Yaqub turned his face away to look at the rain and got up; Rânia’s voice got him out of his predicament. She was frightened by the deployment of troops in the port area, but the sight of Yaqub made her forget the political storm in Brazil. Halim left them alone. Zana was looking after her sick son: she spent hours in the room, and when she opened the door, we could hear her voice complaining: “Omar got caught in the rain, he got ill because of Laval, the mad poet.” She put a hammock up in her son’s room, and interrupted Rânia’s conversation with Yaqub: “I’m going to call a doctor, poor Omar can hardly swallow his own saliva.” Yaqub only followed Zana’s movements out of the corner of his eye. He showed no warmth towards her; he behaved with a kind of distance that was neither neutral nor remote. He proved himself a master at keeping his cool in a tense situation. He didn’t react in his youth, when a piece of glass cut his left cheek. Neither did he get used to the scar, however, passively accepting the work of fate. My mother thought Yaqub more and more decisive and energetic, “like a tree viper getting ready to strike.” She sensed that he was planning something, and I thought the two of them might be meeting secretly, away from the house. They exchanged brief, almost instantaneous looks, but I could see her smile.

In those days, what impressed me most was Yaqub’s obstinate dedication to his work, and his courage. He spent a good part of the night working, with the table in the living room covered with graph paper, full of numbers and drawings. He got up at five, when only Domingas and I were up. At six, he asked me to sit at the breakfast table. He drank warm milk and tapioca, ate fried banana, French toast, and mango compote; he ate almost greedily, getting food all over his hands and mouth. At that hour, the scent of the damp leaves, the fruit hanging off the palm tree, and the ripe jackfruit, was more intense. Yaqub liked waiting for the sun to come up, and following the vegetation as it changed color, emerging slowly from darkness into sunlight. It was the one moment of the day when he was not in a hurry. That morning, he murmured: “I miss this dawn. The smell … the garden.” Then he told me about his work; he went twice a month to the coast, where he was putting up buildings. “One day you’ll come and visit me, I’ll take you to see the sea.”