In the movie Incendies, when Simon gets to know about his brother from Warlord to tell his sister Jeanne about the brother, he asks her
"One plus one, does it make one?"
I understood what he was trying to say from his sister's expression and later parts of the movie, but didn't get it at that moment. How does his sister understood what he meant to say by just this phrase?
It is my theory that these kids are intelligent and this is the normal way they communicate with each other, kind of like solving puzzles.
"One plus one, does it make one?" means they are looking for 2 guys: one is their father and one is their mother's lost child, i.e their elder brother. So from their point of view 1 guy is the Father and 1 guy is the Elder brother (from their mother's point of view 1 guy is the Father of her children and 1 guys is her son). "One plus one, does it make one?" means "both are the same", not like a question or saying that is something which gives them so much weight to take and accept. 1+1=1!
Note : Spoiler
They had two letters looking for their owners.
Their mother had given them two letters, one to their father and the other to their brother
The meaning of this dialogue is that although there are two letters, the owners of those letters are not two people.
I'll try to make it pretty simple. It's what I extracted from the sentence.
Let's say the mother of the twins (Nawal) was 1. She gave birth to a son (Abou Tarek/Nihad) who, being her son, was also a 1. They (ignore the circumstances) mated, 1+1=2, resulting in the birth of the twins (Jeanne and Simon).
So one plus one doesn't make one; it makes two.
(To be very honest, I don't know if it makes sense.)
