Mikhael and Barbara

They sat for a photographer somewhere in Lebanon, in a studio with a painted backdrop of trees and a classical column that was not in any room they ever lived in. He is wearing a tarbouche. Neither of them is smiling, because you did not, in a photograph, in those years.

This is the oldest photograph the family has, and for the moment it is the only branch story written down. That is not because this line matters more than the others — it is because somebody sat down and wrote it. When another branch does the same, this page becomes one of several.

Neither of them ever left Feeki. Their children and grandchildren did — for Brazil, for France, and for the United States. Two of them, Esper and later George, sailed from Beirut on a boat that took a month to reach Brazil. They may have called at Marseille on the way; nobody now living is sure.