The Witch of Portobello

Because of that conflict, I suggest she take up some career that doesn't involve emotional contact with people, like computing or engineering.

Oh, she's dead? I'm sorry. So what did she do?

What did Athena do? She did a little of everything, but if I had to summarize her life, I'd say: she was a priestess who understood the forces of nature. Or, rather, she was someone who, by the simple fact of having little to lose or to hope for in life, took greater risks than other people and ended up being transformed into the forces she thought she mastered.

She was a supermarket checkout girl, a bank employee, a property dealer, and in each of these positions she always revealed the priestess within. I lived with her for eight years, and I owed her this: to recover her memory, her identity.

The most difficult thing in collecting together these statements was persuading people to let me use their real names. Some said they didn't want to be involved in this kind of story, others tried to conceal their opinions and feelings. I explained that my real intention was to help all those involved to understand her better, and that no reader would believe in anonymous statements.

They finally agreed because they all believed that they knew the unique and definitive version of any event, however insignificant. During the recordings, I saw that things are never absolute, they depend on each individual's perceptions. And the best way to know who we are is often to find out how others see us.

This doesn't mean that we should do what others expect us to do, but it helps us to understand ourselves better. I owed it to Athena to recover her story, to write her myth.

SAMIRA R. KHALIL, FIFTY-SEVEN, HOUSEWIFE, ATHENA'S MOTHER

Please, don't call her Athena. Her real name is Sherine. Sherine Khalil, our much-loved, much-wanted daughter, whom both my husband and I wish we had engendered.

Life, however, had other plans--when fate is very generous with us, there is always a well into which all our dreams can tumble.

We lived in Beirut in the days when everyone considered it the most beautiful city in the Middle East. My husband was a successful industrialist, we married for love, we traveled to Europe every year, we had friends, we were invited to all the important social events, and once, the president of the United States himself visited my house. Imagine that! Three unforgettable days, during two of which the American Secret Service scoured every corner of our house (they'd been in the area for more than a month already, taking up strategic positions, renting apartments, disguising themselves as beggars or young lovers). And for one day, or rather, two hours, we partied. I'll never forget the look of envy in our friends' eyes, and the excitement of having our photo taken alongside the most powerful man on the planet.

We had it all, apart from the one thing we wanted most--a child. And so we had nothing.

We tried everything: we made vows and promises, went to places where miracles were guaranteed, we consulted doctors, witch doctors, took remedies and drank elixirs and magic potions. I had artificial insemination twice and lost the baby both times. On the second occasion, I also lost my left ovary, and after that, no doctor was prepared to risk such a venture again.

That was when one of the many friends who knew of our plight suggested the one possible solution: adoption. He said he had contacts in Romania, and that the process wouldn't take long.

A month later, we got on a plane. Our friend had important business dealings with the dictator who ruled the country at the time, and whose name I now forget [Editor's note: Nicolae Ceausescu], and so we managed to avoid the bureaucratic red tape and went straight to an adoption center in Sibiu, in Transylvania. There we were greeted with coffee, cigarettes, mineral water, and with the paperwork signed and sealed. All we had to do was choose a child.

They took us to a very cold nursery, and I couldn't imagine how they could leave those poor children in such a place. My first instinct was to adopt them all and carry them off to Lebanon, where there was sun and freedom, but obviously that was a crazy idea. We walked up and down between the cots, listening to the children crying, terrified by the magnitude of the decision we were about to make.

For more than an hour, neither I nor my husband spoke a word. We went out, drank coffee, smoked, and then went back in again--and this happened several times. I noticed that the woman in charge of adoptions was growing impatient; she wanted an immediate decision. At that moment, following an instinct I would dare to describe as maternal--as if I'd found a child who should have been mine in this incarnation, but who had come into the world in another woman's womb--I pointed to one particular baby girl.

The woman advised us to think again. And she'd been so impatient for us to make a decision! But I was sure.

Nevertheless--trying not to hurt my feelings (she thought we had contacts in the upper echelons of the Romanian government)--she whispered to me, so that my husband wouldn't hear: "I know it won't work out. She's the daughter of a gypsy."

I retorted that culture isn't something that's transmitted through the genes. The child, who was barely three months old, would be our daughter, brought up according to our customs. She would go to our church, visit our beaches, read books in French, study at the American School in Beirut. Besides, I knew nothing about gypsy culture--and I still know nothing. I only know that they travel a lot, don't wash very often, aren't to be trusted, and wear earrings. Legend has it that they kidnap children and carry them off in their caravans, but here, exactly the opposite was happening: they had left a child behind for me to take care of.

The woman tried again to dissuade me, but I was already signing the papers and asking my husband to do the same. On the flight back to Beirut, the world seemed different: God had given me a reason for living, working, and fighting in this vale of tears. We now had a child to justify all our efforts.

Sherine grew in wisdom and beauty--I expect all parents say that, but I really do think she was an exceptional child. One afternoon, when she was five, one of my brothers said that if, in the future, she wanted to work abroad, her name would always betray her origins, and he suggested changing it to one that gave nothing away, like Athena, for example. Now, of course, I know that Athena refers not only to the capital of Greece, but that it is also the name of the Greek goddess of wisdom, intell

igence, and war.

Perhaps my brother knew not only that but was aware too of the problems an Arab name might bring in the future, for he was very involved in politics, as were all our family, and wanted to protect his niece from the black clouds that he, and only he, could see on the horizon. Most surprising of all was that Sherine liked the sound of the word. That same afternoon, she began referring to herself as Athena and no one could persuade her to do otherwise. To please her, we adopted the nickname too, thinking that it would be a passing fancy.

Can a name affect a person's life? Time passed, and the name stuck.

From very early on, we discovered that she had a strong religious vocation--she spent all her time in the church and knew the Gospels by heart; this was at once a blessing and a curse. In a world that was starting to be divided more and more along religious lines, I feared for my daughter's safety. It was then that Sherine began telling us, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that she had a series of invisible friends--angels and saints whose images she was accustomed to seeing in the church we attended. All children everywhere have visions, but they usually forget about them after a certain age. They also treat inanimate objects, such as dolls or fluffy tigers, as if they were real. However, I really did feel she was going too far when I picked her up from school one day, and she told me that she'd seen "a woman dressed in white, like the Virgin Mary."

Naturally, I believe in angels. I even believe that the angels speak to little children, but when a child starts seeing visions of grown-ups, that's another matter. I've read about various shepherds and country people who claimed to have seen a woman in white, and how this eventually destroyed their lives, because others sought them out, expecting miracles; then the priests took over, their village became a center of pilgrimage, and the poor children ended their lives in a convent or a monastery. I was, therefore, very concerned about this story. Sherine was at an age when she should have been more concerned with makeup kits, painting her nails, watching soppy TV soaps and children's programs. There was something wrong with my daughter, and I consulted an expert.

"Relax," he said.

According to this pediatrician specializing in child psychology--and according to most other doctors in the field--invisible friends are a projection of a child's dreams and a safe way of helping the child to discover her desires and express her feelings.

"Yes, but a vision of a woman in white?"