1 5 August

Beirut

Some things happen so fast. Jacob Seger lands in Beirut, confused. He slept on the plane, so perhaps he’s still half asleep as he follows a stream of travellers headed to border control, to the heavily armed policemen or soldiers or whatever they are, who ask him why he’s visiting Beirut, how long he plans to stay, why he doesn’t have diplomatic status if he’s going to be working at the Swedish embassy.

‘Intern,’ he says. ‘I’m just an intern. Not a diplomat.’

Not yet, he wants to add, slowly starting to wake up. I’m not a diplomat yet. This is just the first step. This and getting his degree in political science at Uppsala. All he has to do is pass that gruelling statistics exam and complete this internship, then write his thesis. After that he’ll get a real job at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. That’s his goal. He’s been dreaming about it for the four years he’s been in Uppsala, buying The Economist, studying up on heads of state in obscure Asian countries, Swedish exports and Nobel laureates so he can pass the Foreign Service entrance exam. A blue diplomatic passport and a calfskin leather briefcase, that’s the goal. He just needs to get a handle on his French and Arabic. A tiny, familiar squirt of anxiety shoots through him there at the counter, while a man in uniform with a tired, neutral expression looks him over. Languages are his Achilles heel, and unfortunately they’re key in a diplomatic career. He tenses up at just the thought of sitting in a classroom, memorizing vocabulary. It doesn’t even help that his Arabic teacher Hassan Rahamin, an Iraqi man in his sixties with thick grey hair and a knitted tie, has offered to give him private lessons at his apartment outside Stockholm.

‘I can see how much you want to learn, Jacob,’ Hassan often tells him, patiently, after class. ‘But you have to practise at home, too. You’re welcome to come to my home once a week, and we’ll work on it together if you like?’

But Jacob feels ill just thinking about studying at home. He can’t stand the thought of hours spent on a train and a subway getting to and from Hassan’s suburban apartment. He doesn’t have the energy for that struggle. He just wants to be able to do it. Like in The Matrix: I know Kung Fu.

He shakes off the thought. It doesn’t matter. He’ll take care of French and Arabic later. He surely can’t be stopped by that; it would be too unfair. He’s meant for this life, meant for airports and important missions.