The night we saw Rânia carrying a box and selling from door to door, he said angrily: “My poor daughter, killing herself to support that parasite.” He could no longer bear to look at Omar. Even his son’s voice irritated him, he said it gave him a stomachache, his heart burned, everything burned up inside him. I found out that he blocked his ears so as not to hear Omar’s voice. When I was looking for Halim, I went by Laval’s pension, but I couldn’t see him in the basement. It was completely dark, and the deserted street was a little frightening. I remembered the few times I had taken part in the readings in the room. Piles of paper surrounded the hammock where he slept. From the ceiling there hung sculptures, mobiles and objects made of paper. Maybe he’d never thrown a single sheet out. He must have kept everything: letters, poems, and endless notes for his classes scrawled on sheets of paper, rolled up, folded, or loose, scattered over the dirty floor. In the dark corners there were piles of empty wine bottles, and on the cement floor shriveled bits of food mixed with cockroach wings. “This chaos is more loathsome than your worst nightmare, but I feed on it,” Laval would say to his pupils. We left the basement carrying books and old class notes he gave us. He stayed there at night, smoking, drinking, and translating French poems.