Wain Hobez?

We are sitting, drinking Turkish coffee out of the most precious, little cups - the word demitasse comes to mind - and my host brother Sufian is telling me a story. He is cigarette thin, and he is at this moment killing himself - and me if you believe everything you read about second-hand smoke - one puff at a time. When he was young, he says, he was wild. I watch him ash his cigarette in the nearest ash tray and I wonder if he still isn't.

He is the youngest of ten children and was also the last one out of the house. He tells me when he was 17 or maybe 18, he left for work one day and his mother asked him to buy some bread on the way home. He said okay and that was his plan. At some point during the day, a friend invited him to the Dead Sea. He went, and he stayed for three days and two nights. He didn't call, he didn't write, no one knew where he was or what he was doing.

He returned on the third day, and his mother was waiting. Do you know what she said? He asks me, his piercing eyes catching me like a fly between glass. No, I really don't. I am worried about the young Sufian in the story and I can feel my eyebrows scrunching down in a way that encourages premature wrinkles. I am imagining his mother standing in the doorway in her black robes and furious scowl. Sufian pauses. He takes another drag of his cigarette, his face softens, and he smiles. "She looked at me hard, and she said, 'Where's the bread?'"