On my previous visit, in a moment when we were alone, Uncle Mahmoud had told me how he had had everything done to him. “They beat me, deprived me of food and sleep, tied me down, spilled a bucketful of cockroaches on my chest. There is nothing they didn’t do. Nothing can happen to me now that can be worse than that time. And always, I managed it. I kept a place in my mind, where I was still able to love and forgive everyone,” he said, his eyes soft and lips smiling. “They never succeeded to take that from me.”
