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knitted his brows, looked full at his sister, and said, Yes.
    As you wish, she said.
    He did not ask her what her relationship was with this man. He did not say that Mansour had said, when he asked for her hand, that Milia had assented and had divulged her love. He felt betrayed but he did not use this word when he asked his sister how she felt about it.
    Do you love him?
    She gazed at him as if she did not understand what he meant. She smiled and said she had consented because Mansour reminded her of him.
    You know, it’s as if he is you, she said.
    Me! he answered, a hint of disapproval and reproach in his voice.
    You’re better looking, but he looks enough like you to be your brother.
    Musa frowned and muttered something about the wiles of women.
    What are you saying? I didn’t hear you, Milia said.
    Congratulations, sister.
    That day Milia sensed she must discover life anew, as though she had been born that very moment, or as though (as she bent over her little brother’s eyelashes and then straightened up to stand facing the youth who had reached twenty and whose head already glinted with a few white strands) she had passed through her entire life thus far as though traversing a dream. She pressed her palms to her eyes briefly and then stretched her arms forward, trying to glean the sense of the words coming from her brother’s lips.
    He told her she would go to Nazareth immediately after the wedding.
    As you wish, Milia said, dropping her head slightly. Her steady gaze broke on the floor tiles, tracing their floral pattern on a background of black.
    The photographer would come the next day, Musa said. I want you to still be here with us. So I’m going to hang your picture on the wall, just here.
    The photograph that was fixed to the white wall in the sitting room would stay there for years. When Musa inherited the house from his mother he left the picture there, as though it had grown into the wall. Printed ona large white sheet of photographic paper and framed in black wood, the image was large enough to display Milia’s features clearly and in detail: her long hair and honey-brown almond-shaped eyes, her small nose and full lips, a long neck, hollow cheeks, and fine eyebrows. It was an upper-body shot. Sharif Fakhouri the photographer had stuck his head into a wooden box covered with black cloth. He had made Milia stand in front of the white wall for two entire hours as he tried to find the most attractive pose for her. In the photograph the pale woman with her features etched in black seemed to be coming out of the wall itself, and Milia’s eyes emitted a glow of light.
    Musa was convinced there was something strange about this photograph. Everything was outlined in black contours except for the pupils of his sister’s eyes, which seemed to have been drawn in green.
    Musa brought the photograph to the house three days before the wedding. He pounded a nail into the wall and hung it up, stepped back three paces and called out to his sister. Milia hurried into the room to find Musa in front of the picture, his eyes charged with astonishment.
    Look, do you see it? he said to her.
    Thank you, it’s very nice.
    Look – the eyes, look at the color – as if there’s a green light at the center, coming out of the black. See it?
    The girl looked at her photograph and the surprise of it struck her hard. She felt tears coming. The tears covered her eyes and the image broke up into fragments inside a vast watery field. She worried suddenly that her guardian angel had abandoned her. How could the photographer from Zahleh have snapped the secret of her green-tinted eyes? It was only in her dreams that her eyes shone green, only when Milia became the little girl with the brown skin and short curly black hair. How could the photographer have acquired the secret of her eyes? Had they betrayed her? Was this why she no longer saw dreams as she slept? Ever since the moment she hadagreed to the marriage, going to sleep had