'Romema.'
'Where in Romema?'
'Behind the zoo? I think. I was never there.'
'How, then, do you know about Fatma meeting Abdelatif?'
'Nabil and Qasem saw him talking to her, warned him off, and told Father about it.'
'What did your father do?'
Anwar hugged himself and rocked in the chair.
'What did he do, Anwar?'
'He beat her but it didn't stop her!'
'How do you know that?'
Anwar bit his lip and chewed on it. So hard that he broke skin.
'Here,' said Daniel, handing him another tissue.
Anwar kept chewing, dabbed at the lip, looked at the crimson spots on the tissue, and smiled strangely.
'How do you know Fatma kept seeing Issa Abdelatif?'
'I saw them.'
'Where did you see them?'
'Fatma stayed away too long on errands. Father grew suspicious and sent me to? watch them. I saw them.'
'Where?'
'Different places. Around the walls of Al Quds.' Using the Arabic name for the Old City. 'In the wadis, near the trees of Gethsemane, anywhere they could hide.' Anwar's voice rose in pitch: 'He took her to hidden places and defiled her!'
'Did you report this to your father?'
'I had to! It was my duty. But?'
'But what?'
Silence.
'Tell me, Anwar.'
Silence.
'But what, Anwar?'
'Nothing.'
'What did you think your father would do to her once he knew?'
The brother moaned, leaned forward, hands outstretched, eyes bulging, fishlike, behind the thick lenses. He smelled feral, looked frantic, trapped. Daniel resisted the impulse to move away from him and, instead, inched closer.
'What would he do, Anwar?'
'He would kill her! I knew he would kill her, so before I told him I warned her!'
'And she ran away.'
'Yes.'
'You were trying to save her, Anwar.'
'Yes!'
'Where did she go?'
'To a Christian place in Al Quds. The brown-robes took her in.'
'Saint Saviour's Monastery?'
'Yes.'
'How do you know she went there?'
'Two weeks after she ran away, I took a walk. Up to the olive grove where you found me. We used to play there, Fatma and I, throwing olives at each other, hiding and looking for each other. I still like to go there. To think. She knew that and she was waiting for me-she'd come to see me.'
'Why?'
'She was lonely, crying about how much she missed the family. She wanted me to talk with Father, to persuade him to take her back. I asked her where I could reach her and she told me the brown-robes had taken her in. I told her they were infidels and would try to convert her, but she said they were kind and she had nowhere else to go.'
'What was she wearing, Anwar?'.
