Last night, I got up in the middle of the night, went to my computer and started to write my memoirs on my maternal grandmother, Nana Kokab who died 38 years ago, and my mother, Mammon, who passed 15 years ago. As I started writing, Nana Kokab walked in to join me. This annoyed me. Late at nights, I preferred to be by myself and away from any daily encounters. She said, “I’m hungry.”

I answered curtly, as we all always did when talking to her. I said: “This is still dark. “How can you be hungry? Go back to bed and come back in the morning.”
She did not say anything, but just stood there. This was typical behavior for her. She never did anything she did not want to do. This made people angry at her.

Last night, after I told Nana Kokab off, my mother, Mammon, came in to see what the commotion was about. I was telling her that Nana Kokab said she was hungry in the middle of the night. As I was telling her this, I realized that in fact the room was now light with the day light. I turned back to Nana and said,

“You were right all along. It is already morning. I forgot that you wake up early.”

She did not say anything. She quietly walked toward the kitchen table and started eating a piece of feta cheese with some dried up lavash breadcrumbs.

Mammon came closer.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m writing.”

“What are you writing?”

“Everything. All of it.”

There appeared a twinkle in her eyes, and I knew she was plotting to find a way to read them, just like what she used to do when I was thirteen. She would lay down near the phone and pretend to be asleep so that she could eavesdrop on my phone calls with the male phone-friend I had found. Peering at my papers, she now looked about the same age she was then.