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With his own eyes he witnessed another inmate being forced to swallow a dead mouse. I couldn’t bear to recall that tale, whether in imagination or in conversation, though it haunted me for weeks, even in my sleep, when it came back to me in nightmares. But I told Hazem about the Spanish woman who wrote about her prison experience during the reign of Franco. ‘This woman formed an extraordinary friendship in solitary confinement. She got to be friends with someone whose movements she followed in the cell, and who was her constant companion, observing her and talking to her all the time, telling her about herself and her husband and her three children, who’d been farmed out to three different families, because her husband was also a prisoner.’
    ‘Didn’t you say she was in solitary confinement? How could this friend reach her?’
    ‘Guess.’
    ‘Was it a tree?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘A bird?’
    ‘No. I don’t remember whether there was any access to the cell. Perhaps the wall had no openings at all.’
    ‘A model she traced on the wall of the cell?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Then she must have summoned up her friend in her imagination.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I’m stumped.’
    ‘The friend she loved and depended on was . . . a fly.’
    There was a long silence. Finally I broke it. ‘I’m going to write a chapter of my book on this woman.’
    ‘Are you going to write about political detention in Egypt, or in the world?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘But you’ve been saying that you’d drawn up a plan for the book.’
    ‘I have three plans.’
    ‘Good heavens!’
    ‘There’s no need for mockery.’
    ‘All right, then let’s talk seriously. Plan number one?’
    ‘A book on the experiences of Egyptian prisoners at Mahariq, concluding with a chapter on my father.’
    ‘Dozens of people who’ve lived through that experience have recorded it – what would you add to their accounts?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘All right, then. Plan number two?’
    ‘An edited volume, each chapter of which contains a selection from the writings of political prisoners from a particular country, Arab or non-Arab. I would edit the book and introduce it with a general study of the subject.’
    ‘And plan number three?’
    I faltered a moment. Then I said, ‘I forget!’
    I hadn’t forgotten, but I was embarrassed to talk about my intention to write a novel that would invert the usual order of things, whereby it is those living outside the prison who are the prisoners, not the other way round. The idea was very tempting, but it was just an idea, one that crossed my mind from time to time, and had come to seem like the germ of some sort of literary enterprise. I’m not a novelist, so where did I come up with this mad idea of writing a novel, anyway?

Chapter five
    Translation problems II
    In the beginning, it was a honeymoon. A resplendent month, it extended spontaneously into the months that followed. The days leading up to it were like wedding celebrations, the house rocked by a feverish commotion of joy – and the guests, the good wishes, the ‘ Hamdillah ‘a-ssalaama ,’ ‘Thank God you’re safe,’ ‘Your presence illuminates the house’ . . . and the chocolates, the sweets, baskets of fruit, flowers, and the potted houseplants delivered by one of the florist’s employees, each with a greeting card bearing the name of whoever had sent it.
    My grandmother came from the village, bringing stuffed pigeons and ducks, and salted rice pudding. She also brought another gift, entrusted to her by my aunt (for the festivities in no way mitigated against her vow never again to darken the door of her sister-in-law’s house). My aunt sent fiteer pastry and meneyn biscuits, as well as dates and pomegranates. (My mother tasted none of this – she declared that it hadn’t been intended for her, and that it wouldn’t be right for her to eat any of it.) My father’s relatives – cousins on both his father’s side and his mother’s –