I had dreamed of her the night before. A few nights before, maybe. We were sitting together, at home, and eating macaroni that Leila had cooked; the same recipe we used to order from a small restaurant in Bab Al Louq back when we first met. The food smelled and tasted delicious, and I knew that soon we’d be headed for the bedroom, and there was this sudden access of joy. But as Leila turned away from me to get up and fetch a glass of water, I felt a hair in the food in my mouth. Quickly, before she came back and caught me, I pulled at it. It was long and red, from a woman’s head, and it kept on coming, longer and longer, endlessly long. I began to choke. I remember choking and pulling and glancing up wretchedly in anticipation of Leila’s return. Then the dream ended.

Leila brought me back to reality: “You’re going to accompany him on an expedition. The magazine’s sending you.”

I stared at her uncomprehendingly, and she smiled in disbelief.

“Bahr! Don’t you remember him?”

I watched as she slipped behind her desk and sat down. So confident, as though she’d been here forever. There was something astonishing about the way she’d managed to make herself at home. But I knew this train of thought would bring me pain, and I shut it down. Instead, I thought to myself how difficult it was to guess Bahr’s age.

“An expedition? Where?”

“Here,” she said, pointing to the floor. “Egypt, I mean.”

I had no choice. I couldn’t refuse. It had been a while since I’d submitted a piece of any consequence and had it not been for Leila taking pity on me and interceding on my behalf I would have been fired long ago. I’d stopped being surprised by Leila’s capacity for sudden interventions, the fact that she was saving me even though it was me who had introduced her to the magazine. To journalism, in fact… Once again, I shut the thought down.

I had been told that Bahr was an Egyptian who had returned home after several years living abroad, and that he—or so he claimed—was in the process of researching a long, serialized piece on a list of selected sites in Egypt, with a book in mind, maybe. The magazine wanted me to accompany him, and this was the plan:

Bahr was going to write up detailed dispatches on his expeditions to be published in the country of his former exile, and I would write for our magazine: reports on Bahr and his project. Quite a challenge for someone like me, who didn’t get around much and hadn’t cared about anything for years.

“Isn’t there anyone else? Someone who’d actually enjoy this kind of thing?”