The door opens and Alexa turns around, greets a woman in green surgical scrubs with a green shawl over her hair. Her eyes seem tired – maybe she’s worked all through the night, maybe longer than that. Alexa kisses her cheeks.

‘Thank you, Aisha,’ she says. ‘I owe you.’

But the woman just smiles and shakes her head and pushes past Alexa. ‘We’re even,’ she says. ‘For now.’

She sits down in front of Jacob and looks at him with eyes as exhausted as they are cold and indifferent. ‘So,’ she says. ‘Alexa is my friend, and she says you have something under the skin on your back that I need to take out. Which I will. But I’ve been up for thirty-six hours, and I have a waiting room full of people who need my help. That means I don’t want to hear anything from you, okay? I don’t want to know who you are, why you’re in Shatila, or what you have under your skin. And I don’t want to hear any whining about how much it hurts. Short and sweet. This will take fifteen minutes, and I want complete silence from you. Is that clear?’

Jacob nods. Her sternness and competence are soothing, and for the next fifteen minutes, he allows himself the temporary relief of surrendering completely to someone else’s demands.

Then they’re back in the car again – Alexa, Jacob, and the small chip in a plastic bag in his hand. He turns it over and over in the yellow, dusty afternoon light.

‘It’s probably password protected,’ Alexa says. ‘So you won’t be able to see what’s on it. But that’s not the point.’

‘What is the point?’ Jacob whispers.

Alexa turns to him in the back seat and grabs his face, draws it close and looks deep into his eyes.

‘The point is that now you’re not just a shell, habibi,’ she says. ‘Not just a passive vehicle. Now you have some kind of power, some kind of control. If you need it.’

*

And so the week passes by, and the time is here at last. Jacob stands in the hallway of the youth centre with his backpack next to him on the floor, the wound on his back aching more than ever. Alexa opens the door to the dark drizzle falling like a haze over the alley. A motorcycle idles energetically beneath the small staircase. A black helmet with a black visor covers the driver’s head. Jeans and a motorcycle jacket that match the bright-red paint on the gas tank.

‘Well, then,’ says Alexa, putting an arm around Jacob. ‘Bashir will take you to the airport.’