, and a family stands together.”
Numan drew a deep breath and said:
” I will be careful, but we will not yield to fear. Truth is our path, no matter the sacrifices.”
Determination settled on their faces, as if they were bracing themselves for whatever trial might come.
Under cold lights that cast sharp shadows across the family home, worry etched the investigator’s face. All eyes seemed drawn to the wealth of Mr. Ahmad, Muna’s father, a fortune that had caught the attention of the security apparatus.
One evening, the investigator arrived, his expression hard and his smile tinged with threat. In his hands, he carried a small recording device disguised as a pen. He summoned Numan outside and spoke in a cautious voice, heavy with veiled menace:
” Numan, for your own safety, and to prevent you from being entangled in intelligence charges that could bear heavy burdens, I am giving you this device. You will remain close to Mr. Ahmad and Muna, and record everything that is said, to aid us and secure the safety of your country.”
Numan, after a moment of thick silence, replied:
” And this is the trust of the state? To turn people’s homes into centers of surveillance and recording?”
The investigator answered with deadly calm:
” This is not a request, Numan. It is a necessity for everyone’s protection. Do not let fear take hold, and do not let your care for your country trouble you.”
Numan returned and sat down, realizing the game was larger than he had imagined, and that he had become part of a complex web of surveillance and fear, where money, love, and freedom were all trapped within the walls of this house, under ruthless scrutiny.
He sat in silence, holding the small device as if it were an unbearable weight. Then he went to the garden, dug a small hole, buried it in the soil, and returned. He told them what had happened. Muna looked at him with eyes that mingled confusion and fear, and spoke in a low voice:
” Do you think this will change anything? Is it only for protection, or the beginning of a bitter betrayal?”
Serious lines etched Mr. Ahmad’s face. He spoke with firmness, yet his tone was laced with caution:
” This is our reality now, Muna. We cannot ignore what is happening around us. The money I possess has become a focal point for surveillance, and this device… it is a tool of their control over us, or at least an attempt at it.”
Numan breathed slowly, trying to absorb the weight of the words, then said:
” But can these words, these conversations that bind us, really be recorded and watched? Isn’t this a suffocation of freedom?”
Mr. Ahmad offered a bitter smile and answered:
” Yes, Numan, it is suffocation. But it is suffocation for all of us. And sometimes, we must pretend to be content just to stay alive.”
Muna lifted her hand to rest gently on Numan’s shoulder, adding softly:
” We need to be stronger than fear, to stand together, not to submit to the voices watching us from the shadows.”
Numan looked at her, eyes deep with resolve, and said:
” I will not do what they ask, even if it is dangerous.”
Night was nearing its end when Numan turned to Mr. Ahmad and spoke in a low voice, as if shielding his loved ones from the shadow of an impending disaster:
” Tomorrow… the house must be sold, all your affairs here settled, and you must return with Muna to Beirut. This Damascus is no longer safe for you or for Muna, and the danger is closer than we think.”
A heavy silence fell over the room. Muna sat by the window, eyes fixed on the darkness outside, shedding tears as if listening to a sound no one could hear. Then she slowly turned to her father, waiting for an answer, or a way through the peril that surrounded them.
Mr. Ahmad folded his hands together and lowered his head briefly before raising his eyes to Numan, speaking in the tone of one who knows too much yet feels broken:
” Do you think that leaving for Beirut will take us out of danger? My son, those who hold the reins of security here are the same who hold them there. Borders no longer separate the knife from the neck—they have become bridges of suspicion, surveillance, and enforced loyalty.”
Muna’s voice trembled, the pain unmistakable:
” Does that mean we have no refuge? No home? No country?”
Her father answered, as if speaking more to himself than to her:
” It means… we must think of a wider solution, one that does not save us alone, but extracts the truth from this siege. To survive together—but there is no way but escape. No wisdom can shield, reveal, and maneuver like it can.”
Numan stepped toward the table, placing his hand on scattered papers belonging to the house and office, and said:
” But time shows no mercy. Each passing day brings them closer. The intelligence demanded that I record for them… that I listen, and report, and transmit, and I…”
Muna suddenly rose, cutting him off:
” And you didn’t, did you? You won’t!”
He looked at her steadily, and replied:
” And what did you think? Of course I didn’t… and I won’t.”
Her father bowed his head again, and silence enveloped the room. Then, in a calm, decisive voice, he said:
” Then we think together. We sell nothing. We end nothing. We need a smuggler who draws no attention, and a plan that does not expose us. We need… time, even if it costs us fear.”
Numan said,
” But I think buying time won’t be possible with you here in Damascus.”
Time was not on their side. Every passing minute multiplied their anxiety, letting shadows creep further into their faces and thoughts. On the table lay piles of sales papers and office contracts, suddenly a weight that had to be disposed of quietly.
Mr. Ahmad spoke in a low voice, flipping through one of the sheets:
” If they find out we’re planning to leave, they’ll call it fleeing… and the doors of suspicion will swing wide open.”
Numan tried to steady himself as he replied:
” I know. But they already know more than they should, which means at least you’ll be blackmailed to shield yourself from the harm they plan or create… They watch, they ask about you, your money, your uncle in Lebanon, that small printing press that published a book about beauty and freedom twenty years ago—they counted it as political propaganda.”
Ahmad laughed bitterly:
” Beauty? A crime now?”
Numan answered, as if revealing the truth in his heart:
” Yes, a crime! Because they fear anything that cannot be bought… anything that is published only by written order within their reach, or else it will be sealed with red wax.”
Muna stepped closer to her father, placing her hand on his shoulder, speaking with a calmness that carried a quiet plea:
” We don’t want to be heroes, father… we just want to live in peace.”
He nodded, looking at her as if entrusting her with something larger than words:
” And I do not want to make you pay the price for this broken dream. We will find a path that does not lead to an abyss. But… we must not falter in the next step.”
Numan replied,
” If you wish, I can meet them again, to understand how far this has gone with them.”
Mr. Ahmad said thoughtfully,
” Don’t rush. And don’t meet them before we decide what we want. This is not a game… these are destinies.”
Silence fell again. Then a gentle wind stirred through a poorly closed window, making the papers on the table dance, as if whispering that their place here was now at the mercy of the breeze.
Their eyes remained fixed on that silent trembling, each realizing that the path they had begun would not lead to the familiar, and that life, like freedom, would be granted only at a steep price.
On a muted gray morning, Damascus stirred awake to another day, yet the house in the district of al-Mazzeh Villas seemed to fold in on itself, like a page no one intended to read again.
They had decided. They would leave, and they would leave far.
Mr. Ahmed already held the receiver in his hand as the clock pressed toward what would be their last day here. His voice, hushed but edged with urgency, carried across the line to a distant relative—someone with influence in places where ordinary people never set foot.
He pleaded for three seats on the first plane out of Damascus. Destination irrelevant. What mattered was departure, before the next dawn: one seat for him, another for his daughter, and the third for Numan.
Numan stood apart, his forehead resting against the cold pane of glass. When Mr. Ahmed spoke his name, Numan turned slowly, as if something inside him had splintered.
“I can’t go with you,” he said, his voice cutting the silence like the edge of a blade. “I can’t leave my mother. Not now.”
The room fell into a silence so complete it seemed even the static on the line had retreated.
Muna looked at him as though the ground had been pulled from beneath her. Her lips trembled, on the verge of protest—or perhaps a plea—but no words came. Instead, she stepped toward him, laid a trembling hand in his, and whispered, “I understand.”
Yet her eyes filled with defiant tears that refused to fall.
Mr. Ahmed watched them in silence, his gaze lingering before he gave a barely perceptible nod. Then he turned back to the phone. His sigh, long and heavy, carried more meaning than words.
“Two tickets only,” he said. “From Damascus to Amman. From there—to France, perhaps, or maybe Australia. It doesn’t matter. What matters is leaving. As soon as possible.”
Muna began packing her things in silence. She wrapped the books with a trace of unease, slipping between their pages old notes in Numan’s handwriting, unsent fragments of letters, and a pencil sketch of her mother’s face—left one evening on the margin of a lecture notebook.
Mr. Ahmed busied himself with documents, folding each sheet twice, as if trying to erase its very existence. In the corner, the landline phone sat still, a presence both mute and watchful, like a defused bomb—silent, unused, yet heavy with surveillance, as though it were a third eye listening for whispers.
Meanwhile, Numan had phoned the real estate office. In his gentle way, he asked the agent to come at once, if he was not otherwise engaged. The man arrived quickly, by which time Numan had already persuaded Mr. Ahmed to sell both apartments together. Since they were registered in his name, the sale would make their departure easier—no need for bureaucratic delays, no endless appointments at government offices. All Mr. Ahmed had to do was inform his brother-in-law and Muna’s aunt that necessity had forced the decision. He would explain later. The funds from the sale, he promised, would be transferred without delay.
By the time Mr. Ahmed and Muna gave their consent, the agent had entered the study.
Numan spoke first:
“Mr. Ahmed is under urgent pressure to leave. He wishes to sell his apartment, and also his brother-in-law’s. Could you find a buyer willing to pay what both are worth together?”
The agent smiled, almost in disbelief.
“My, what a stroke of fortune!” he said.
He asked for a moment and slipped out, returning with the merchant who lived in the apartment upstairs. The man had long sought two nearby flats for his relatives. A call was made, the relatives arrived without delay, and within hours the sale was complete—the contracts signed, the arrangements sealed.
All that remained was for Numan to appear, on the appointed day, at the government office to finalize the transfer of ownership.
The buyers left for about an hour, then returned, each carrying a bag of money—in foreign currency. Mr. Ahmed was relieved; it spared him the trouble of exchanging it. The buyer hesitated, wanting to hold back part of the payment until the transfer was complete, but Numan handed him his own identification card as a guarantee of his word.
The upstairs merchant, however, already knew Numan well. He assured his relative there was no need for such caution. The full payment was made in cash on the spot. The real estate agent took his customary commission and left for his office, praising God for a fortune that had come so swiftly, on the lightest of winds.
They agreed that in the morning the keys would be handed to the merchant, that everything in the two apartments would remain untouched except for Mr. Ahmed’s belongings, Muna’s, and her aunt’s. Then the gathering dispersed.
Mr. Ahmed tried to press one of the heavy bags upon Numan as a gift. Numan refused, gently but firmly, making it clear that such a gesture would sever him from them forever. They relented, withdrew the offer, and apologized.
Numan stood by the door, uncertain of what words could possibly suffice. There were too many, and none of them right. At last he spoke, his eyes fixed on Muna.
“In the very last moment, just before the plane doors close, call me. Only two words—no explanations. Just say: We’re safe.”
She nodded silently, then moved as if to embrace him. Instead, he extended his hand, parting from her with a handshake, as though bidding farewell to a homeland he might never see again.
“Will you go back there?” he asked, though he did not name the place.
Her reply came with a softness that broke the heart, a trace of childhood woven through her voice.
“To wherever we can live as human beings without fear. And if we return… it won’t be now.”
Mr. Ahmed stepped forward. He shook Numan’s hand with grave respect, then drew him into an embrace.
“You have been generous,” he said, “and braver than anyone should be. Stay cautious. Do not let the shadows consume you. This country still needs someone to keep its face intact—even if everyone else abandons it.”
Numan answered steadily.
“I know the path. I’ll try to stay in the light, as much as I can… and to write only, not to declare.”
Then he turned to Muna, lowering his voice.
“If I ever write poetry, it will be for you, and about you. Otherwise, it will be words never published—kept between me and the dream.”
She raised a trembling hand in farewell. Then they turned their backs and walked away.
Numan remained standing, alone in the house, waiting for their call so he could hand over the keys to the new owner and return to his own home. His eyes lingered on the wall outside, still refusing to crumble, on the garden gate, on the sour-orange tree that had shed its leaves too early that year.
He drew a long breath and thought:
“Some farewells cannot be spoken. They can only be lived.”
________________________________________
One week after the family’s departure.
On a bleak gray evening, Numan was summoned again to the branch.
The road was not unfamiliar, but this time it felt longer, as if the sidewalks were pulling away from him, as if the walls had grown heavier, turned into faces without eyes.
The same room awaited him. The same table. The same cold metal chair. The same eyes that never missed the tremor in another.
The investigator entered—better dressed than before, holding a thin file in one hand, a meaningless smile on his lips. He leafed through the papers slowly, then spoke.
“Did they leave?… You think this makes things simpler?… Didn’t I tell you to track every detail?”
Numan did not answer.
The investigator went on, as if delivering a sermon.
“But what if I told you they didn’t get very far? What if someone left behind a trace—something that unsettles the state?”
Numan’s reply came carefully.
“What kind of trace?”
The investigator opened the file, drew out a folded photograph, and spread it across the table with deliberate slowness.
“Do you recognize this?”
He continued:
“It’s a picture of a small leather bag. Familiar, isn’t it? Maybe it belonged to Muna. Or to her father. We can’t be sure.”
His eyes locked onto Numan’s.
“It was found near the border. Inside—a memory card. We don’t yet know what’s on it. Messages? Recordings? Names? Who can say?”
He paused, leaned in, and whispered:
“And all of this… was traced back to the house. The one that was sold.”
Numan swallowed hard. Inwardly, he almost laughed. The man knew nothing. He was trying to prove something to himself, to cling to a thread. The truth was simpler: they had left on a plane, with papers in order.
The investigator lifted a small recorder and placed it on the table.
“Do you remember this? Same model as the one I gave you. In their house—did you use it? Did you record what I asked for? You can tell me freely. We’re friends now, aren’t we?”
Numan shook his head, steady and unflinching.
“I recorded nothing. I delivered nothing. You’ll find your device in the garden of that house, buried by the western root of the old fig tree.”
The investigator smiled slyly and shut the file.
“Good… good. We like honest men. I have no use for a corrupted pen. But sometimes… the truth takes its time to surface.”
His tone shifted, cold and deliberate.
“By the way… the professor who came from Beirut never went back. And he won’t be returning here either. Don’t worry about him. He and his daughter are safe now. They left for Australia.”
He leaned back, almost casually, before adding:
“But you—you’ll be called again. Of course. A homeland never forgets its friends.”
35
Chapter Thirty-Five – Never to Return
After long hours, Numan stepped out of the interrogation room, its papers laid bare before him, stripped of pretense this time.
“He carried no doubt in his heart, nor in his eyes, for those he had loved; yet her departure left a knot in his chest that refused to loosen.”
From his pocket, he drew a folded note—left on her pillow before she traveled, written in her hand:
“Be at peace, for we are well, so long as you are a pulse in my heart, and an echo of thought that lights my spirit.
(Do not write that novel—
the novel of the dream—
unless it rises on its own from you alone.)”
Two weeks after their leaving, Numan woke early, though sleep had been scarce. It was no discipline of effort that roused him, but rather the hollow that stirs a man awake before its time, yet offers no reason to rise.
He opened the window. A rural breeze slipped in—cool, almost tender, yet carrying within its warmth a shade of cold, a trace of absence. It whispered to him, as though the morning itself were speaking:
“She passed this way… and she will not return.”
He walked to campus carrying his books and notebooks as though they were the remnants of a battle. In the long corridor he caught the usual faces, the hurried laughter, the shallow conversations that weighed on him more than solitude ever could.
He sat in his seat, and beside him the chair that had been hers remained empty—empty yet alive, as if staring back at him and whispering:
“Tell me something… the way you used to.”
A classmate leaned over, speaking softly, pointing to the paper in his hand.
“What do you think? Will we pass this year with distinction, as always? Or should we push it off another year?”
Numan nodded without looking. His eyes were elsewhere, reading in another place. Across the green fields he saw her steps, and in the broken sound around him he heard a voice untouched by the last interrogation.
After class, he went to the library. He sat in the corner Muna had always chosen. He pulled down Camus’s The Plague, opening it from the middle. The words seemed to recognize him. In the margin, in a small familiar hand, a line was written:
“Sometimes, a person resists illness with words. And sometimes, those words are what kill him.”
He stared at the sentence for a long time. Then he closed the book gently and buried his face in his hands.
“You left ink everywhere, Muna,” he thought. “Even in the books I will never finish.”
That evening, he returned home. The lights were off, just as he had left them. He sat at the table, looking toward the corner where she once used to sit, jotting notes, laughing whenever he teased her handwriting.
From a drawer he drew out a small envelope. Inside were two photographs: one of them together in the college garden, the other of a slip of paper on which she had written:
“One day will come… when love is not a crime. If only we had met in another country.”
Then he switched off the light. And the night kept watch over his grief, counting the breaths of his town… while he waited for the next summons.
36
Chapter Thirty-Six – A Poor Servant of God
Numan said:
“One day in 1979, about two months after Muna and her father had left for a faraway continent.
I had come back from the university after a long day of classes and stepped into my father’s barbershop. He was trimming a customer’s hair, as he had done for years. I paused at the door, then asked softly:
‘Do you need anything, Father? I’m heading home.’
He lifted his head from above the man’s crown and looked at me with eyes that carried a glint of comfort.
‘Sit for a while… don’t rush,’ he said.
I obeyed and took a seat on one of the wooden chairs near the mirror. There was something in his tone, not just a request for help, but a quiet wish that I stay. He turned back to his customer, continuing their conversation.
That was when something caught me off guard. I heard him call the man ‘Comrade.’
My eyebrows rose. It was unlike him. My father never used that word—it wasn’t in his vocabulary. In fact, I had always believed he kept himself far from anything that even hinted at party talk. My curiosity sharpened. I listened more carefully, saying nothing.
When he was finished, my father patted the man’s shoulder.
‘Na‘iman,’ he said, offering the blessing he gave to every customer.
The man smiled, then moved to sit beside me. His eyes lingered on me, calm but searching. Finally, in a voice weighted with reassurance, he asked:
‘Tell me… what is your story?’”
I was caught off guard by his sudden question. I hesitated, then asked politely:
“Who are you?”
He smiled, a smile both gentle and unreadable.
“A poor servant of God… Tell me everything. Don’t be afraid.”
I exchanged a quick glance with my father, then began to speak—as if some knot in my tongue had finally come undone. I told him the story from the very beginning: from October 6, 1974, through my days in prison, the sham of the trial, the summons from Political Security, my dutiful visits to the Party bureau, and the endless evasions of “Comrade Abu Ma‘rouf”—all the way up to that very moment.
He listened with unwavering focus, never interrupting, never showing the slightest trace of boredom or impatience. From time to time, he would nod, as though taking notes in silence.
When I had finished, he asked in a calm, almost measured tone:
“Do you know the Regional Command building of the Arab Socialist Ba‘ath Party in Damascus? On al-Mahdi Street, just past the General Staff headquarters?”
I answered, a little uncertain:
“Yes, I think I know it… and if I don’t, I can find my way there.”
He said:
“Tomorrow, exactly at eight in the morning, you will find me waiting for you there.”
The next morning, I arrived fifteen minutes early. A heavy iron gate stopped me, with a guard standing before it, his features simple, almost rustic.
He looked at me and asked:
“What do you want?”
I answered, stumbling slightly:
” I’m waiting for the comrade… ”
Then I fell silent. I had forgotten to ask him yesterday for his name! I quickly corrected myself:
” He’s coming now… He promised to meet me here at exactly eight.”
The moment the clock struck eight, I saw him running toward me from afar, signaling the guard for entry. I followed him down a long, ornate corridor until we reached a grand door, its wood carved with delicate patterns stretching up to touch the ceiling.
He knocked, and a voice from within said:
” Come in.”
He led me inside. I found myself in an elegant room, heavy with the scent of aged wood and lined with orderly bookshelves. At the center stood a table; behind it, a man in his late fifties rose upon seeing me. He extended his hand warmly and then gestured for me to sit on a comfortable leather chair opposite him.
The man who had brought me said:
” This is dear Numan, our young comrade. I hope you will treat him fairly, as you promised me.”
The older man nodded, returned to his desk, and produced a printed form that looked exactly like the ones I had filled countless times before—always in vain. He handed it to me, saying:
” Do you know how to fill it out?”
I smiled, a little wryly:
” I’ve filled it out more times than I can count.”
He said:
” Then fill it out, and sign it.”
I did as I was told, quietly, and handed him the paper. He passed it to my companion and said:
” Register it at the office, give it a number and a date. And this is a sheet with the session number and its date.”
As my companion left, he called a messenger and asked for two cups of tea. He turned to me and asked:
” How do you like your tea?”
I smiled faintly:
” Extra sugar.”
While we sipped, he asked me about my hobbies, the books I had read, and there was a warmth in his voice, unlike the cold indifference I had grown used to over the past years.
Soon, my companion returned with the paper. The official read it, then looked at me and said:
” Tomorrow, you will visit the party office and ask about your request.”
He shook my hand warmly, even more warmly than when I first arrived. I returned home that day with a sense of calm I had not felt in five years.
That evening, deep in sleep, I was woken by my grandfather’s voice from behind the door:
” Numan! Someone is at the door asking for you.”
I rubbed my eyes and asked:
” Who is it, grandfather?”
He replied calmly, with a trace of astonishment:
” He told me his name… Abu Ma’rouf!”
37
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Last Chapter – The dream
The dream Numan returned with from his exams was unlike the one that woke him every morning. Between a promise to his family and a whispered confession in the depth of night, the roads fractured, and the maps were lost.
The path of engineering narrowed beneath him, so he veered toward design, then wandered through circles of the self until he found himself in words. He was not fleeing failure, but a hidden fear, a wound without a name.
The dream shifted: from walls of concrete to the labor of building meaning. Every corner, every touch, became a text to be read, and every material hid a trace.
He longed to understand the world to build himself—not with the eyes of sight, but with insight that pierced shadows and probed meanings.
He realized that thought and faith alike carried a breath of authority, dividing truth and seizing meaning, much as politics does across the geography of oppression.
Between what crumbled inside him and what he quietly constructed, Numan drew from his wound to write, gazing through a small window in his heart toward a distant light.
And it seemed that every time he returned to himself, he returned to the dream from a purer, sweeter edge, unwilling to awaken from it.
Something called him: to become a teacher. Not because he sensed any mastery in the craft, but because he had tasted loss and wanted to become a map for those who would come after him.
He wished for the word to be a refuge, and the classroom a stage for the small awakening of souls entering their own light.
And as he returned to himself again and again, he returned to the dream from a new, clearer, more exquisite corner—a dream that bore other dreams, an inkwell that would water tomorrow.
Author’s Conclusion
These pages are not merely the recounting of a fleeting personal tale; they are the testimony of a heart that lived in fear, shaped by the ache of exile, and for whom even the dream on the doorstep turned to wheat of fire.
I grew up in a homeland I deeply cared about, but I saw it become a place where its own people were not treated fairly, and where people were put in a difficult position where they could not speak freely. Despite the challenges posed by more than half a century of oppression, the light within us remained steadfast. However, the circumstances we faced led to unfortunate circumstances for many of us, including loss of life, imprisonment, and even being cast out from our homes and communities.
As I bring this work to a close, I find myself at another crossroads: the threshold of gratitude.
I would like to express my deepest thanks and appreciation to the Federal Republic of Germany and its people, who have welcomed and supported those affected by injustice and destruction. Their land became for us not exile, but a new beginning.
Their hospitality was not merely political; it was profoundly human. It has been said that it has restored to many of us the right to live with dignity, and it has given me—at the very least—the chance to write, to speak, to dream, after so many dreams have been suppressed.
In a subtle way, this novel conveys a sense of loyalty to that alternative homeland. It was a place that did not inquire about my origins, but rather embraced me as I was. “What are the possibilities for your future?”
I would like to express my gratitude to the German government and people for their hospitality.
I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who believed in the potential of a dream, even when it was still in its nascent stages.
As the sun sets on that chapter,
It is my hope that the shadow of fear will be lifted from the hearts of those I love, so that they will not be oppressed.
If I may, I would like to share my journey in writing this piece. I have endeavored to capture the essence of my experiences, transcribing them with the utmost sincerity and authenticity.
BACKNANG – GERMANY
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Numan Albarbari
From the heart of social realist literature