“This house? Where every room bears witness to our past glory?”

She leaves me, and I sit there alone holding my hands over the heater. I’d like to know more about my father. Was he one of these hypocrites? He died young, my mother sank very low, and I grew up her way, under the devil’s horns. But you, Abbas, are a dark horse.

How bored I am! I’m like a jinni shut up in a long-necked bottle. No room to maneuver.

I follow the play’s success with fascination, expecting the playwright to surface, even to come up with a new play, hoping that his success will change the course of my tedious life.

I make frequent visits to the theater to nose around for news; and one morning as I enter Amm Ahmad Burgal rushes up to me and takes me into the empty cafeteria. His downcast face alarms me. I sense that behind it lies bad news.

“Karam! I was just about to come see you.”

“Why! What’s wrong?”

“Abbas.”

“What about him? Say it, Amm Ahmad.”

“He disappeared from the pension in Helwan, the place where he was staying, and he’s left a strange message behind.”

“What message? Don’t you want to tell me?”

“A note, saying he was going to commit suicide.”

My heart sinks, pounding, like anyone else’s. We look at each other silently. “Have they found…?”

“No,” he says. “A search is being made, though.”

“Ah. Probably…who knows? But he wouldn’t have written the note, would he, if he hadn’t…?” My mouth says the words, my thoughts are astray.

“May the Lord help you.” He sounds like someone who believes the matter is ended.

“I must go to Helwan!”

“Sirhan Bey al-Hilaly has already gone.”

A futile, painful trip. There is nothing but the suicide note. Abbas has vanished, disappeared once and disappeared again. Finding his body will be the only proof of his suicide. Would he have written the note if he hadn’t really made up his mind to commit suicide?

“If he really wanted to commit suicide,” al-Hilaly muses, “why didn’t he do it in his room?”

“So you doubt the seriousness of his intentions?”

“Yes, I do.”

I do not return to the old house until evening. Halima isn’t there and I realize that she’s gone to the theater to find out why I’m so late. I close up the empty shop and sit in the hall waiting for her. An oppressive hour goes by before she comes in, her eyes ablaze with madness. We gazed at each other for a second, then she cries, “No! Even if he wanted to kill himself he wouldn’t do it! He couldn’t! He couldn’t kill himself! It’s not possible!”

Sinking into a sofa, she bursts into wild tears, slapping her cheeks with both hands.