Yassim strokes his cheek. ‘Then there are many people depending on you now, Jacob,’ he says. ‘You don’t know how much depends on you not losing this little card.’

It feels like the memory card is burning in his hand and he wants to drop it onto the floor of the taxi and stamp it out before it burns a hole through his hand. He feels instantly anxious. Not because of the risk the card entails, but because he’s afraid he won’t be able to fulfil his task.

‘But what if they stop me?’ he says.

Suddenly he is overcome with the magnitude of the situation.

‘What if I lose the card? What if I do something wrong?’

But Yassim puts a gentle hand on his knee and it calms him. ‘You won’t lose it,’ he says. ‘We’ll take care of that now.’

‘What do you mean?’

Jacob looks out the window. It must not have taken long to get through Beirut’s morning streets because he doesn’t know where they are now. The buildings here are far from the expensive shops downtown and the newly built skyscrapers. Instead, there are winding alleys and bullet holes, dirty laundry and tarps for windows, electrical lines in a tangled spider web just above the roof of the taxi.

Yassim bends over to the taxi driver: ‘Wait here.’

Then he takes Jacob by the hand and pulls him out into the dusty street. ‘Come,’ he says. ‘Time to make sure you don’t lose your little chip.’

They’re waiting. The door is opened up by a young, shy woman in a hijab and white hospital clothes before Yassim even rings the bell. She says something in Arabic that Jacob doesn’t catch, but she looks stressed and nervous that they’re here, and she hurries them inside and closes the door carefully.

It’s not a hall they enter: the door leads directly to a staircase and they follow the woman as she goes up it.

‘Is she a nurse?’ Jacob asks. ‘Where are we?’

Yassim just turns around and gives him a quick, strained smile. ‘I’ll explain. Soon.’

The stairs lead up to a shabby waiting room. Old steel-tube furniture, a rickety table; the blinds are drawn on the window that looks out over the street. The woman leading them opens a door on the opposite end of the waiting room and gestures for them to enter. Yassim turns to Jacob and looks at him in a piercing, solemn way again. He doesn’t pull him close. They’re just friends here. Nothing more.

‘Where are we?’ Jacob says again. ‘At a doctor’s office?’

But before Yassim can answer, a short man in green surgeon’s scrubs is standing in the door. He is wearing a protective cap and mask, and only his dark, tense eyes are visible.