With pious deference he bowed and said, “Good morning, Your Excellency.”

The man looked up and mumbled some sort of reply to his greeting.

“Othman Bayyumi, Head of Archives,” he announced by way of introducing himself. In the way the Director lifted his normally level eyebrows Othman read the equivalent of a smile, though no smile showed on his lips.

“The new one, sir,” he added.

“And the translator. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” he answered, his heart beating.

“Your style is good,” he said in a low voice.

“Your encouragement is a great honor, sir.”

“Any important mail?”

He began opening the envelopes dexterously, showing the Director their contents and scrupulously taking down his instructions. He bowed again and left the room drunk with happiness. On his way back to Archives he thought how Hamza al-Suwayfi was now passing out of his life into the shadows, until the darkness should swallow him as it had swallowed Sa‘fan Basyuni, and how from that moment his future was in the hands of (next to Almighty God) His Excellency.

“Beware of slow progress, Othman,” he told himself. “One or two leaps forward will be essential.”

“When Sa‘fan Basyuni was pensioned off he had spent the last half of his service in the same grade,” he told himself again.

He knew only too well that the department had two Deputy Directors, which meant that a leap forward could only materialize through Hamza al-Suwayfi: through either his promotion, his retirement, or…his death. The thought made him feel ashamed, as his thoughts often did, and he prayed to God for forgiveness.

“Why did God create us in such a corrupt image?” he wondered.

He was anything but pleased with that aspect of his own nature, but he accepted it as it was. He believed that on either side of his sacred path the waves of good and evil clashed together, and that nothing could affect its sanctity except weakness, frailty, self-satisfaction, and indulgence in easy delights and daydreams. He prayed: “Forgive me, O almighty God! For my only sin is the love of glory You have instilled in me.”

“How can you convince His Excellency of your usefulness? That’s the question,” he said to himself with determination.

How and when would he have the opportunity to render services without immorality or shame: not as a debtor but as a creditor, in the same way as he treated Hamza al-Suwayfi, and within the limits of dignity and pride, yet according to the dictates of official decorum and its usual obsequious language? “My struggle is noble,” he thought to himself. “As for my feelings and thoughts, these belong to God alone.”

He believed that God made man for power and glory. Life was power. Survival was power. Perseverance was power. And God’s heaven could only be attained through power and struggle.