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Stories of longing were the only stories. To desire was as good as to possess.
I became myself here, in this country, and for that reason I cannot represent anything. I belong here as much as I belong in Palestine.
Even from these few minutes� intercourse, they surely saw aspects of him invisible to those he had met in France. At the sense of exposure Midhat grew hot. He could not conceal, nor even detect, the survival of his child-self in his mannerisms, or traces of his characteristics as they had been popularly understood. A childish predilection for certain sweets, or certain games—the kinds of facts that were enlarged as personalities in Nablus were distilled into characters painted simply, so they could be picked out from a rooftop and fitted into stories. Midhat wished he could isolate those
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