Nothing is easier, for the human being, than to scrutinize the errors of others
- Mourid Barghouti

Jana Elhassan is a Lebanese-American novelist and translator whose works have been translated into several languages around the world. She is the author of four novels, two of which were shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Arab Booker), while her first novel won the Simon Hayek Prize. Her third book, L'Étage 99, was the first to be translated into English. Her writing explores themes of identity, memory and love, while probing the imprints of war and exile on the human soul. Alongside her literary career, she has been working in journalism since 2009, where she has collaborated with major daily newspapers and worked for several TV channels

They had finally decided to bury her, but couldn't agree on a place.
They couldn't welcome her into their cemeteries: they barely knew her.
She was the stranger who had dropped into their lives, unbidden, breaking the monotony of their miserable days.
So, they dug a wide pit for her at the edge of the valley, overlooking a deep ravine.
And yet, the landscape wasn't ugly: a light breeze drifted between the nearby olive trees, while a solitary oak, standing near the pit, seemed to offer her its shade, as if to caress the end of her story.

They didn't know much about her when she'd first appeared in the village, looking for a small house to rent. Had it not been for the suffocating economic crisis ravaging the country, no one would have thought to welcome her into their midst.
Uncle Salih had agreed, not without some reluctance, to rent her the secluded part of his home: a cramped, detached wing, which he had already advertised on these new short-lived rental platforms.
But his previous attempts had left him with a bitter taste: two young women had brought a bunch of friends back and partied loudly until dawn; then a young man had inadvertently burnt his luxury Egyptian cotton sheets.
Since then, he'd sworn never to repeat such a misadventure, even if it was for hard-earned dollars.

As soon as she'd arrived, he'd made it clear that visitors were forbidden - except for close family, he specified, by which he meant father and mother only.
Dropping her small bag to the ground, she'd reassured him, with a pale smile, that no one would ever come to see her.
No one knew her real name. The day she'd arrived in the village, she'd introduced herself as Leïla, but she didn't speak like people from the Levant or the neighbouring towns.
When Uncle Salih asked her for a copy of her identity card or passport, she slipped a green hundred-dollar bill into his hand, making it clear that this was just a modest token of gratitude for finding this home, and that she would give him three similar bills at the beginning of each month - in dollars, she insisted.
He then reiterated his rule forbidding any visitors and added that she would be held responsible for any damage caused in the apartment.
She merely nodded silently, but an indecipherable glint persisted in her eyes, as if she knew far more than she wanted to let on.

Not much was found out about her in the weeks following her arrival.
She would stroll easily through the alleyways, a bag of bread and a few vegetables in hand, then disappear behind her blue wooden door.
No one had ever heard her laugh, and no one had crossed paths with her more than once in the market.

Sometimes, the light in her room flickered until late at night, as if she were holding secret conversations, yet no one ever heard the sound of her voice.
She looked to be in her late thirties, or perhaps a little older.
Her body was slender; naturally slim, not thin from lack of sustenance or exhaustion.
Her long chestnut hair was often pulled back and tied simply.
As for her skin, it had the glow of moonlight spilling over still water: a luminous, almost cold whiteness, alien to this world.
She was not sickly pale, but unsettlingly pure.
There was something unforgettable in her face; her brown eyes seemed to guard the secret of an ancient age, long forgotten.
There was nothing flashy about her beauty: it was calm, diffuse, akin to contemplating a lost Gothic painting.

The first few days, she was never away for long; she only went out for brief errands.
But by the second week, Uncle Salih noticed that she left the house at dawn and returned every day at the same time, a few minutes before sunset.
He would sometimes catch a glimpse of her, drawing aside the living-room curtain, standing upright, motionless, her eyes fixed on the spectacle of twilight that the house overlooked.
She watched the sky's metamorphoses with a strange patience, following the colours as they changed, until the orange disc faded behind the horizon.

*"Marhaban" means "hello" or "welcome", while "Marahib" is its plural, an amplified form of greeting, as if the welcome itself expanded and intensified.

Every day, she would return the same greeting.
In the morning, she would say "Marhaban", and in the evening "Marahib "*, as if the greeting itself were multiplying, growing with the day until ripening at its end.

He had imagined that she was going out for work, a routine task perhaps.
But this was of little concern to him, as long as she didn't disturb him and respected, without protest, the "no visits" rule.
This quiet young woman appealed to him, especially when he remembered the two others who had turned his house into a nightclub, before lodging a complaint against him on the online app, because he had dared to knock on their door in the middle of the night, "invading their privacy", they said.

"Their privacy!" he grumbled irritatingly, telling the story to the villagers:
"Me? These bitches want to turn my house into a brothel and they accuse me on the internet? No more, I never want to hear about this again!"

He repeated the tale day after day, in an increasingly enraged voice, demanding that his grandson go "on the net" to insult those responsible for the site, then send them a message to "set the record straight".

"I sent it, my grandfather, I swear by my father's death, I sent it," the boy replied, his face set in the boredom of one who dare not say, "I never want to see that message again in my life. "

Uncle Salih's anger was aimed not only at the website, but also at the economic circumstances that had forced him to give up part of his house, since the pound had lost all value, as had his pension, the bitter fruit of a career he had endured only on the promise of an honourable retirement.

But his satisfaction at housing the young woman soon faded.
Less than two months later, on an autumn morning, he knocked on her door to claim September's rent.
When she didn't answer, he used his spare keys.
He was still grumbling against that cursed "privacy" as he pushed the key into the lock and turned it brusquely.

He entered.
She was lying on the floor of her room. Cold. Lifeless.
No wounds. No poison. No medicine nearby.
No trace of a struggle.
Nothing... but a dead young woman.

The villagers rushed in as soon as the news spread; some were jostling to get in, to see the body.
The doctor who examined her declared that her heart had simply stopped.
No explanation.
No apparent cause.
A heart that had suddenly stopped beating.

These were the most painful moments for Uncle Salih, who had never believed in this thing called "intimacy".
He rummaged through the young woman's belongings, looking for a paper, a card, anything that bore her name, revealed her family, her origin, or her religion.
The wardrobe contained only a few clothes and two pairs of shoes, carefully arranged, as if they were part of the décor rather than an everyday life.
And, even more mysterious, no telephone.

"Is it possible? Who, these days, doesn't have a telephone? "he thought as he turned over the objects.

And yet, he who had always believed that in a rented house nothing should remain secret, suddenly felt a hesitation, the sensation of violating a silence he had no right to disturb.
He rummaged cautiously, stayed for a short time, then put everything gently back in place, almost as if apologising.

** The qibla refers to the direction Muslims turn towards when praying, that of the Kaaba, in Mecca.

Before she was laid to rest, the villagers argued over her religion and burial rites.
Some insisted that she should be buried according to Muslim custom, like the locals: prayer recited, face turned towards the qibla**.
Others asserted that she must be Christian, and that she should be laid to rest accordingly, with the cross and a few symbols whose meaning few still knew.
Murmurs arose, objections flew, faces tightened; some even approached the grave, hand raised, as if quarrelling with the stranger herself.

The village did not regain its calm in the days following her death.
Her name was on everyone's lips: at the market, in front of the mosque, on the doorsteps of houses.
Everyone was talking about what they had seen or heard.

The first story reached Uncle Salih through the mouth of the baker, who told it with solemn assurance:
"She was a spy. The policeman who came with the doctor saw the body, and he's the one who told me."
According to him, she worked for the Mossad.
And every time he uttered the word "Mossad", his voice dropped to a whisper, as if he were betraying a secret... while repeating it in front of a dozen men gathered outside the bakery.

He added that Uncle Salih should have checked "her origins and parentage" before renting the outbuilding to her, and asserted that the young woman was planning a major operation; perhaps she had been killed by some modern method, which leaves no trace and doesn't even require a murderer.

"Something electromagnetic... they sent this to her, somehow," concluded the baker, shaking his head.
To which Uncle Salih mockingly replied, "By carrier pigeon, no doubt. "

A few steps from the bakery, a group of women had gathered around with morning coffee, sitting outside someone's house on plastic chairs.
The sun was still rising, the village not quite awake, but their conversations were already reaching a climax.

One of them, raising her voice to drown out the rooster crowing in the distance, threw out: "She must have been up to something... who leaves her family home and comes all alone, without relatives, without friends, without even a telephone?"

A woman in her forties replied, cautiously: "Maybe she ran away from her husband... I saw her with a gold ring on her finger. She was married, something happened to her."

Another interrupted, dryly, with a scowl on her face: "My son would just stand and stare whenever he saw her. Good riddance to her!"

Then harshness donned the mask of reason. An elderly woman, her voice cold as if she were announcing a sentence, declared, "Me, if I had the power... by God, I'd have searched the grave right away and done a virginity test. I don't understand why they buried her without making sure!"

The voices rose, mingling - affirmations, warnings, threats - until the discussion became a little storm spinning in on itself.
And, as if all were waiting for the moment of verdict, one of the women finally said:
"So much the better that she's gone. God keep her away from here. Death, sometimes, is a form of modesty. Any woman whose origin or parentage is unknown... it's got to be something underhand."

They nodded in silence, as if the dead woman had committed a fault simply by having lived.

At the café, under a fan that groaned more than it spun, a balding man in his fifties told another version of Leïla's story.
He swore he knew the truth: "The girl was the mistress of a big banker, one of those directly responsible for the crisis. "

He raised an eyebrow, swept the room with his gaze, waiting for the reaction, then added in a lower voice: "Nobody runs away like that, without a name or identity, unless they have something to hide... And she was definitely hiding something."

A young man smoking in silence asked him if he meant she had stolen money before running away.
The fifty-year-old reminded him that she had paid Uncle Salih in dollars.
"Who, nowadays, can still pay in dollars?" he concluded with a shrug, as if he had said it all.

Another man replied:
"Anything is possible in this country. There are some who eat bread soaked in water, and others who die for a thousand reasons at once... without anyone knowing anything."

Uncle Salih heard many stories in the days that followed, some so strange he didn't know whether to laugh or worry.
Among the stories told, it was said that Leïla went out at night, when the village was asleep, and walked alone through the alleys - dressed in a long white dress, her face motionless, expressionless.

It was also said that she walked barefoot, without a single step being heard, like a shadow without a body.
One of the women swore she had seen her, at midnight, standing by the village's old abandoned well, staring at the bottom as if waiting for something to emerge.
And a child told of seeing her through his bedroom window one rainy night: she walked through the downpour, without umbrella or coat, her hair stuck to her face, never lifting a hand to move it aside.

A man claimed to have awakened in the middle of the night, alerted by footsteps near his house; when he opened the window, he saw her walking slowly past, muttering incomprehensible words - as if she were talking to someone unseen.
"By God, she wasn't a human creature," he swore, before adding:
"Either she was mad... or possessed by a spirit from who knows where."

Uncle Salih didn't comment.
As the stories accumulated, it seemed increasingly impossible to pigeonhole her into a single category: neither a spy, nor a thief, nor a fugitive from scandal.

The only story that saved her a little came from the mouth of a little boy, who waved his hand and said, "Aunt Leïla used to give me chocolate... not once, many times! "
His eyes sparkled as he described the taste, as if she'd given him something magical.

His mother - a discreet woman, reluctant to intervene - spoke up in a voice with a hint of nostalgia:
"I, too, saw her several times giving money to the poor, without anyone noticing...She'd walk fast, slip the bill into their hand and walk away."
She was silent for a moment, then added:
"Me, I say she was a saint. By God, once or twice I passed by her grave at night and saw a light... a little halo."

The days passed and the stories multiplied - contradictory, changing, shifting - revealing only one thing: people's curiosity, their need to explain everything, and the speed with which they pronounce their judgments.
As if everyone, in telling something about Leïla, was actually revealing a little of themselves - their fear, their gaze, their own desire to know.

Only Uncle Salih remained silent.
And as the weeks passed, the grave at the edge of the valley became a place of pilgrimage.
Some villagers laid small flowers there, children left pebbles on the earth.
Others categorically refused to pass near the stranger's grave, choosing longer paths to avoid what they believed to be evil.

Stories piled up around her: each visitor added their own and left something of themselves behind.
But Uncle Salih remained at a distance, watching, aware that the stranger he'd lived with for a few weeks had become the symbol of the whole town - the symbol of what they'd never understood, and which they'd covered over with their own truths.

And when his grandson asked him why there were so many stories, and which one to believe, Uncle Salih sighed sadly, evoking the memory of the stranger, and replied simply:

"Don't believe them. These people invented their own truths, convinced that they could be God... but without His wisdom, nor the slightest shred of His mercy."

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The English adaptation is based on the French translation from Arabic by Rita Barrota.