“Phooey on the whole damn thing,” Mr. N had whispered, disapprovingly, as the old nausea rose inside. Nevertheless, Miss Zahra didn’t get weary or discouraged. For months, she kept trying to get him to write, while Mr. N doted upon her smile as though it were a pitcher of water he could pour over his desiccated heart. He wanted to win her affection. He wanted to please her, to beguile her. So he decided to give it a try. He would give in and write—write anything at all, just so she would come in and see him leaning over his papers, or else see the papers themselves, blackened with letters, piling up in a stack. And so, one morning, when she heard Mr. N suggest that she buy him a box of pencils of a specific kind, writing its precise brand name on a small slip of paper, as well as some white, 80 mm-thick paper, a pencil sharpener, and an eraser, Miss Zahra could barely restrain her joy and asked, nearly hopping in place, whether that was everything he needed. “Yes,” he replied. “That’s the whole set.”

It took days for him to relearn how to eke out a few letters. These were followed by syllables and sounds that he put together any which way to see whether some meaning might arise from various combinations. Then he began writing complete sentences, which he would sometimes copy out dozens of times, until they resounded in his head like a drumbeat. He began following a schedule, like a robot programmed to the task—until his language dyspepsia struck again, in any case. He would sit at his table every morning, arrange his pencils and erasers, and write—like a disabled man training an injured limb to resume its function—until he could do so without any anxiety or discomfort.

Miss Zahra didn’t ask him what he was writing about. She did her best to show no curiosity, in case that might disturb him. It was enough for them both that she concluded each of her visits with a quick glance at his papers and a proud smile, considering herself to be the source of his inspiration. And perhaps it didn’t matter to her what he wrote. The important thing was that he was doing it, and that she saw him doing it. No doubt the idea that he was a writer pleased her, thought Mr. N—or maybe it was more that she liked the idea of herself pleasing a writer? Women love writers, yes? Well, not counting Thurayya and Neda. So, Miss Zahra wanted him to be a writer? Okay, he would go back to being a writer. For her sake. And if it was all for her sake, then why should he be angry if she was the one who stole his papers—or borrowed them, rather, in order to read them? Didn’t that only confirm she was interested and wanted to know at last what her favorite writer was working on?