He says he’s burnt out after eighteen months in Darfur. He says he can’t talk about what it was like in the camps. He spreads his palms out to take in our surroundings, the comfy seats, the strident leftovers on people’s plates.

‘You’re too soft for that kind of work,’ I say.

He laughs instead of getting annoyed. He says, ‘Maybe this is what getting older means, becoming disappointed in our own selves. And now I need to adjust to normal chitchat and the kind of everyday life where there isn’t an urgent situation every two minutes. But I won’t look for another job yet. I’ll wait till my savings run out.’

He says that he’s writing a story about a university professor. He begins to recite it out loud from memory: ‘Hunched, the professor gazed into his glass of whiskey and slowly moved it round and round. The ice clinked. The professor said (and his voice was just a little slurred, his tone as if he was going to tell a secret) “I believe the earth is going to go round and round, round and round forever … It will never stop.”‘

‘Is that all?’ I say. Through the window I can see the traffic building up. Bicycles weave among the black cabs.

‘No, because his friend responds …’

‘What friend?’

‘There is a friend with him, his drinking companion.’ Hisham says ‘drinking companion’ very slowly as if it is a foreign word. It is as if he wants to make a point about the distance he keeps from alcohol. He stresses each syllable, drin-king com-pan-i-on. ‘He is writing a biography of Pascal,’ Hisham adds with pride.

‘Is he?’

‘Yes and this is what he says to the professor when the professor says the earth will go round and round forever and never ever stop. He says – his voice is also just a bit slurred, but smoother – “My money is on it ending.”‘

‘Then what,’ I ask, my fingers reaching for my phone.

‘That’s it, that’s my whole story. Don’t you know Pascal’s Wager?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Pascal said that it is rational to wager that God exists because in doing that, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. If you wager that He doesn’t exist and then it turns out that He does, you lose everything. If you wager that He does exist and then it turns out that He doesn’t, you won’t lose anything.’

Hisham smiles and my brain works to catch up with him. He was like that too when he was young. I could never understand half of what he said or how he could possibly do things like listen to the Grateful Dead. And now he is drawing the Circle Line on a napkin.