No Road to Paradise. Hassan Daoud

kitchen she gave vent to her irritation and she made certain it was heard. The noises coming from there told me she was banging everything her hands picked up and slamming things around. The arrival of the two boys a few minutes later with their sister in tow just increased the loud fury of the show she was making.

      Come! Come, now come, she began repeating as she pushed them all forward into the room where I sat. When she had made certain they were standing immediately in front of me, she clutched the doorknob and slammed the door shut.

      The boys stood there staring at me. Their sister shifted her gaze from me to them as if she were waiting for something to happen, some action that must follow from the fact that they were all standing together in front of me like this. The two boys were also expecting something. Otherwise, why would their mother have pushed them so hard all the way in here, not letting go until they were standing directly in front of me? They looked afraid that I was going to call them to account. They seemed worried that their mother had denounced them to me for something they had done.

      I didn’t want to prolong their nervous wait. I put my hand out to Ahmad, expecting him to respond likewise by shaking my hand. He did so and then I tried to give him some additional reassurance by smiling at him, inviting him to grin back at me. Hiba was looking from me to them and from them to me, not understanding what was going on. Where’s your doll? I asked her, as I reached out to clasp her empty hands. She didn’t answer. Instead, she turned to her brother Ahmad and looked up at him. The missing doll came into my head, with its soiled hands, its straw-like hair and its vacant smile.

      Still the two boys stood there solemnly, waiting and wondering. For a moment I panicked, thinking I didn’t know how to chase away their wariness. I put out my hand to Ayman this time, aiming for his upper arm. I wanted to look like I was testing the strength of his muscles. He didn’t tighten them immediately as he usually did. He was waiting to see if my little game with him was genuine. He needed me to shake his arm not once but twice before he tightened the muscles just slightly. His face remained unchanged, both questioning and watching.

      Finally, when I saw that they were still standing there stiffly even after I had stood up, I began thinking their mother must have done something to frighten them. I left them as they were, standing and waiting, and went to ask her, there in the tiny vestibule outside the two bedrooms.

      Yes I spanked them, she said. For stealing.

      Who did you spank?

      The two boys.

      The boys, stealing? Both of them?

      Maybe Ahmad was pulling the wool over his brother’s eyes. But it was the two of them who took the household money.

      And you spanked . . .?

      I spanked both of them and locked them in their room, and I made them understand that you would discipline them when you got back.

      What did they do with the money?

      They didn’t even try to hide the chocolate bars they bought at the shop. They even gave their sister her share so she could eat half of it and then smear the front of her dress all the way down, with the other half. They stole, and they lied too, said their mother. They had told her that the shopkeeper gave them the chocolate bars without taking any money from them.

      When I went back into the reception room where they were still standing, she followed me. I went in but she stopped in the doorway. I stared back at her to make her understand that I wanted to be alone with them. I felt a lot of sympathy for the boys. I could imagine them cradling the chocolate bars, carrying them as they walked across the square from the shop to the house. I felt even more sympathy for the misery of their situation when it dawned on me that their joint participation in this theft just showed how alone the two of them were, with no one making any effort to even come near them.

      I put an appropriately serious expression on my face. But, trying to give them some advice, I couldn’t maintain my stern demeanor. The terror that Ahmad had tried to conceal was slowly revealing itself on his features. That reminded me of Jawdat, who always looked alarmed and scared. As boys, back then, we always used to say that when Jawdat laughed, it sounded like he was scared to death. It was that same look, terrified and silly all at once, that I was seeing on Ahmad’s face: the lips stretched wide but with no suggestion of a smile or even a question. I couldn’t make them understand what they needed to understand. That stealing was wrong. It was wrong and shameful and forbidden. It wasn’t that this was hard to explain with the usual hand and body movements, but rather that I couldn’t endure this scene any longer, seeing them holding themselves rigid like this, wary and frightened.