Your father, like my grandfather, and like most of the men of our village, was a traveling textile merchant. In fact, your father and my grandfather were travel companions. They arrived in As-Salt and Jerusalem together. In Damascus, your father made the acquaintance of a kind man and they became friends. That man had a son named Tim. Your father liked the name very much and carefully stored it away in his memory.
That’s how you ended up with this name, after someone named Tim from Damascus.
How I would love to visit Damascus and search it, inch by inch, for a man named Tim whose father had a Lebanese friend who used to go from one quarter to another selling fabric he carried on his shoulders. If only I could come with you to Damascus, so we could look for this “Tim the Damascene” and co
