“Fine,” I said. Then I fell silent for some seconds before opening my mouth as wide as it would go and letting out a scream. A shriek, really. I screamed and struck my head against the edge of the bed with all the strength I possessed. “What’s happening?” she asked, trying to calm me. But with every word she uttered, I just kept screaming. I could no longer bear it. I no longer wanted her in the room with me. A nervous fit, and she would leave. She could not hold her ground. She would summon the nurse again, and the nurse would take her away because it was not possible for her to give me another injection.

The ginger clinical psychologist left the room, and I took a deep breath to regain my composure. I will close my eyes and focus on my breathing until my heart rate slows. The sedative is still active in my system, so it hadn’t been at all easy to bring about the nervous fit. I don’t know which drugs I’m currently on, but my favorite is the one I call the “weeping willow,” because it makes me feel so light, as though my whole brain is floating in water.

Whenever it occurs to me to wonder about the absolute best scientific inventions, I conclude without the least hesitation: sedatives, in all their forms, and everything that eases or erases pain. Without pain, there is no fear of death, just peace and harmony. Pain is our punishment for original sin: we do not know who committed it, but it is we who bear the charge. Pain is our hell, our second skin. It is the salt of this earth, and if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? When we were cast down from paradise and made into humans, unending pain was written for us. What were we before that? Angels, most likely. Or perhaps animals that did not worry about their tomorrow. Have any of you seen a cat stretching itself in the sun?

My father said it was a matter of Nurse Widad giving the children a tranquilizer so they would sleep. I did not hear exactly how he phrased it as I crouched there in the corner of the balcony under the window, leaning my head against the stone column of the balustrade. If I had stood up and leaned over the edge, I possibly could have seen my father sitting in his usual place, telling Kevork what had happened. Did he tell the nurse, “Give them a sleeping pill”? Or did he say, “Give them an injection”? As I think about it now, the injection seems more logical, first because of its rapid action, and second because Widad injected herself too. “Forgive me, doctor. I cannot bear another slaughter.” My father did not understand at the time what she meant by those words of hers. No, he must have understood, for he remembered that she was Palestinian, one of the refugees of 1948. Most likely, he half knew, even though the rest escaped him, for Widad had been a second mother to her young patients from the camp. She would rock them and caress them, worry about them, show compassion, and help them. Therefore, it never occurred to him that she …