Summer of the Saroufim's Widow

Osama had no idea that her forced stay in the village of Ain Srar would open doors to mysterious enigmas, requiring courage and shrewdness to unravel. Enigmas like those riddles lingering among the graves in the Metawali cemetery, or like the story of the disappearance of the relics of Mar Quriaqos and the sudden signs of wealth appearing in the house of the late Saroufim, the gatekeeper of the closed citadel museum. The Liberation War raged in Beirut in 1989, and her uncle Melhem's house and its surroundings in the high mountains of Lebanon became a safe haven that summer, indeed, a school for her in all aspects of life. From here, she would begin her career as a private tutor for two children displaced from the coast. Here, she would learn patience in her worry for her parents, who were tied to their jobs in the capital. And here, too, she would meet Nizar, the kind young man, knowledgeable about the village and its most minute details, as he often recounted, including the secret kept by the woman who lived atop the towering hill of Al-Lazab. A woman with harsh features and strange manners... that was Saroufim's widow, the keeper of the cemetery and its secrets.