Sharif Abdel-Hameed from our mother’s side. I remember Sharif. He was nice to me when I was young. He’d play with me and tease me and bring me candies and pencils. Sometimes he would come and sit with me and talk to me like an adult, asking all sorts of questions. What do you see when you climb the mulberry tree? What makes the rain come down? What is your favorite book? Do you think about home? I never felt shy with him and he was always patient to hear my answers. Then, when I was eight or nine, he went to Europe.

Sharif, like many relatives, drifted in and out of my world. There was a time when he was over all the time, so close to us that he went on vacations with us. His mother is from Nawara and is a cousin to my mother.

Heavy feet approach; Latifa is still standing. She looks ridiculous, like a little girl waiting for her father. It occurs to me that she is in love with Sharif.

“As-salaamu alaykum,” Sharif says again when he comes around the corner. “May God protect the rest of the people in this house,” he says because my grandmother’s memory is still close.

“Welcome, Sharif,” my sister says with an especially large smile. “Thank God for your safe return. You remember my little sister Hala?”

“Hala, Hala, Hala, and welcome to you, Miss Hala.” He looks at me, his brown eyes intense, yet cheerful. It is strange to see him after so long. He has aged more than my brother has, or perhaps just looks that way because he is heavyset, or because of all the hair he has lost. It’s not just that, though. Jalal, at twenty-eight, looks as if he’s in his prime. Sharif, who is a few years older, looks as if he has been sitting in middle age for a while. He is neat, his solid body tidily packaged in creaseless clothing. We shake hands and his grip is tight, his hand lingers just a moment.

“Hala, little Hala, is now a lovely grown-up Hala.” I feel a wave inside of me, as though a giant change is about to occur. My sister has gotten up to make coffee. The two of us are alone.

He sits down and sighs. “Ali, a Lebanese poet I know, says: ‘When I was young I loved a woman who never existed / When I grew up I remembered the woman I loved when I was young.’” I stare at his hands that are thick like shovels and wonder at his words.

“I have a punching bag at home,” he says, as if reading my thoughts and I feel my face burn. “I recite poetry as I punch. It gets out all the unused anger and love that I have stored in me.”