He bends down and takes out one of the bottles of Lebanese wine. The traffic is almost completely still. He pours himself a glass and sinks down into his seat, watching the people and the lights and the chaos on the narrow sidewalks outside. Feeling equal parts calm and expectant as he takes his first big gulp of cold, dry wine.

They drive slowly eastward along Armenia Street, and the bars eventually become sparser and are replaced by stores selling lamps and wall clocks and refrigerators standing on the sidewalks. He sees older men in small holes in the wall sweating and welding in the dusk.

‘Where are we going?’ Jacob asks. He’s on to his second glass of wine now, and he’s enjoyed his ride in the diplomatic car so much that he completely forgot that he has no idea where they’re going.

‘Burj Hammoud,’ the driver answers.

Jacob’s heard of the Armenian district beyond Mar Mikhael, and his curiosity is piqued again, along with a gnawing nervousness. Burj Hammoud is the neighbourhood with the highest concentration of gay culture, though nothing happens openly there either. Apparently he didn’t misunderstand Vargander’s hints.

After they cross the highway the traffic lets up a little, and the character of the neighbourhood becomes something completely different from his own. It looks poorer, more like he imagined Beirut. Run-down houses and dirty neon signs, power lines that turn and twist like spider webs over streets and buildings.

The car turns off the main street and stops at what must be one of the older houses in the area. A modest and worn brass sign hangs on the door: Hammam Oriental.

‘Well,’ the driver says, staying where he is, with his back to Jacob. ‘We’ve arrived. I’ll wait close by and pick you up when you’re ready.’

A hammam? A bathhouse? Jacob knows what that means and he can feel his pulse start to race. It was more than a little forward of Vargander to arrange this. He takes a deep breath, swallows hard and opens the car door.

*

‘Welcome,’ a boy says to him in Arabic when he rings the bell. The boy, who can’t be older than fifteen, shows him into a hall with green, blue and black mosaic tiles in intricate patterns on the walls and floor. On the benches lining the walls some men sit drinking tea from glasses. They study him with interest as he walks over to a small counter in the middle of the room where a stout woman in her fifties asks him for twenty dollars and hands him a towel and some lavender soap in exchange. She says something in Arabic, but when Jacob stares at her doubtfully she switches to English.

‘The locker rooms are that way,’ she says, pointing over her shoulder. ‘We have three saunas. Firas will show you.’