I didn’t do anything wrong. Drugs were chic, weren’t they? And I was a man with no inhibitions. I followed my instincts, that’s all. Other men were no different from me. What happened later was bad luck. Halima would say to me, “Do you expect my salary by itself to be enough to support your family?”

“You want a quarrel? I’m ready.”

“Opium ruins everything.”

“So what?”

“What about your son? Such a wonderful boy deserves to be looked after.”

It wasn’t my fault. My mother taught me what’s right, instilled the fundamental principles. Halima wanted to play at being respectable, to forget the way she used to live. But I won’t tolerate hypocrisy in my household.

“If you have trouble finding a suitable place sometimes,” I said to al-Hilaly, “you can use my house.” He gave me a searching look. “In the heart of Bab al-Shariya,” I assured him, “even the jinn wouldn’t suspect it!”

I was right. The old house took on new life: it was cleaned from top to bottom and the largest room was transformed into a salon for the hellraisers. Those aristocrats. Those playboys—al-Agrudy, Shalaby, Ismail, Tariq—and Tahiya the playgirl. I respected them. They did as they liked without hypocrisy. There was a storeroom for snacks, drinks, and drugs, and Halima really took to the trade. A total hypocrite. I despise hypocrisy. Her true nature came right to the fore: the expert mistress of a new establishment, pretty, sharp-witted, as open-minded as I was and even more so, quite adept at running a brothel. The sky rained down gold.

What made the boy look at us in disgust? Whose son are you anyway? Who’s your father? Who’s your mother? Who’s your grandmother? You’re a bastard, you are—offspring of a theatrical marriage! An idiot, taken in by hypocrisy.

“The boy’s sorrow is killing him,” Halima sighed.

“Let him die of grief, the way every idiot should.”

“He refuses to accept the situation.”

“I don’t like that word accept.”

“He deserves some sympathy.”

“He deserves to be throttled.”

As he grew to hate me, my love for him was likewise uprooted. “Understand your life! Live in the real world! It’s only the chosen few who have as good a life. Look at the neighbors! Don’t you hear about what’s going on around you? Don’t you understand? Who are you anyway?” His eyes gave off a queer look, as if he lived outside the walls of time. What did he want?