The disappointments came with—no, even before—the opium. My expectations—all dead and buried now—had been so sweet. I remember one night when he drained the dregs from his glass, leered drunkenly, pointed to the room next to the reception room, and said, “My mother used to go into that room alone with the master sergeant.”

The disclosure was so brutal it shocked me. Abbas was tucked up in his cradle, asleep. I couldn’t believe my ears. “You’re drunk, Karam.”

He shook his head. “She used to warn me to stay in my own room.”

“That wasn’t right.”

He interrupted me. “I don’t like hypocrisy. You’re a hypocrite, Halima.”

“God forgive her. Do you still feel resentful toward her?”

“Why should I hold it against her?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Your husband is unrivaled among men. He doesn’t believe in any man-made lies.” What does he mean? He’s not a bad husband, but he makes fun of everything. He ridicules my faith, the things I hold sacred, my principles. Doesn’t that man respect anything at all? He’s just exposed his mother shamelessly. “And that’s lucky for both of us,” he went on, “because if it weren’t so, I’d have divorced you on our wedding night.”

I was pierced to the heart and tears welled up in my eyes. I’d just received the second cruel blow of my life.

“You can’t help it, Halima. When are you going to become liberated?”

“You’re wicked and cruel.”

“Don’t bother using words like that. They don’t mean anything.”

He told me how his mother had been madly in love with the policeman, how she’d neglected him, and how he’d grown up “liberated,” thanks to her dissipations. “I owe everything to her,” he said finally, with a drunken leer.

He was like some frightful object hung around my neck. I was living with a force that had no principles. On what basis, then, was I to deal with him? The letdown came before the opium. The opium found no spirit left to crush.

When I catch sight of him coming back, my heart leaps in spite of its aversion. He looks even older in the street than he does in the shop. He sits down without looking at me and I can’t help asking, “What did he say to you?”

“He left the flat with a suitcase, and no one knows where he went,” he says without emotion.

Ah! What instant trepidation, instant torment! Is there no end to calamity?

“Why didn’t he let us know?”

“He doesn’t think about us.”

Pointing to the four corners of the shop, I say, “He treated us better than we deserve.”

“He wants to forget us now.”

“You should have gone to see al-Hilaly.”