But in jail you are liberated from the vicissitudes of life, just as in the womb. Saber, arrested while murdering his mistress. Saber, there’s a story behind him. Basima Omran, queen of the Alexandria nightlife. She offered him in his poverty and despair an unknown father, a lost hope. The search for Sayed Sayed el-Reheimy. Love. Murder. Saber’s amorous adventures and conquests. Saber, the symbol of cruelty and corruption. They admired his love for Elham. How noble that was in the midst of a sordid story.

His mother afforded him a brief life of luxury; when that inevitably collapsed, he had to find a father or kill. The investigator suspected you from the first. You were constantly watched. Sawi spoke to you of Karima’s infidelity. That cunning old devil! What an idiot I’ve been!

Her first husband, Mohamed Ragab, denied any connection with the victim. It was the lover who fell in the trap. Was Ragab lying, or was he simply telling the truth? The papers don’t give any details of the part that resulted in your destruction. Will you find out the truth after death?

Mohamed el-Sawi, the doorman, spun his web of lies which ensnared you in the trap. The address you got out of him so effortlessly. The doorman of the building who almost caught you on your way to her. The detective recognized your voice as you apologized to the beggar when you bowled him over. Curse that beggar!

The papers splash your scandalous life just as they do your mother’s. A magazine made a study of your case. Learned men gave their opinions. Incompatible marriage between the old man and Karima. The prime cause of the murder. Poverty is the cause. Karima’s first husband sold her because of poverty. Karima is the martyr of the class war. Saber’s upbringing in a den of sin. Saber’s Oedipus complex. In Karima he saw a mother substitute, and Khalil was a symbol of power, which he had to destroy.

He avenged the confiscation of his mother’s wealth. It’s a matter of a lost religious faith. If Saber had spent only a fraction of his efforts searching for God rather than searching for his father, none of this would have happened.

Saber shrugged his shoulders as he read all these comments. No one knows whether Karima was lying or telling the truth, or whether Reheimy existed or not, he told himself.

A lawyer called one day to see Saber. He thought he’d seen him somewhere before. But where and when, he could not remember. He felt comfortable in the lawyer’s presence. He was an elderly, distinguished-looking man.

“Are you the lawyer chosen by the court to defend me?”

“No.” Then, in a quiet voice, the lawyer said, “I am Mohamed el-Tantawi.”

Saber did not recognize the name. “Who gave you my case?”

“Consider me your friend.”

“But I have no money.”