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the left was what in my alarm I imagined to be a lethal dagger.
    I quickly tossed my cigarette on the floor and hurried toward the exit, fighting a painful urge to scream andsummon the people busy playing to protect me as if I were attacked by a lunatic. Scenes and memories raced through my mind: what I had and hadn’t produced during my lifetime, what had been really happy and what painful. I thought about the curse that writing is and told myself that it is the greatest curse that could afflict a math teacher who otherwise might today have become Minister of Education or at least a noteworthy educational adviser.
    For the most part, my writing has been a mix of reality and imagination – something inspired by my surroundings and something I invent. But even when I find inspiration from reality, I don’t write it down the way it is but rather change it so that it won’t wound anyone; I don’t allow reality the chance to assert its dominion. Friends, family members, neighbors, acquaintances, activists and recluses in the world have found their way into my writing, yet no one has ever said, “That character’s me.” No protagonist of a scene I borrowed has ever repeated that this was his scene and that he would kill me for writing about him. I don’t even use the real names of cities for fear a city will come forward one day to claim I have depicted it. Even though I have described in many passages the liveliness of my street, not one of its residents has ever reproached me.
    When the man stood before me, to my intense astonishment, I flashed through all of
Hunger’s Hopes
and called to mind all its characters, cul-de-sacs, alleys, paved streets, and rocky paths. I pondered its inspired and uninspired parts, what I considered brilliant in it and what I thought was flavorless and vile. I finished my review without findinganything that resembled this man or that would cause him to pursue me this way.
    The novel was in his right hand; what I had imagined to be a lethal dagger was a figment of my imagination, because his left hand was empty.
    Shaken, I tried to relax, fearing that he would run away from me. I asked the man, “What do you want from me? Why are you pursuing me?”
    He smiled or perhaps laughed – I couldn’t tell which. All I could discern was that his wide mouth opened somewhat and his teeth confronted me, although tobacco had marred them so much that none of them could really be called a tooth. I thought I heard a sound that might have been the clearing of a throat prior to a laugh.
    He said, “I brought my copy of
Hunger’s Hopes
so you could sign it for me. I told you before you traveled that I would bring it to you one day. Do you remember me? Do you remember the copy you signed for my sweetheart, Ranim?”
    â€œYes, your sweetheart Ranim; who could forget something like that?”
    I didn’t ask him how he knew that I had returned from my trip and had been conned into attending this lecture. It seemed to me he was stalking me or could predict my movements – I didn’t know for certain which.
    I took the copy he was holding out to me as my shaken resolve to flee grew. I searched my pocket for a pen but didn’t find one. Then I saw the man dig into the pocket of his thobe and pull out an old blue pen without a cap.
    â€œTake this,” he said in a harsh tone, offering me the pen.
    â€œYour name, sir, so I can write the dedication. You didn’t mention it last time.”
    With calm, deadly firmness, he replied, “Nishan Hamza Nishan.”
    â€œWho?”
    I suspect that I was quite agitated. No, I was only upset momentarily. I pulled myself together as best I could. Here was a crazy man who was trying to provoke me, but I wasn’t going to fall for his provocation.
    No one has a rare name like this, at least not in the combination I had struggled hard to concoct to avoid any possible repercussions. No one is