A whole seven years younger. This was a serious matter; a grave threat. In one fell swoop, one man had won back two and a half thousand days of dead time. Would he mind waiting outside? They went into hasty conference, then emerged, smiling.

They took him to the department that was responsible for issuing IDs, sat him in front of the camera, and took his picture. The picture confirmed it: seven years younger.

At which moment, Hossam had a revelation. With the click of a shutter, these people had fixed him in time. He would have to be twenty years old forever: the same shameful moustache forever sprouting on his lip, the same inches forever kept off his waist, the same dye forever in his hair. He held up his new ID and peered at it: a passport to a past with no return. He thanked them with a curt nod and left.

That night, Yehyia couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned in bed until his wife lost her temper. Here comes insomnia, he said to himself, I won’t get to sleep for hours. He found himself facing a sort of pure wakefulness he had never experienced. The next day on his way to work, he almost fell asleep in the car. A blare of horns startled him back to wakefulness. He was like that for the rest of the day, suspended between sleep and sleeplessness, and when it was time to go home he was too scared to drive, so he took a taxi instead. The driver had to shake him when they reached his street.

He ate early, a light supper, and laid down, but again, sleep defied him. That night he almost went mad. Consulted over the phone, a doctor friend suggested he take a pill, but it didn’t work as intended, dragging him to sleep’s threshold but not across it. And so on until morning, unable to tell whether he was asleep or awake. He called the friend again and arranged an appointment at the day clinic he ran at a private hospital.

This time he took the metro. He sat by the window. A gentle breeze ran over him and he sank into a deep, deep sleep.

He woke at the end of the line and caught a train back. He’d gone past the clinic and missed the appointment, but despite the seats being cramped and uncomfortable, he had recovered sufficiently to consider going to work. He gave himself a perfunctory wash in the office bathroom and went to his desk. He was in better shape than he had been the day before. He remembered that he’d left his car in the garage downstairs and drove it home. A couple of times he nearly dozed off, but managed to hold himself together.