This was loneliness: a silent house filled with memories and ghosts, a heart ravaged not only by sorrow but also by a sense of sin, for the icy reality that stared me in the face also whispered in my ear that my imaginings had not been realized. I wanted to forget the imagination, even if it meant grieving more deeply.

Yet when grief is so intense, plunges so deeply that it finally hits bottom, it begins to radiate a strange intoxication, bringing a little solace with it. Could it be that Tariq Ramadan, when he affronted the mourners with an outburst of tears deep down inside, had been laughing? This, too, is loneliness: grief, accompanied by forbearance and challenge. Together they showed me a prospect that tempted me: lifelong bachelorhood, satisfied pride, and immersion in writing until death.

I had already begun drawing up plans for a play to be entitled The Old House—The Brothel when in a flash came a vision of Tahiya as she had been, strong and well, lusciously full of joie de vivre. A new idea sprang up: the setting would actually be the old house, its actual transformation into a brothel would still pertain, and the characters would be actual people themselves; but the plot would be what I’d imagined and not the actuality. Which—what I’d imagined or what had actually happened—was theatrically stronger? What I’d imagined, unquestionably. In reality the house had been raided by police and sickness had killed Tahiya and her son, but there was another murderer: my imagination, which had informed the police and had killed both Tahiya and the baby, and was thus the ultimate protagonist in a plot that fulfilled all the requirements of a drama—a plot through which I would confess, do penance, and write a real play for the first time. I would challenge Sirhan al-Hilaly to reject it, though he and a few others might think I was confessing to outward reality rather than to the substance of a dream. Inwardly, art is a means of expurgation, outwardly a means of battle, incumbent on men born and reared in sin and determined to rebel against it. Nothing else matters. The fever of creation had infected my whole being.