“Sometimes, it’s wiser to give up … let the two of them live their lives. Let’s hope your son finally takes off, Halim! Let’s hope he really does get intoxicated with the happiness of a free woman.”

“That’s what I wanted,” said Halim. “But Omar wants much more, he wants everything. He’s a prisoner of his own desires.”

He was prepared to take a boat upriver for weeks to find his son. At heart, he was thinking of all the nights he’d lost because of Omar. Halim rented a motorboat and enlisted Captain Pocu: he wanted to search all around the edges of the lakes and the branches of the river. He asked for my help, and insisted on Tannus going with us. We spent weeks going around in circles. We would go out early in the morning, go around Marapatá Island, and cross the branch of the Xiborena to Marchanteria Island. Now we were on the river Solimões, and we went up the Careiro branch, making an arc until we reached the Amazon. We would ask the river dwellers and fishermen if they had seen the couple. Halim showed photos of his son, and Tannus described the woman. The river dwellers looked at the photographs with furrowed brows, struggling, but: no sir, we’ve had no strangers around here. Halim said over and over: “I’m going to bring Omar back by hook or by crook, you’ll see.” He only needed to see a house on stilts, an isolated shack, or a raft, and he would ask Pocu to take the boat across. This went on for days. Tannus said that Halim was losing his head: he wasn’t searching for his son, he was persecuting him. We no longer knew what day of the week or month it was; we disembarked in Manaus at nightfall and at five on the dot Halim woke me, and off we went, on foot, to the small harbor. We went all along the coast of Terra Nova, of Marimba, of Murumurutuba … We went around the lakes of Careiro Island: Joanico, Parun, Alencorne, Imanha, Marinho, Acará, Pagão … Not a sign of Omar. Pocu used the trips to hunt hoatzins and wild duck; he set up a net in a lake, and on the way back picked up the fish, which he later sold in the street markets in Manaus. On the Parauá branch, an old man very solemnly said: “The dolphin’s got them, you’ll see; they must be enchanted, at the bottom of the river.” We went from black to muddy waters, moored dozens of times on the shore of the Cambixe branch. Halim and I visited the little farms, he asked the questions, got the answers, but all to no avail. One day, Pocu, tired of all this, reminded Halim that they had already gone around the same places seven times. “We’re burning fuel for nothing,” said the captain. Then Halim took it into his head to look on the Madeira, they might be in Humaitá, who knows? Or they might be on the Colombian border, or in Peru, in Iquitos … Then suddenly, worn out, he would change his mind: no, maybe in Itacoatiara, or some island near Parintins. But there were hundreds of them. He thought of Santarém, where Abbas the poet was known, and Abbas would help him, he knew the middle and lower reaches of the Amazon—he was forever sailing up and down the river in those parts.