Madame Sarah was in the kitchen, clattering a tray, preparing tea for herself and for Pierre, the other lodger. Pierre was a teacher, always prompt with his rent, always neatly dressed. Madame Sarah treated him like another son. As Sam crept past, Aziz – Madame Sarah’s youngest – looked up and caught his eye. Sam had bought his loyalty early on with an old football shirt. The child was wearing it now as he sat eating a peach, CONNECTICUT HUSKIES emblazoned in white across the worn blue cotton. Sam put his finger to his lips as he edged towards the door. Aziz nodded solemnly.

Then he was out, ducking down the nearest alleyway. It was cooler here among the shadowed streets of the casbah. He took a right, through a passage that looked like a dead end but which led to a set of steps that would spit him out near the old, crumbling city gate. He’d been lost in the casbah more times than he could count, and even now, if he wasn’t concentrating he’d find himself facing a blind, peeling wall which he could have sworn was a gate the week before.

He ducked past a tendril of some climbing vine and emerged on to a tiny square with a fountain in the middle, surrounded by children and women with buckets. It smelled of wastewater and drying dirt and ripe garbage from the pile in the corner. Some of the kids yelled when they saw him and rushed over, trying out monsieur and señor, are you lost? Follow me!

He shook his head and brandished the typewriter in its case, but a few still ran ahead of him, staring back over their shoulders and calling: ‘Follow, follow, you are French? American? This way!’

‘I know the way,’ he said. ‘I’m going to see Abdelhamid in his shop.’

‘Abdelhamid?’ one boy persisted. He had no shoes, his shorts torn at the hem. ‘He is sick today, not there, come, I will take you to his home.’

Sam shook his head and pressed on. The boy tried a few more times, but eventually, one of the other children called to him and he wheeled around, disappearing down another passage. Sam sighed and tried to blink his headache away. The typewriter was growing heavy, the handle slick with sweat.

The smell of the casbah changed, the lower he went. Smoke and cooking, the thick fug of diesel from generators and the waft of fish innards, left out for the cats. He passed the weavers, their looms stretched into the middle of the passage, their hands crooked and swift, their legs sinewy from years of working the pedals. A few doors down rugs were spread over the uneven stones. The shops grew in number, spilling out from closet-like spaces, every inch a basket or drawer. In one, clocks and watches and alarms. In another, rounds of buttery msemen. He faltered at the sight of them.