Responsibility. An odd feeling, Seif. Let me tell you how I began to understand—only hazily at first—the algorithms that run this world of ours. A while after I was released, I read an article in a medical journal about the importance of facing your fears, so I decided to go back to the yard where I had suffered that jolt of terror. Since the day I’d gotten out, just the sight of the street where the entrance to the station’s yard lay would push the sweat out onto my forehead and down my neck, and throw my heartbeat into a madness. There she was again, my mother, stooped to kiss the no-name conscript’s hand while my father turned that murderous, murdered look her way. I resolved to return and claim that I’d lost some documents, that I wanted to report them missing and apply for replacements.

I went up to the gate as though to the Pit of Hell itself, citizens and hawkers crowding around, while on the sidewalk men at small tables sold official stamps. The sun was strong and the stench penetrating, and I was amazed that these were the walls behind which I had felt that cold fear. I drew closer. At the gate the guard called me over (my heart nearly hopped out of my ear) and asked what I wanted. “To file a report for missing documents,” I said. He reached out and rifled through my pockets, insolent and indifferent, then waved me through.

I stood in line, my heart growing calmer as I waited. The corner where I’d been sitting when I saw my parents was empty. A young desk sergeant opened a report for me, and once I’d signed he took the pen and set it down on the desk beside him. I stood there. “What are you waiting for?” he asked.

“You’ve got my pen.”

“This is my pen,” he said, disgusted.

I found myself smiling. “Well then, you keep it.”

“You think you’re doing me a favor?” he snapped, glaring at me. “It’s mine!”

Still smiling, I left the station as calm and measured and confident as a man who came there every day, and as I passed through the gate I pushed my hand in my pocket and felt my pen. How unfair I’d been. That poor sergeant. I started to laugh. It occurred to me to call my father, to see how he was and tell him what had happened, so I went to a store across the street from the station and dialed his apartment from the phone they kept behind the counter. I called once, then again, but no one answered. Worried, I kept trying until my sister finally answered, her voice somewhere between a scream and tears.

“Baba’s dead, Bahr!”