The sun was setting—though the light was still like early morning—when there was a knock at the door. A knock I knew from long ago. Then the door began to open tentatively, scraping the chair back, and Leila eased through. She set her bag down on the floor, and sat. For a moment she said nothing, then, “I found this outside the door.”

She bent and took a little tin box from her bag, about the size of an old-fashioned candy tin. She sighed, gripped the edge of the lid, and popped it open. She didn’t take her eyes off me.

I looked inside. The box was full of sheets of paper, something gray, and then, resting on top of it all, a pair of red glasses.

I stared. Mouthed a whisper: “Bahr!”

Then I drifted off again. Then woke again. Evening spilled into the living room, filling it to the brim. Leila was reading by the light of a candle. I squinted to make sure she was really there, and I wished that we could stay like this forever. She sensed my stirring.

“The power’s out.”

“Where did you get that candle?”

“Everyone carries candles these days.” She jerked her thumb at the door: “Why’d you leave it open?”

I looked at the door through the room’s gloom and saw it had been propped shut with the chair once again. Then I looked for the tin, but couldn’t see it. Leila turned back to the pages I had written, read for a while, then raised her head.

“Do these places really exist? Did you really meet these people?”

I didn’t answer.

She glanced back down, smiling uncertainly. “And who’s this Bahr?”

She looked straight at me.

“Seif… Do you still see the dead?”

AFTERWORD

1

TRAIN IN MY HEAD

“I couldn’t feel my body, but I could tell that I was naked,” Alya said. “And I could see them beneath the spotlight: the heads, talking at me through white masks; the gesturing hands. All I could hear was a train.