“I wasn’t able to pay you my condolences, but I waited until you came to Le Canard. Everyone is asking about you.” The rain had stopped. He stood up, making some excuse about an appointment. She got up and said softly, “Are you in financial straits?”

So they’ve begun talking!

Temptingly she continued: “Someone like you should never be in want of money.”

He shook hands coldly and left. Someone like you should never be in want of money. The call of the madam. That’s just what your enemies want. I’d rather be dead. What’s left in Alexandria?

The palm reader; but nothing new.

The sheikh, all-knowing perhaps. He visited him in his ground-floor room, shuttered and musty. The sheikh, sitting cross-legged on the floor lost in thought, said, “Seek and ye shall find.” The sound of waves seemed to augur a promising start. “A search as tedious as the winter nights,” the sheikh added. Every day is like a year, and at what expense! “You shall obtain what you seek.”

With a startled voice: “What is it that ‘I’m seeking?”

“He is waiting for you impatiently.”

“Does he know about me?”

“He’s waiting for you”

Maybe his mother didn’t tell him everything.

“Then, he is alive!”

“Thanks be to God.”

“Where do I find him? That’s what I really want to know.”

“Patience.”

“I can’t be patient indefinitely.”

“You’ve just begun.”

“In Alexandria?”

The sheikh closed his eyes. “Patience, patience,” he murmured.

“You’ve told me nothing,” retorted Saber angrily.

“I’ve told you everything,” replied the sheikh.

He walked out cursing and was greeted by the introductory rumbles of a thunderstorm. He decided to sell his furniture and leave for Cairo. He had already sold the costly objects in order to maintain his expensive tastes and extravagant living. He hated having the secondhand dealers and buyers come to his flat, so he paid a visit to “Madam” Nabawiya, a close friend of his mother’s, and the only one in that circle he did not dislike.

“I’ll be glad to buy your furniture, but why are you leaving?” she asked, offering him a puff from her narghileh.

“I’ll make a new life for myself in Cairo, away from all this.”

“May God have mercy on her soul. She loved you and ruined you for any other kind of life.”

He understood what she meant and said, “I’m no longer fit for this kind of life.”

“What will you do in Cairo?”

“I have a friend who promised he’d help me.”

“Believe me, our work is suited only to the proud.”

He spat in a large incense bowl. That was his response.