“Tariq Ramadan, don’t be so tiresome! Pay attention to your work and take advantage of this opportunity, because it isn’t going to come your way again.”

I become absorbed in my role. Rehearsing that murderer’s play, I relive my life with Tahiya, from its beginning backstage and the old house in the gravel market where we made love in my room, to the denunciation of Karam and Halima, and finally to my crying at her funeral.

“You’re acting like you never acted before,” Salim al-Agrudy remarks, “but you must stick to the text.”

“I’m repeating what was actually said.”

He laughs. “Forget about real life and live in the play!”

“You’re lucky to have the right to change it.”

“Just the necessary cuts. I dropped the scene about the baby.”

“I have an idea!” Al-Agrudy looks annoyed, but I go on anyway: “As the heroine is dying, she asks to see her former lover.”

“What lover? Every actor in this theater was her lover at one time or another.”

“I mean the lover whose part I’m playing. He goes to see her, and she apologizes to him for her infidelity and dies in his arms.”

“That would mean introducing major changes in their personalities and in the relationship—the bond of affection—between the husband and the wife.”

“But…”

“You’re inventing a new play. The heroine here forgets her former lover altogether.”

“Impossible. And unnatural, too.”

“I told you to live in the play and forget about life. Or go ahead and write a new play. There’s quite a lot of sloppy, offbeat writing on the market these days.”

“But you cut out the baby!”

“That’s different. It has no connection with the basic plot, and the killing of an innocent baby is enough to deprive the hero of any sympathy.”

“But he kills his wretched wife.”

“Listen, hundreds of men in the audience wish, in their hearts, that they could kill their wives, too!”

—

Isn’t that Karam Younis? That’s him, for sure, leaving al-Hilaly’s office. Only two weeks to go before the play opens. At the doorway of the cafeteria I stand chatting with Doria, the star of our company, the two of us with coffee cups in hand. As Karam approaches, dressed in his old suit, the neck of his black sweater pulled right up to his jawline, I call out, “Glad to see you here.”

Casting a look at me, he growls, “Get out of my sight,” nods at Doria, and goes on his way.

Doria breaks off what she was saying about the high cost of living to remark, “He must have come to ask about Abbas’s mysterious disappearance.”

“Abbas is hiding because he’s a criminal.”

“He didn’t kill anyone,” she assures me with a smile, “and he hasn’t committed suicide.”

“He may not have committed suicide. But he’s certainly going to hang.”