“Victory*3 should have led us to a more prosperous life,” Doria goes on, returning to the subject at hand.

“Only the corrupt have it easy. The whole country’s become one huge brothel. Why did the police bother to choose Karam Younis’s house for a raid? He was only doing what everyone else does.”

“We’re living in times when sex has become a national pursuit,” Doria says, laughing.

—

“I’m a man so sunk in corruption that I’ve been disowned by an old respectable family. So why am I still bogged down in failure?”

“The eternal failure! Poor man. No field of operation left to exploit but Umm Hany!”

—

On opening night, the tenth of October, the air outside is mild, but inside it feels as though it’s going to be steamy. Karam and Halima, al-Hilaly, and Fuad Shalaby are among the audience. Though I’m the only one acting out on the stage what he experienced in reality—Ismail has the part of Abbas—the life of the old house is lived again in all its shamelessness with new and more brutal crimes added. Scandals follow one after another—the producer takes the risk of actually sneaking into Halima’s bedroom—and are crowned with betrayal and murder. And during all this, for the first time in my career, my acting is greeted with applause. Is Tahiya watching us from her grave?

Pouring us out success like wine, the crowd either listens in deathly silence or bursts into wild applause. The author, of course, criminal and cowardly, is absent. But how are Karam and Halima taking it? Before the final curtain they’re going to have a few more wrinkles in their faces.

—

After the show, when we have our usual celebration in the cafeteria, people, for once, seem aware of my presence. I am altogether a different person. From a nobody, Tahiya has made me more than a man. The broad grin on Umm Hany’s face spreads until her mouth is as wide as a bulldog’s. Behind every great man there’s a woman.

“Didn’t I tell you?” says Sirhan al-Hilaly.

“A great actor has been born,” adds Fuad Shalaby.

Ismail’s simper shows his jealousy: it’s I who’ve played the complex role of a lover, a madman, and a heel. I fill my stomach with shawerma and cognac; and the cognac reacts with the wine of success to the point where, seeing Halima in a suit she’s rented from Umm Hany, I even drink a toast to the absent author.

Around three o’clock in the morning I leave the theater, arm in arm with Umm Hany and Fuad Shalaby. “Come on,” says Fuad. “Let’s take a stroll around Cairo at the only time it has a chance to be respectable.”

“But we’re a long way from home,” protests Umm Hany.

“I have my car. I need to get some information.”