“Ikh bin a printsesin!”

“She tells us lots of stories. She talks about wonderful parties when your father was Ambassador in Miami. The guests, the champagne, the beautiful dresses, the palm trees . . . all of it . . . it lets us dream a little . . . takes us out of ourselves.”

The suffocating irony of the situation made me feel a bit better.

I smiled. “We’re not very good at affection in our family.”

“But I know from what she tells me about your life, about your daughters, all of that, that she has always been there, with you.”

“Yes, there’s no denying that. She has always been very much there . . . in her own way, let’s just say.”

“You’re both angry about what’s happening and that’s normal. Your mother, she can tell she’s slipping away, so she’s grabbing on to anything she can, including you, and it makes her unbearable. She’s scared of her life ending and you’re scared too. It’s a difficult time, always tricky. And it’s why we’re here, so it’s easier for the families and, if you won’t mind me saying, there’s no point you coming here every day. At some point you won’t be able to stand it anymore, and afterwards, you’ll only have bad memories of her. We’re looking after your mother very well, and if there’s a problem, we’ll call you. Go on, go home.”

That evening, I didn’t weep on my couch. I even invited my two girls over for dinner and made them what my mother used to call her culinary speciality: Girls, with this recipe, you’ll be alright, whatever the circumstances.

Miami salad

One tin of palm hearts, one tin of corn and one tin of sliced pineapple.

One avocado

Dice the ingredients.

Put everything into a salad bowl.

Add some peeled defrosted shrimps.

For the cocktail sauce: stir together some Heinz ketchup and Amora mayonnaise until it’s salmon-pink.

It would be an exaggeration to say that we became friends that day, Khadija and I, but she was so kind, so patient with the old people and their families, that she allowed me to get past my internal guilt about not doing anything useful. I followed her advice and spaced out my visits.

But towards the end of June, things got more complicated.

For a couple of months I had been fairly vague in my translations about the quantities being imported by her son, Afid.

In the first wire taps, he had been bringing in 50 kilos per trip in his little vegetable truck, like an unassuming ant; then it was 60, then 70 . . . At some point, I stopped translating, allowing the specific details to go unremarked, and making the note “indecipherable” in my reports, on the very rare occasions when the quantity was mentioned. In April, they were talking 250 kilos and by May they had acquired a bigger truck.