The Witch of Portobello. Paulo Coelho
She’s the daughter of a gipsy.’
I retorted that culture isn’t something that’s transmitted through the genes. The child, who was barely three months old, would be our daughter, brought up according to our customs. She would go to our church, visit our beaches, read books in French, study at the American School in Beirut. Besides, I knew nothing about gipsy culture – and I still know nothing. I only know that they travel a lot, don’t wash very often, aren’t to be trusted, and wear earrings. Legend has it that they kidnap children and carry them off in their caravans, but here, exactly the opposite was happening; they had left a child behind for me to take care of.
The woman tried again to dissuade me, but I was already signing the papers and asking my husband to do the same. On the flight back to Beirut, the world seemed different: God had given me a reason for living, working and fighting in this vale of tears. We now had a child to justify all our efforts.
Sherine grew in wisdom and beauty – I expect all parents say that, but I really do think she was an exceptional child. One afternoon, when she was five, one of my brothers said that, if, in the future, she wanted to work abroad, her name would always betray her origins, and he suggested changing it to one that gave nothing away, like Athena, for example. Now, of course, I know that Athena refers not only to the capital of Greece, but that it is also the name of the Greek goddess of wisdom, intelligence and war.
Perhaps my brother knew not only that, but was aware, too, of the problems an Arab name might bring in the future, for he was very involved in politics, as were all our family, and wanted to protect his niece from the black clouds which he, and only he, could see on the horizon. Most surprising of all was that Sherine liked the sound of the word. That same afternoon, she began referring to herself as Athena and no one could persuade her to do otherwise. To please her, we adopted the nickname too, thinking that it would be a passing fancy.
Can a name affect a person’s life? Time passed, and the name stuck.
From very early on we discovered that she had a strong religious vocation – she spent all her time in the church and knew the gospels by heart; this was at once a blessing and a curse. In a world that was starting to be divided more and more along religious lines, I feared for my daughter’s safety. It was then that Sherine began telling us, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that she had a series of invisible friends – angels and saints whose images she was accustomed to seeing in the church we attended. All children everywhere have visions, but they usually forget about them after a certain age. They also treat inanimate objects, such as dolls or fluffy tigers, as if they were real. However, I really did feel she was going too far when I picked her up from school one day, and she told me that she’d seen ‘a woman dressed in white, like the Virgin Mary’.
Naturally, I believe in angels. I even believe that the angels speak to little children, but when a child starts seeing visions of grown-ups, that’s another matter. I’ve read about various shepherds and country people who claimed to have seen a woman in white, and how this eventually destroyed their lives, because others sought them out, expecting miracles; then the priests took over, their village became a centre of pilgrimage, and the poor children ended their lives in a convent or a monastery. I was, therefore, very concerned about this story. Sherine was at an age when she should be more concerned with make-up kits, painting her nails, watching soppy TV soaps and children’s programmes. There was something wrong with my daughter, and I consulted an expert.
‘Relax,’ he said.
According to this paediatrician specialising in child psychology – and according to most other doctors in the field – invisible friends are a projection of a child’s dreams and a safe way of helping the child to discover her desires and express her feelings.
‘Yes, but a vision of a woman in white?’
He replied that perhaps Sherine didn’t understand our way of seeing or explaining the world. He suggested that we should gradually begin preparing the ground to tell her that she was adopted. In the paediatrician’s words, the worst thing that could happen would be for her to find out by herself. Then she would begin to doubt everyone, and her behaviour might become unpredictable.
From then on, we changed the way we talked to her. I don’t know how much children remember of what happens to them, but we started trying to show her just how much we loved her and that there was no need for her to take refuge in an imaginary world. She needed to see that her visible universe was as beautiful as it could possibly be, that her parents would protect her from any danger, that Beirut was a lovely city and its beaches full of sun and people. Without ever mentioning ‘the woman in white’, I began spending more time with my daughter; I invited her schoolfriends to come to our house; I seized every opportunity to shower her with affection.
The strategy worked. My husband used to travel a lot, and Sherine always missed him. In the name of love, he resolved to change his way of life a little. Her solitary conversations began to be replaced by games shared by father, mother and daughter.
Everything was going well. Then, one night, she came into our room in tears, saying that she was frightened and that hell was close at hand.
I was alone at home. My husband had had to go away again, and I thought perhaps this was the reason for her despair. But hell? What were they teaching her at school or at church? I decided to go and talk to her teacher the next day.
Sherine, meanwhile, wouldn’t stop crying. I took her over to the window and showed her the Mediterranean outside, lit by the full moon. I told her there were no devils, only stars in the sky and people strolling up and down the boulevard outside our apartment. I told her not to worry, that she needn’t be afraid, but she continued to weep and tremble. After spending almost half an hour trying to calm her, I began to get worried. I begged her to stop; after all, she was no longer a child. I thought perhaps her first period had started and discreetly asked if there was any blood.
‘Yes, lots.’
I got some cotton wool and asked her to lie down so that I could take care of her ‘wound’. It wasn’t important. I would explain tomorrow. However, her period hadn’t started. She cried for a while longer, but she must have been tired, because then she fell asleep.
And the following morning, there was blood.
Four men had been murdered. To me, this was just another of the eternal tribal battles to which my people have become accustomed. To Sherine, it clearly meant nothing, because she didn’t even mention her nightmare.
Meanwhile, from that date onwards, hell came ever closer and it hasn’t gone away since. On that same day, twenty-six Palestinians were killed on a bus, as revenge for the murders. Twenty-four hours later, it was impossible to walk down the street because of shots coming from every angle. The schools closed, Sherine was hurried home by one of her teachers, and the situation went from bad to worse. My husband interrupted his business trip halfway through and came home, where he spent whole days on the phone to his friends in government, but no one said anything that made any sense. Sherine heard the shots outside and my husband’s angry shouts indoors, but, to my surprise, she didn’t say a word. I tried to tell her that it wouldn’t last, that soon we’d be able to go to the beach again, but she would simply look away or ask for a book to read or a record to play. While hell gradually put down roots, Sherine read and listened to music.
But, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to dwell on that. I don’t want to think about the threats we received, about who was right, who was guilty and who was innocent. The fact is that, a few months later, if you wanted to cross a particular street, you had to catch a boat across to the island of Cyprus, get on another boat and disembark on the other side of the street.
For nearly a year, we stayed pretty much shut up indoors, always hoping that the situation would improve, always thinking it was a temporary thing, and that the government would take control. One morning, while she was listening to a record on her little portable record-player, Sherine started dancing and saying things like: ‘This is going to last for a long, long time.’
I tried to stop her, but my husband grabbed my arm. I realised that he was listening to what she was saying and taking