“Let’s leave our reminiscences until after we’ve reassured ourselves about your health.” He opened his case book and started to write. “Name: Omar al-Hamzawi. Profession: Lawyer. Age?” The physician laughed, saying in anticipation, “Don’t worry, we’re in the same predicament.”

“Forty-five.”

“Remember what a difference in age a month seemed when we were in school? But now, who cares? Any history of special illness in the family?”

“None, unless you consider high blood pressure after sixty extraordinary.”

The physician folded his arms and said seriously, “Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

Omar stroked his thick black hair, in which the first strands of white were discernible, and said, “I don’t believe I’m ill in the usual sense.”

The physician regarded him attentively.

“I mean I don’t have the usual symptoms…”

“Yes.”

“But I feel a strange lethargy.”

“Is that all?”

“I think so.”

“Perhaps it’s overwork.”

“I’m not sure that’s the answer.”

“Of course not. Otherwise you wouldn’t have honored me with your visit.”

“In fact, I no longer feel any desire to work at all.”

“Go on.”

“It’s not fatigue. I suppose I could still work, but I have no desire to, no desire at all. I’ve left the work to the assistant lawyer in my office and postponed all my own cases for the past month…”

“Haven’t you thought of taking a vacation?”

Omar continued as though he hadn’t heard. “Very often I’m sick of life, people, even the family. The situation seemed too serious to keep silent.”

“Then the problem is not…”

“The problem is very serious. I don’t want to think, to move, or to feel. Everything is disintegrating and dying. My hope in coming here was to find some physical cause.”

The physician remarked with a smile, “If only we could solve our most serious problems with a pill after eating or a spoonful of medicine before sleeping.”

They proceeded into the examination room. Omar took off his clothes and lay down on the medical cot. The physician followed the usual procedure. He looked at Omar’s outstretched tongue, then pressed up his eyelids and examined his eyes, took his blood pressure, then measured his breathing with the stethoscope. Omar breathed deeply, coughed, and said “Ah” once from the throat, again from the chest, and glanced furtively at the physician’s face without reading anything. The elegant fingers then tapped on his chest and on his back and pressed with more force on his abdomen. The examination over, the physician returned to his office, where Omar joined him a few minutes later. He finished looking at the results of the urine analysis taken earlier, rubbed his hands, smiled broadly, and said, “My dear lawyer, there’s absolutely nothing.”

The nostrils of his long, sharp nose dilated and his face flushed. “Nothing at all?”