It was at this time that I distanced myself from Rânia. I didn’t want to. I liked her, I was attracted by the contrasts in a woman like her, so human and so unworldly, so ethereal and so ambitious at the same time. The memories of the night we’d spent together, the intensity of that encounter, still made me shudder. But she resented me, and was offended by my lack of concern, my contempt for her imprisoned brother. At bottom, she knew what I was brooding over, what was eating me inside. She must have known what Omar had done to my mother, and all the wrongs he had done us. I stopped working for her, I never wrote any more business letters, or rushed out to clear out the drains, pile boxes, or sell things from door to door. I moved away from the world of buying and selling, which wasn’t mine and never had been.

Omar left the prison a little before the end of his sentence. He came out thanks to the small change Rânia had accumulated. Talib met him once, and said all he talked about was his mother. He cried in desperation when the widower offered to go with him to the cemetery to visit Zana’s grave.

Rânia did everything to get close to him, but Omar fought shy of his sister, avoiding her and all the neighbors. For some months he could still be seen here and there, wandering around the city at night. Rânia resorted to all kinds of ruses to send him money, trying to attract him, to win him back. She dreamed of having her brother in the house; the room where her mother slept would be his.