3The way my grandfather treated my mother was different from that day on. Although he was angry, he showed her a respect to which she wasn’t accustomed. And although she had let him down by coming back with a child, at least she was married. My mother was the child closest to him, even if he sometimes gave the opposite impression, because she was the one who looked after him and who treated him as a father, however cruel he was to her. She brought him food and took the trouble to clean up his little room. She even gave him half of what my father sent her from Kuwait, although she and I needed the money.
My mother said, ‘As far as possible I’ve tried to get along with your grandfather as well as your grandmother did. He’s irritable because he was a soldier and had a hard time when he was y
