I nearly forgot Luqman. But I started meeting dozens like him every night. I tried to forget the angel who occupied my thoughts for a while, for I realized I could never reach her now that the monster had made her his own. My angels were of another kind now, with colorful skin, rough hands, and worn-out bodies. Black, yellow, and red, untouched or tattooed with bruises and scars, wearing skimpy clothing and covered in pictures, drawings, and obscure words I couldn’t understand.

Like Jonah in the whale, I had dropped into the belly of the city and begun wandering through its entrails, deeper and deeper, to the lowest of the low. Down where even the darkness was hidden, where rats found refuge and insects made their nests; where lepers, amputees, and the heartsick hid themselves away. I would retreat to my apartment for a few days when I needed to recover my strength, and then I would resume my descent to the bottom. I would be beaten until I lost consciousness, only to wake up each time somewhere new: sometimes on a street corner, sometimes a building foyer, or else near the garbage cans or in a gutter, in vagrants’ rooms and the dens of drunkards. And one time—magically—in the bosom of a woman.

Shaygha had a body like a prepubescent child. Nothing about it was big or adult-sized except her wide eyes. The pupils moved about in a way that made you dizzy to follow, as though you were floating around a planet with no gravity. Shaygha took me in when she stumbled across me in the street, far from her country of Nepal. She picked me up despite how much smaller she was. Even though I had lost a substantial amount of weight as a result of my beatings and my wanderings, I was still heavy for her, and she dragged me bodily to her room with her small, skinny arms. She cleaned away the mud, sweat, spit, piss, and blood that covered me. She peeled off my foul-smelling clothes and washed, dried, and ironed them. In this way, I awoke to find she had restored my human appearance.

Soon after waking, when I felt strong enough to do it, I stood up, expressed my gratitude, and got ready to go. But she didn’t want me to leave. She held my arm and shook her head no. She pulled me away from the door and sat me down. Then she sat on my lap and embraced me, burying her head against my chest. I let myself be carried away by her, for you cannot say no to a small woman like this. We found ourselves united in the coop: she the hen, I the cock. The space, barely large enough for us both, was filled with a bed, a small dresser, and, tucked in the corner along with a plastic chair, an unassuming table, upon which had been placed a purple cloth and a vase with plastic flowers. Above the raised threshold that separated the narrow kitchen and bathroom from the main room, a transparent plastic curtain had been hung—Shaygha’s idea, no doubt, to contain the cooking smells and to keep the light that came through the kitchen window from escaping.