Back in the old apartment, his bed had been a mere “twin.” He grew, but his bed did not. That building had been something of an antique; their apartment didn’t much resemble the ones now being built, all stacked on top of one another like cardboard boxes. A beautiful apartment, large and comfortable, in a yellow building from a different era. There was no elevator, and its five floors never had vacancies for strangers. Mr. N loved the building’s tiles: small brown triangles, purple and yellow squares. He loved its high ceilings and its tall, arched windows, decorated at the top with pieces of stained glass that reminded him of church windows. He was familiar with each and every one of its details: the old Arabic toilet that he preferred to European toilets because it didn’t provide any perch to sit and ponder; the shower nozzle that used to wash the bathroom and everything in it about as much as it washed him; the dark, corroded mirror in whose glass his skin looked fairer than it actually was; the kitchen as spacious as a sitting room, with its old couch that no longer matched the actual sitting room; his bedroom; the bedroom of his older brother, Sa’id; his parents’ room; the guest room, which had been converted to an office for his father; and Mary’s room. All this he remembered, all this he loved; just as he loved other things, now forgotten from having lived in their company from the day he was born.

But the thing he’d loved most of all about that apartment was its broad, indulgent balcony, over which the building’s roof extended, and which was ringed around by a railing supported by small white columns. The balustrade acted as a shield, protecting the apartment from whatever annoyances might reach up from their calm, narrow, dead-end road, which was accessed via a street less narrow and far busier, Abdel Wahab El Inglizi, in the neighborhood of Achrafieh.

Mr. N—though it’s true he wasn’t called Mr. N in those days—used to live on this fifth-floor balcony more than he lived inside the apartment. He’d found his natural place there. It was he who picked out a corner for himself among the crowded flowerpots. He put a small table there and two chairs, a chaise longue to lie on while reading, and a straight-backed chair for drinking his coffee, or when he sat with his papers to work. Later on, he added a large, sesame-colored umbrella to that corner of his, which gave an appealing intimacy to the place, such that the other members of the household were satisfied that that part of the balcony, adjacent to his bedroom, was Mr. N’s own property.