“I didn’t live in Lebanon, Talib.” The voice began calmly and in a monotone, but sounded as if it would soon be raised. It was, so much so that the words that followed shocked everyone: “They sent me to a village in the south, and I’ve forgotten the time I spent there. That’s it, I’ve forgotten almost everything: the village, the people, the name of the village, and the relatives. The only thing I’ve not forgotten is the language …”

“Talib, let’s not talk—”

“There’s something else I couldn’t forget,” Yaqub excitedly interrupted his father. “I couldn’t forget …” he repeated, hesitating, and then went silent.

Zana invited the neighbors to have a liqueur in the drawing room, but Talib thanked her, said he was going to take a siesta; he had a headache. He and his daughters said goodbye, and right away the family made themselves scarce. Only Yaqub stayed beneath the rubber tree, with his uncompleted sentence, his reticence, and the mystery of his life. Yaqub, cornered in this way, looked more human, or less perfect, less finished. I could see he was nervous, smoking hard, his eyes on the ground. I didn’t go over to him; I didn’t dare. He was transfigured; he looked as if he were grinding his teeth right down to the quick.

At nightfall, he wanted to talk to Halim; the two of them went out for dinner and came back late. I only saw him on the Sunday, before his return to São Paulo. He no longer looked haggard, and showed no signs of weakness or suffering. He hugged me tight, then stood back and looked straight at me, examining my height, observing my face.

Rânia insisted on taking him to the airport. They were already in the street when Domingas gave Yaqub a packet of manioc flour and a bunch of pacovã bananas. She embraced him, and sobbed when she saw him go. It was the most moving scene of Yaqub’s visit.

He had revealed to his father some episodes connected with Omar’s disappearance from São Paulo. Halim knew nothing. Zana and he misguidedly thought he had gone to one of the best schools in the city, and that for a whole semester he had burned the midnight oil, applying himself, bent over a book-covered desk. That’s why he came back speaking a bit of English and Spanish, they thought.

“Majnun! Omar’s a madman!” said Halim, taking a swig of arrack.

He’d taken me to a small bar at the very end of the Floating City. There, we could see the shanties of the Educandos, and the huge creek separating this amphibious neighborhood from the center of Manaus. It was the busy time of day. The labyrinth of houses built on wooden posts was humming; a swarm of canoes wound their way between the floating houses as the inhabitants returned from work, walking in single file along the narrow planks that allow people to circulate in this labyrinth. The more daring carried a large flagon, a child, or sacks of manioc flour; they had to be acrobats not to fall into the Negro. From time to time, one would disappear into the darkness of the river and turn into a news item.