During his last days in Manaus, Yaqub came to see me several times. He sat on a stool, put his hand on my arm and head, and said I was a little feverish. I still remember the worried look on his face, his voice wanting to call a doctor; he would pay for everything. Domingas wouldn’t have it, she trusted in the copal balsam and other curative herbs. I spent some days in bed, and was pleased to know that Halim had been more concerned about his bastard grandson than his legitimate son. He hardly crossed the threshold of Omar’s room. He came into my room several times, and on one of these occasions gave me a fountain pen, in silver, an eighteenth-birthday present. Not even Yaqub had remembered the date, but what he hadn’t spent on the doctor, he offered to Domingas, and this time she accepted. It was a birthday I never forgot, with my mother, Halim, and Yaqub by my bed, all talking about me, my fever and my future. Upstairs, the other patient jealously tried to steal this celebration of my coming of age. We heard groans, shouts, knocks, metallic crashes: a frightful racket. Omar, furious, had kicked the chamber pot and the spittoon, messing up his own room as if he disowned the place he lived in. No, he wasn’t going to let it pass; he wasn’t going to let me hold sway in the house, even for one day. He coughed, complained of the heat, banged on the door, couldn’t stand upright, turned his bed over, opened the windows, couldn’t breathe. Rânia went up and down stairs with compresses and plates of food. Zana couldn’t tear herself away from him; she resented Domingas and Halim, who hadn’t gone to see Omar. My mother didn’t go to see him. Halim couldn’t bear listening to the whispers between Zana and her son. In my room, he said over and over, his head bent: “Do you understand that? Do you understand?” He seemed to be talking to himself, or, who knows, to an unknown person, someone not in the room. He lifted his head when Yaqub, ready to leave, came into my room. I didn’t know if I would see him again. He didn’t like prolonging goodbyes; he held my hands and said he would write and send me books. Then he grasped his father’s hand, said he was in a hurry, but Halim hugged him tight and began to cry, his body bent over, his head leaning on Yaqub’s shoulder, brokenly stammering: “This is your house, son …”

I’d hardly ever seen Halim so sad, his eyes tightly shut, his face tense, his wrinkled hands gripping Yaqub’s back. The two of them went out of my room, and I got up to see them from the window. Zana and Rânia were waiting for them on the veranda. Halim asked his son to stay a few more days, and come back again with his wife. Yaqub promised that on his next visit he’d bring his wife. I listened to his deep voice echoing: “You needn’t worry, Mother, we’ll stay in a hotel.”