Omar didn’t come to his brother’s farewell dinner. He arrived early in the morning, at the end of the party, when only family members were left and were making their exhausted goodbyes after their last night with Yaqub. Halim was proud: his son was going to live on his own at the other end of the country, but he was going to need money, he couldn’t just go off empty-handed … For a moment, Yaqub’s voice echoed in the house; already it was a man’s voice, full of determination, saying “No, Baba, I won’t need anything … This time it was me that wanted to go away.” Halim embraced his son, and wept as he had on the morning Yaqub had left for Lebanon. Zana still kept on: she would send him a monthly allowance, for he wouldn’t have time to work. “Your studies …” she added. “Not a cent,” he said, looking at his mother. Then they heard a noise: Omar had dropped his bicycle in the garden and was fixing his hammock. He wasn’t drunk; he took some time to get to sleep and woke up several times with the sun burning his head—it got on his nerves to the point of making him punch the ground and the wall. He was forgotten; for once Omar had gone to sleep without the protection of the two women. He only got up after lunch, and refused the cold food. He was watching his mother’s movements, while she only had eyes for the other son, the traveler. Halim was still in his room, and Domingas was stuffing bags of manioc flour and slabs of dried pirarucu fish into his case. Omar didn’t move an inch; he stayed sitting at the table, motionless in front of his untouched plate, looking sideways, furtively at his brother’s face. Yaqub’s decision hurt him. He, Omar, was going to stay there, he’d be the king of the castle, in the house, the streets, the city, but the other had had the courage to leave. The lionheart, untamed in his childhood, was spent, wounded. “He wanted to leave the room, but he couldn’t make it,” Domingas told me. He didn’t want to see his brother proud and serene, or hear his mother beg Yaqub to send her a letter a week, tell him he wasn’t even to think of leaving her with no news, worried sick here in the back of beyond. Rânia kept close to Yaqub, kneeling down to speak words that only he could hear. Domingas didn’t take her eyes off him, and years later told me that she was worried about the journey. Not even Zana could stop him leaving.