Mother’s face had grown haggard, though, and she muttered words I could not understand while Father would shrug his shoulders, as if things didn’t matter, then burst out singing the national anthem in a raucous, mocking voice: “My country, my country, I have shed my blood for you.”

The theater was shut down for some days, and for the first time I was able to enjoy having my parents at home all day long. Father even took me with him to the coffeehouse on Sharia al-Gaysh, a new experience. Defeat that time was not without pleasant side effects, but they were short-lived.

Mother was pouring tea. “Abbas,” she said, “we are going to have a stranger living with us!” I stared at her in disbelief. “He’s a friend of your father’s. You know him, too. It’s Tariq Ramadan.”

“The actor?”

“Yes, he had to leave the place where he was living, and what with the housing shortage he hasn’t been able to find a good place to go.”

“He’s a rotten actor. He doesn’t look nice.”

“People should help each other. And you’re an angel, my dear.”

“He’ll come at dawn,” said father, “and sleep until the afternoon. So except for his room, the house will still be your own special domain.”

I was never aware of his arrival, but he usually left with my parents or immediately after them. He was insolent-looking and rough-spoken. He took a sham interest in me to flatter my parents, but I had no respect for him. One day, having spotted my library from where he was sitting in the hall, he asked me, “Schoolbooks?”

“Literary books and plays,” Mother answered proudly. “You’re speaking to a playwright!”

“Damn the theater! I wish I were a junk peddler. Or a hawker of meat from animal heads.”

At that I asked, “Why do you only play small parts?”

He coughed abruptly. “My fate! I’m stalked by such crippling luck that if it weren’t for your father’s decency I’d have to sleep in public toilets.”

“Don’t scare the professor with such talk, Tariq,” cautioned Mother.

He laughed. “A playwright must learn about everything, the good and the bad. Especially the bad. The theater has its fountainhead in wickedness.”

“But good always triumphs,” I declared with naive fervor.

“That’s the way it is—in the theater!” he answered.