Rânia came up to see what was happening, but he wouldn’t stop shouting: “I’d have given him a thousand, the coward!” She bent over, stroked his head, cleaned the sweat from his face and the saliva covering his mouth; he was drooling with hatred, he gagged, shook his head, began to cough, hawking up, gasping for breath, his eyes bulging, his hands searching for his cane. “Baba, are you better? Quiet down, the shop’s full of customers.” He looked at his daughter: “To hell with them all,” he said. She went down. Halim got up, leaning on his cane. He stopped, looking at the rolls of frayed madras and chintz, full of clothes moths. He gave a few hesitant steps, and went very slowly down the iron staircase. I offered to help him, but he refused. He didn’t say where he was going. He crossed the shop holding his cane to move the customers out of his way. I saw him stagger between the boats moored by the ramp. Soon after, only his white head was moving on the dark horizon of the river.

By that time of his life, it was difficult for him to walk from the house to the shop, go up the spiral staircase, and sit on the wicker chair near the window with its view over the bay. I accompanied him many times on this slow walk, and when someone greeted him or shouted his name, he lifted his stick and asked me who that madman was, and I replied, it was Ibrahim of the Kebabs, or, again, it’s the son of Issa Azmar, or one of his friends who played backgammon in that bar, the Siren of the River. He’d stopped playing; his shaking hands stopped him toying with the dice before each throw. This ritual was a kind of secret magic, an infallible trick. Playing with the dice, feeling their corners, the lines on each side, the texture of the material, then watching them jump and roll over the felt rectangle; that ritual was over and done with. Sometimes Rânia invited two acquaintances to play in the little upstairs room, just so that her father would amuse himself and not stick his nose into her business, though he took practically no interest in the fate of the shop. Nor did Halim pay any attention to the players and their throws of the dice, because the other game, the big one, the real mainspring of his life, had ended when his son had met the woman in the lilac brothel. He let himself be lulled by the hot, humid air and the light, warm breezes coming in the storehouse window. And when he looked at the board, he soon turned his face away to the bay of the Negro, looking for calm in its waters and the huge white clouds mirrored in them.