“If these walls could speak, they would tell you the most fantastic tales,” Father said.

It was a lonely house, but a harmonious one. At that time Father and Mother were an agreeable couple, or so, as I saw them in the gathering twilight, they always appeared to me. They shared conversation, jokes, and a deep affection for me. My father had a tendency to express himself a little freely, but Mother would stop him with a warning look, which I noticed sometimes and wondered about. The moment of leave-taking was painful and I would await Thursday with dwindling patience, for that was the night I could go with them to see a play.

As my learning increased, enabling me to read more, I asked for more pocket money to buy books, until I had accumulated a library of secondhand children’s books. “Aren’t you satisfied with going to the theater every week?” Father asked.

But I wasn’t satisfied. My dreams took me far away to new horizons. One day I went so far as to tell him that I wanted to write plays!

He guffawed. “Dream about being an actor! It’s preferable and more profitable.”

“I have an idea, too.”

“Really?”

I went on to outline the story of Faust, which was the last thing I had seen in the theater. I’d added nothing new except that I made the hero a boy of my age.

“How did the boy triumph over the devil?” asked Mother.

“You beat the devil by using the same tricks he does!” answered Father.

“Keep your thoughts to yourself!” shouted Mother. “Can’t you see that you’re talking to an angel?”

From an early age I was saturated with the love of art and virtue. I used to make lengthy speeches about these things to myself, in my solitariness, and I also learned about them from my schoolmates, among whom I was pretty conspicuous. Most of them were mean little devils, to be sure: whenever the teacher got fed up with them he’d shout, “You whorehouse brats!” There was a select little group, however, who were known for their innocence and good behavior, and I gravitated to them. We formed a Morality Squad, to battle against obscene language, and used to strike up the anthems of the New Egyptian Revolution, in which we believed implicitly. When a few of us pledged ourselves to unprecedented bravery, military or political, I pledged myself to the theater, seeing it as a platform for heroism, too, and one that would suit me, with my weak eyesight, which had obliged me to wear prescription glasses while I was still at primary school. Whatever differences there may have been among us, we all dreamed of an ideal world in which we made ourselves its most exemplary citizens. Even defeat failed to shake our basic ideals. As long as the slogans did not change and the leader remained the same, what did defeat mean?