Jacob doesn’t move, he just stares straight ahead. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m not interested.’ Slowly he lifts his head and looks at Myriam. ‘Go ahead and tell them I’m from a fucking working-class background if you want. It’ll be embarrassing for me. And tough. But I’ve been through worse.’

His rage is growing. Why did he change his name anyway? Because the whole time he was growing up he wanted to escape the stigma of being poor. Escape his mother. Escape where he came from.

Becoming Jacob Seger was a big part of his metamorphosis, and he’s been terrified for a long time that someone would find out who he used to be. But now, in this apartment in Beirut, he feels like it doesn’t matter any more. He has finally become whom he wanted to be. And he won’t let anyone force him to do anything any more.

Myriam doesn’t say a word, just opens the computer and runs a hand over the track pad until a video window opens. When she presses play, Jacob knows there’s nothing he can do. Escape is impossible.

He can only watch a few seconds of the video – it’s too naked and raw and disgusting. His hands tremble when he slams the screen shut. He falls forward and buries his head in his hands. ‘What have you done?’ he sobs. ‘Why?’

‘What have we done?’ Myriam’s voice is ice cold. ‘Isn’t that you in this video? Aren’t you the one raping that kid? Hassan is his name, by the way. And he’s fifteen years old.’

His world is collapsing. That’s Jacob on the video. Jacob and the guy from the bathhouse. Before he closed the screen, he saw himself hit the boy across the cheek and pull his hair. Call him a whore.

‘It’s not what it looks like,’ he whispers. ‘He asked for it. He wanted me to do it.’

‘Really?’ Myriam says. ‘Is that your defence? That he wanted to be raped?’

‘If you play it again you’ll hear that he wants it.’ His panic has awoken again in a kind of delayed reaction and sent a fever through him as he realizes the consequences of that video. Homosexual rape in Lebanon, where homosexuality itself is illegal. And even if he managed to explain it in a convincing way… His career is over. Long before it even started. Everything he struggled for. Everything he dreamed about. Over.

‘I’ve watched it more times than anyone should ever have to watch such a thing,’ Myriam says. ‘And all I see is a Swedish brat brutally raping a poor, underage boy.’

‘That’s not what happened!’ he screams. ‘He came onto me, and I didn’t even want to go to the bathhouse, it was Vargander who arranged a car and…’