IF HE LAY STILL enough, for long enough on the narrow bed, he could keep himself just below consciousness so that hours would blur into days, and days would fold into weeks, without him being aware of the four walls which held him. He could feel his muscles wasting, his flesh seemed loose about his bones, and the little exercise he was forced to take exhausted him. But if he slowed his breathing in this way, his body would become lighter and he’d feel the touch of his father’s palm on the back of his neck and he would be six years old again, learning to swim underneath the Mediterranean sky. Angles of blue and white would fill his mind. He would see his body glistening and strong under the scalding sun. Hear his father whispering, ‘Trust me, trust the water, it doesn’t want to harm you,’ then he would feel his own childlike panic overwhelm him as he grappled for his father’s neck, felt himself sinking. On other days, it was the scent of bitter orange that filled his senses, its cloying sweetness drugging him into a welcome stupor, or the buzzing arpeggio of the muezzin’s call to prayer.

When consciousness was insistent, he would sit, his back against the cold plaster, his eyes half closed, pushing back the walls with his mind. Like tracing paper, he would overlay memories of his past on to his present. The back wall was the dappled walk beneath the lemon trees towards the university. Past the café where his friends took black tea. The far wall was the corridor where he had first met his wife, the place where she had scolded him sternly for pinning a notice to the wrong board. His flamboyant begging for forgiveness. The bemused look she had given him. The moment he decided he must know more about it and her. The wall behind him was his office, the bricks his books, the muslin drapes that overlooked the city at a time when no one thought to ask what religion their friends were. This bed. This bed was where they had made love without making love. Her white teeth, the way she swore over coffee.