My older brother is my legal guardian. A difference of seven years and seven months grants him that distinction. He’s the one who left me here like this—broken down, limbs crushed, mind disturbed—without troubling himself to visit me or call. Coward! How will he reply when I demand that he leave, and that he hand over my share of the inheritance and the memory of our father, who left us through the window, and whose spirit is floating in the air? I will tell him I have deleted Thurayya’s name from my ID card, and in its place have put Mary. Yes, Mary, who was my adoptive mother. Mary, Maryam the Virgin. And Sa’id, who was always hunched over his own navel, so proud of himself, always seeing himself through Thurayya’s eyes, is no longer my brother but has transformed into a big black insect that is at this moment crawling across my belly and making me itch …

“Get it off me!” I screamed. “Get it off, before it makes a nest and lays its eggs and starts eating my organs!”

The psychologist tossed aside her notebook and stood up to reach a button that would call a nurse and notify the doctor. The nurse came running, pulling the cover off a sedative needle that she plunged into my forearm. Within a matter of seconds, I was quiet again. I indicated the small notebook with my eyes. The psychologist picked it up and gave me a glance to ask if that was what I really wanted. I stared at her ginger hair. It was ablaze from the slanting rays of the sun that played upon it.

“Your hair is on fire, miss,” I said, struggling to move my tongue. “Is that its natural color, or do you dye it?”

She smiled, reaching up to touch her hair before sitting back down in the chair as a way to announce the resumption of our session.

“I used to tell Neda—you know who Neda is, right?” Of course, answered the doctor by inclining her head. “I would warn her in advance. I’m going to lie to you now, Neda, and you have to separate the truth from the lies in what I’m about to say. Neda couldn’t figure it out, even when I exaggerated and said nonsensical and illogical things. In the end, she would get annoyed and protest: ‘You’re not only a writer, you’re also an actor, and you’re very good at it.’ I did the same thing with Mary, but Mary would laugh her heart out. She would run over and give me a big hug, saying, ‘There’s no one smarter than you, my dear boy!’ Mary would laugh, and Neda would get sad. Then Neda came to say she was no longer able to bear me. How could she have loved me then for all those years without seeing how much weight she had taken off my back? Tons! And how, despite my immeasurable lightness when we were lovers, how did she slip me off her shoulders and put me into a bag to throw on the café table and then just leave?