This other Omar existed for a few months. On Republic Day, November 15, before he went to Santos with his wife, Yaqub decided to go to the Liberdade area, where Omar lived. Years later, Yaqub told his father that he didn’t want to speak to his brother, or even see him. He had passed in front of the pension to see the miserable house inhabited by students from other cities and regions. He thought of the lonely nights of the first months when he, Yaqub, had lived in São Paulo. On Saturdays he would go to Porto Geral and the Rua 25 de Março, and go into the little clothes shops and haberdashers’; he heard the conversations of the Armenian and Arab immigrants, and laughed to himself, or felt bitter as he remembered his childhood in the port area of Manaus, where he had heard those same sounds. Then, in the Damascus Emporium, he spent a good while sniffing the strong odor of the spices, devouring with his eyes the delicacies he couldn’t buy; he thought of the restaurants and clubs he couldn’t go to, of the shop windows he stared at on his way to and fro between the Pension Veneza and the Polytechnic School; he thought of the boredom of Sundays and holidays in a city, with no friends or family. Extreme solitude would tame a savage like Omar. Yaqub believed that suffering, hard work, changed habits, and the despair of solitude would be decisive in Omar’s education. He wasn’t going to help him. He believed that having to fend for oneself brings out the best in people. But he was curious to know something about his brother’s life. How was he getting on? How was he behaving at school? How could he live far from Manaus, where he knew every street and was greeted and fussed over in the posh clubs and the brothels? Where home cooking and the comforts and affections of the women of the house spurred on his insolence even more? In Manaus, Omar would never be just anybody. For Yaqub, though, anonymity was a challenge.

A week after the holiday, he decided to go to the school where his brother was studying. He talked to the teachers and pupils. He was strange, they said; an impulsive boy, a daredevil, who liked overcoming obstacles. Omar faithfully came to classes, went to the labs, though he was a bit overenthusiastic in the physical education classes. He was getting on well: why had he stopped coming to school? Was he ill? Yaqub stood openmouthed: since when hadn’t he come to school? Since the holiday he hadn’t come to a single class.