As for Mother, she was still attached to me and still wanted to live with me, but I wanted to be unencumbered, to discover some new place to live on my own, even if it was only one room. If I didn’t feel any love toward her, neither did I harbor any feelings of hate. And she will be dismayed when she sees herself portrayed on the stage and realizes that I was aware of everything she had tried to hide from me. After that, would I be able to look her in the eye? Never!

I would leave them to themselves, but in some security. The idea of the shop—Amm Ahmad Burgal had suggested it—was a good one. I hoped they would make a living, and sincerely repent.

I was face to face with Tariq Ramadan. We’d always exchanged the usual greetings in passing. This time, however, with typical insolence, he actually intruded into my solitude. Tariq is one of those few who have no notion at all of what it is to feel awkward or embarrassed over doing anything at other people’s expense; I’d scolded Umm Hany several times for living with him.

“I came to congratulate you,” he said, “on the play.”

I didn’t believe him. You came, rather, to conduct a cruel inquiry. I tried to be courteous, however, and thanked him.

“The hero is totally disgusting, an odious person,” he said. “The audience won’t have any sympathy for him.” The remark was mainly his sly way of letting me know the director’s opinion and I ignored this criticism completely: the hero wasn’t like that, either in real life or in the play. I saw that Tariq was simply attacking me, nothing more or less, and I looked at him so contemptuously that he asked, “Didn’t it occur to you that the events of the play would make people think the worst about you?”

“That doesn’t matter to me.”

“What a cold-blooded killer you are!” he blurted out, suddenly showing agitation.

“Now you’re going back to the past,” I said disdainfully. “As far as I’m concerned, the main thing was an attempt at love, whereas with you it was all nothing but an ordeal marked by your own spite.”

“Are you going to be able to defend yourself?”

“I haven’t been accused.”

“You’re going to find yourself in the office of the prosecuting attorney.”

“You’re a stupid ass.”

He got up. “She deserved to be killed in any case,” he said contemptuously. “But what you deserve,” he added, “is hanging.” Then he left.

This hateful visitation made me feel as if I were being caught up in a whirlpool; it convinced me that I had to hide myself somewhere, out of reach of these ignoramuses. Did I really deserve to be hanged? Not in the least, not even if I were charged with my own hidden desires. My imaginings—symbols of escape from actual burdens, not of flight from love or my loved one—had arisen out of temporary agitation, not out of deep-seated feelings. Anyway, I could no longer go on living where this devil could get at me.