The letters came less often, and the news from São Paulo seemed to come from another world. The little he told them didn’t warrant the fuss they made at home. A short, uninformative note might set off a party. Zana joined in the festivities, which to begin with happened every month, then got less frequent; Yaqub’s few lines passed over Manaus like a fading comet. Flickering signals from the big city: daily life in the Pension Veneza, the cinemas on the Avenida São João, tram rides, the noise of the crowds on the Viaduto do Chá and the solemn professors in their ties, whom Yaqub worshipped. In the first photo he sent, he had a jacket and tie and a stiff, formal look, reminiscent of the swordsman in the Independence parade.

“He certainly looks different from the hillbilly I met in Rio,” Halim commented, looking at the image.

“Your son is the hillbilly,” Zana said. “Mine’s the other one, the future engineer in front of the Opera House in São Paulo.”

He was a different Yaqub, wearing the camouflage of everything that was modern about the other side of Brazil. He was becoming more refined, getting ready to take the big jump: a worm that wants to be a snake, is one way of putting it. He made it. He slid by silently under the foliage.

Outside, he really had changed. Inside, there was a real mystery: a silent person who never gave voice to his thoughts.

I grew up with Yaqub’s photos, listening to his mother reading his letters. In one of the photos, he posed in an army uniform; a sword again, but this time the two-edged weapon made the reserve officer look all the more formidable. For years, this image of the dashing young man in uniform was imprinted on me. An army officer, a future engineer from the Polytechnic School …