He walked to the windows. Walls of them, glass from top to bottom. He was on the twenty-third floor. He peered down at calcined lime and clay, churning in drums below. Construction stretched to the horizon. Haze never lifted. When he first came to Dubai, he thought it was the earthworks. He guessed that digging and cratering made filmy air. Back then, there weren’t many structures to show for it. Different now. From his room in the sail of the Burj, the icon hotel, the sailboat building, he saw lanyards of skyscrapers. Highways—five lanes each direction, traffic-jam free—carved around and over and down to the Gulf. They were ready for everyone.

He had to lie down. The orderly followed his movements. He hated being annotated. Clinical as he was, he rejected the need for it. Either he would be well or he wouldn’t. Notes couldn’t make anything what it wouldn’t be. His progress was like an audio transmission on a two-dimensional graph. The serrated up and down on the x line would flatten and rise, and no watching would affect it. This gorp of a nurse didn’t get it.

By the second week, the orderly and the nurse were tranquilized by Hoseyn’s lack of visible symptoms. His watchers mostly watched television. Hoseyn kept close to them but managed forays. After several trips to various corners of the suite, each for longer absences, he went to the closet where they’d stored his Samsonite. He pulled out a sweater for help against the air conditioning. The day after, he yanked down an extra pillow from a high shelf.

Then, one morning, he opened the door and fell to his knees. He crept to the suitcase gingerly. When he reached its vinyl, it smelled like a baby’s neck. Had they washed it in talc? Maybe his imagination was still overworking, as it had in the cafeteria. He tugged it from the recess in crab motions. Near the closet door, he put his ear to the combination lock. It was a seashell. For a while he was content, listening to nothing.

Later, he pulled credit cards from the Ziploc packed beside his coffee-blotched shoes. Their embossed numerals shone like mercury. Their surfaces were mirrors. The rough back strips awaited his signatures. With these he could elude his medicalized protectors. He slipped the cards in the pocket of his old sports jacket. He had worn it with Will in Moscow.

Still crawling, he found the suite door’s handle with his hand. He pulled it down and liked its well-oiled torsion. He nudged the door into the hall. He waited. There was nothing from nurse or orderly. The television droned. He crept forward and out. After his breathing settled, he positioned himself correctly. With care, he pushed the door back. Then he let it settle into the frame. He released, second by second, the latch into the jamb.