He stopped. Halim lowered his head, thought of mentioning the other son, and hesitated. He said: “Your mother …” and stopped in his turn. He saw Yaqub’s tense face; then his son got up, looking harassed, and let his trousers down to piss against the bar wall, right in the middle of Cinelândia. He pissed for a long time, and was now relaxed, quite indifferent to the loud laughter of the people passing by. Halim managed to shout, “No, you shouldn’t …” but his son either didn’t understand or pretended not to.

He had to swallow his shame. That wasn’t the only time: there were others, with Yaqub and the other son, Omar, the younger, the twin who had been born a few minutes later. What bothered Halim was the twins’ separation, “Because you never know how they’re going to react later …” He never stopped thinking about his sons meeting again, and how they would get on after so long apart. Since the day he left, Zana never stopped saying: “My son will come back a hillbilly, a shepherd, a ra ’í. He’ll forget Portuguese and he’ll never set foot in a school; there isn’t one in your family’s village.”

It happened a year before the Second World War, after the twins’ thirteenth birthday. Halim wanted to send the two of them to southern Lebanon. Zana resisted, and managed to persuade her husband to send Yaqub on his own. For years Omar was treated as an only child, the only boy.

In the center of Rio, Halim bought clothes and a pair of shoes for Yaqub. On the journey back to Manaus he gave him a long sermon on manners: you shouldn’t piss in the street, wolf your food, or spit on the floor. Yaqub said, “Yes, Baba,” with his head bowed, vomiting whenever the twin-engine plane shook, his eyes deep set in his pale face, and a look of panic every time they took off or landed on the six stops between Rio de Janeiro and Manaus.