I did the shopping and Zana cooked by the brazier, as she had done when her father had the restaurant. She wandered around in a daze, and hesitated in front of the door of Domingas’s room. She spent some minutes like this, and sometimes went in, lay down on the stained hammock where Omar had sprawled after his nocturnal sprees. She was waiting for a visit that never came.

Zana left before the final act. She took the hammock and all Omar’s possessions, the photograph of her father and the furniture from her room. She left only Halim’s clothes hanging on a rusty metal rack.

I stayed on in the house alone, with the shades of those who had lived here. Ironic, to be the absolute ruler, even for a short time, of a handsome house in the vicinity of Manaus Harbor. I was the master of the walls, the roof, the garden, and even the toilets. I thought of Yaqub, and remembered the portrait of the young officer, his proud face with its smile full of hope for the future.

She was away for more than a week: she reappeared very early one Sunday, with her left arm in a cast again. Rânia asked me to look after her mother while she went to the market. “Call one of the girls from the slum to do the cleaning and don’t leave Zana on her own,” she said.