Seven years before my death, I took my parents’ ashes home. The Holy Book forbids cremation, but no one was very interested, and in any case, such prohibitions had lost their significance for my father. He didn’t believe in Hell any more, only earthly existence, and his just happened to reach its end in Paulstadt. Before they were laid to rest, I removed a little scoop of ash from each urn so I could smuggle them out of the country in two small linen pouches, disguised as powdered spices.

I took the bus from the airport. The driver smiled at me in the rear-­view mirror.

Are you from here? he asked.

I don’t know, I said.

Mashallah, my friend.

Mashallah.

I got out at the village square. The brightness hurt my eyes. The bus shelter, behind which I used to play with stone marbles, had disappeared. Everything looked different. Only the great cypress was still there. My father had often talked about it. It was so old that the prophets had rested in its shade before setting off into the world. Its roots went so deep that the furthest tips were scorched by the heat of the Earth’s core. That’s why sometimes, at night, you can see its cones glowing in the moonlight.

I walked through the village streets, inhaling the smell of the old walls. I was hot in my shirt and dark trousers. The sweat ran down my face. There weren’t many people about. A few children. A small group of elderly women, all in black.

Some men were sitting outside a café, drinking tea. I remembered the entrance, with its carved ornamentation. I’d forgotten how tiny a tea glass can look in a man’s hand. I walked on. Here and there I recognized a house, a fragment of wall full of holes, the barber’s shop, the square with the acacias, the cracked concrete pipes for the well that was never dug.

The road forked, and I bore left onto the Street of the Three Widows. I didn’t recognize anything here any more. The road was freshly tarred, but the tar had split in the heat and its black wounds bulged open. My parents’ house had vanished. Three cars were parked on the empty plot, which was littered with stones. The back of the parking lot was marked by a low, half-­derelict wall. I couldn’t tell if it was our garden wall or the remains of the bedroom. I sat down on one of the sections. The sun was high; everything was drenched in its blinding white light. I couldn’t remember what I’d intended to do. I think I had wanted to scatter my parents’ ashes over the grass in their garden. I’d thought someone was sure to be living in the house, so I would have to be quick, a swift movement of my hand in the wind. But there was no wind, no garden and no house. There was just a parking lot and the heat.