As he dressed, he was thinking about what was next. It was time for the number. Six one seven, two eight two, twenty-five forty-six. It was Rafik’s. And it would be easy, he hoped, to call it from this Egyptian’s apartment. The plan had been, once he called Rafik, Rafik would come get him, and then, once at Rafik’s, he would call his mother and father. He wondered how many times his mother would have liked to call Rafik. He wondered how many times she did. It was expensive, fantastically so, but he knew that after three weeks—which is how long it took Rafik to make the journey three years ago—his mother would be quiet, and then angry, and then shouting, and then weeping, and then, finally, would come the last awful quiet, which is where, he estimated, she had been for at least a month.

He saw her in his parents’ bedroom. His father was in a chair praying near the window. She kept her head at the foot of the bed, which is how she always took things the worst. “I am on my head,” she would say. Then, sometime later, “I am on my head.” His father would say, “He is fine. These are not trains that run on time.” She would have a handkerchief on her forehead, one that was moistened with water and a lemon. “I am dead now,” she was saying. “Cover my eyes; all is lost to me.”

The Egyptian and his wife and their two children, a boy who was still a baby, really, and a girl slightly older, were seated around a table in the dining room. When he walked in they all looked up and smiled. The girl said, “Up at last! Up at last!” The wife was wearing a nurse’s dress and shoes. She headed into the kitchen to get him a plate, and the Egyptian seemed pleased with himself about something that had nothing to do with Aziz. “A good day,” he said. “A very good day.”

The wife was back with a lamb stew, and Aziz was drunk fast, looking at it. As she put down his plate, she said, “I am going to bandage those feet after dinner.”

“And I will help,” said the Egyptian. “There is something very wrong with your eyes,” he said, looking satisfied at having discovered this and said something about it.

The wife nodded. “I think I have something for them too.”