He can feel his eyes filling with tears from the pain, but he doesn’t want to close them. He has to see Yassim, has to look into his eyes. And when he does, it’s as if he can see straight into him, as if he forgets he doesn’t know anything about him, that they just met, that he disappeared for over two weeks and then just as suddenly came back. None of that matters, because he sees something in Yassim’s eyes, feels it in the desperation with which he’s being forced down onto the mattress, knows this is more than sex, it’s something elemental, something that’s more than lust, so much bigger, infinitely more risky. Something you can’t resist, no matter how much you might want to.

*

Afterwards they lie on their backs in bed in the empty room. Jacob stares straight up at the ceiling, doesn’t dare glance at Yassim, afraid this fragile bubble of something like happiness might burst. Finally, Yassim breaks the silence.

‘I have no room for this,’ he says. His voice is thin, barely more than a whisper.

‘No room for what?’ Jacob asks as quietly as he can.

Yassim takes a breath and turns his face towards him. ‘For what we just did,’ he says. ‘For you. I have no room for us.’

‘And yet you let it happen,’ Jacob says. ‘And yet you were the one who contacted me. You could have left me alone.’

Yassim nods. ‘I should have,’ he says. ‘But I couldn’t. After that night in the garden, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.’ He sits up halfway, resting on his elbows. ‘But my life,’ he continues. ‘My life is not simple. I travel, take off on short notice. And what I do…’

He falls silent for a moment, as if thinking of how to put this.

‘It’s necessary that I don’t draw any attention to myself,’ he says. ‘What I photograph and the contacts I need to maintain in order to do my work, if they knew this about me it would be over. This isn’t Europe. What we’re doing is a disadvantage, you know? A risk I can’t really afford to take.’

Jacob nods. He knows how it is in Beirut. He’s heard the stories of sudden crackdowns on the bathhouses in Burj Hammoud, on doctors who perform anal exams, about the humiliation and harassment. And still Beirut is the most open place in the Middle East. He can only imagine what it must be like in Syria, in the war zones. He suddenly feels so selfish, that he didn’t think about this more, didn’t think about anything but himself.

‘I understand,’ Jacob says. ‘I really do.’