Among all the buildings on this street I'm the tallest one. Seven floors high, four apartments to each floor, and a balcony for each apartment. The apartments in my back face taller buildings than I, most of them about eight floors high but none higher than that. The view from my front was better when I was first put up, but that was a long time ago.

Now it's Lebanon in July 1976 and the Civil War doesn't make anybody proud. I'm old, looking my age, but with no bullet holes. The troubles haven't come this way, and I hope to God that they don't, and this is the reason why Ahmad and his older brother Habib have come to stay with their aunt. Anyway... things get confusing with this war and it's difficult to think, even for a building, but anyway, they're on the sixth floor now, since yesterday.

Ahmad is five and a half, Habib seven, and their mother has died from a bad disease. Their father is fighting with some militia and he's been captured by another militia. Their aunt had to collect them after their mother died. She died about six months ago and their father wanted to keep them around for as long as possible, letting the neighbours mind them every now and then, but now he's captured, so this aunt had to take them.

Their aunt is a really nice person, in that she means well, but she's fat. Fat is not that bad but Ahmad's mother wasn't fat. She was slim, had an easier temperament, and she used to brush Ahmad's hair really gently. She annoyed him sometimes but not in a nasty way, she would want him to brush his teeth before he went to bed and first thing in the morning. He didn't mind brushing at night although he didn't like it too much, but the mornings? No, it didn't make too much sense because he wouldn't have eaten anything all night. His mother would say "Just in case you have eaten something in your dreams", and then he would try to make some sort of a deal with her, that he will brush only on the mornings when he had eaten something in his dreams and then, while doing something else at the same time, she would say "What if you had dreamt and forgotten?!",