For a while I actually stayed on at Karam Younis’s house—Abbas Younis had left, taking over his father’s job as prompter, which the old man no longer needed, being content with the earnings the house made for him—and the atmosphere to begin with was somewhat strained. Sirhan al-Hilaly took me aside. “Don’t spoil our soirees,” he whispered. “Be sensible. You can get Umm Hany back with a wink, you know. She earns twice as much as Tahiya.” Al-Hilaly is crazy about women and he’d had Tahiya once or twice, but he knows nothing about love and can’t see any connection between suffering and sex, which he ordains or disdains as if it were a matter of administrative routine. When he wants it, it’s simply served up immediately. I had no doubt about his good intentions toward me: he’d given me many chances, all of which came to nothing only because of my own limitations—and now in Abbas’s play he believes I’ll finally be a success—so that when he told me he’d already given hints to Umm Hany about my returning to her, I went back to the company’s seamstress. I did it more for the sake of escaping loneliness and shoring up the sad state of my finances than to get over any bitter emotional experience. The fact was that I expected Tahiya’s marriage to fail: she’d always had attachments—she needed the money—but I was sure she’d never love anyone except me, in spite of my poverty. On the face of it she belied my expectations, keeping up her marriage until her death. The play, however, unveils her secret: she is shown confessing on her sickbed that she’s sold herself to a foreigner, whereupon her husband decides to kill her by replacing her medicine with plain aspirin. So my doubts were justified without my knowing it. This man, whose idealism had been a thorn in our flesh, killed her—this man who, if it is left to me, will never escape punishment.

—

What have I hoped to gain? I’m face to face with Abbas in the flat that was once Tahiya’s, having gone there the day after the reading, after seeing his parents in their shop. So he’s now a playwright—a playwright at last, after dozens of rejections—this scribbling phony who plunders reality without shame. He’s astonished to see me.

Don’t be surprised, I want to tell him. What’s past is past, but its aftermath, thanks to you, is going to be felt far and wide, all over again.

Al-Hilaly made peace between us one day and we’ve shaken hands, but we haven’t buried our feelings. Here in his study—the flat consists of two rooms with a little foyer—we look at each other sullenly until I say, “No doubt you’re wondering why I came.”