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