Standing on the roof, I remembered how once, when she had woken from her nap, I brought her up here. She was still lazy with sleep, walking behind me in her long, loose robe. I, too excited to wait, pulled her up the stairs to my workshop to show her what I had made: a horse out of wood, bubble gum for ears, and radio wires coiled together to make the tail. I made it because the day before she had said, 'You are my prince. One day you'll be a man and take me away on your white horse.' She kissed me, walked to the edge of the roof to look out on to the sea. The sun was dying, pouring itself into the water. I stood beside her, leaning against her leg. When I looked up her eyes were fixed and squinting at the light. 'The sea has changed again,' she said. 'Every day the sea changes.' Then she was silent. From within my core, a place mysterious until that moment, I felt I was melting, that I, too, like the sun emptying itself into the sea, was pouring myself into her.

I stuffed the book into my shorts, covering it with my T-shirt, and sneaked into the kitchen. Mama was standing at the sink. I ran to my room. The moment I closed the door behind me I heard Moosa leave the bathroom, then the sound of the cistern filling up. I had just missed him. A sweet sensation of guilt and excitement ran through me, reminding me of the time I had once stolen a cigarette from him and lit it beneath my bed. I was seven or maybe even six. When Mama caught me she slapped me on the back of the hand three times. I hid the book beneath my pillow and, fearing my absence would raise suspicion, returned to the kitchen.

I sat at the table, opposite Moosa. When his eyes met mine he smiled. He grabbed an apple, sliced it and gave me a piece. I held it between my fingers, feeling its cool moisture against my sweaty skin.

'Why do the Revolutionary Committee want to search our house?' I asked.

Moosa's eyes looked past me at Mama.

'You can't keep a thing to yourself,' she told him.

He put his hands up as if something was about to fall from the sky. 'I didn't tell him a thing, he saw us burning the books.'

'And who brought him to see? Why, Moosa? Why? Can't you keep anything to yourself?'

Seeing how upset Mama had become made me, too, feel angry at Moosa. He wasn't trying to defend himself any more; he sat, arms folded, facing the table. I placed the slice of apple he had given me on my plate, its flesh already beginning to brown.

'Children aren't suppose to know these things. I wish I hadn't told you, I wish I had never told you anything.' Then came the long silence that usually succeeded their arguments.

'Why did you burn Baba's books? Baba loves his books.' Neither of them looked at me. 'I don't think Baba will be happy that you two burned his books.'

'There you go. What are you going to tell him now?' Mama said. 'Go on, tell him,' she shouted. Moosa stared at the table. 'Tell him about his father, your hero.' She was beside him now. She nudged him several times, repeating, 'Tell him, tell him.' For a moment she seemed to hesitate, then she said, 'Tell him that you encouraged him, looked up to him to guide you, inflated his chest with your adoration.'

Moosa's leg began to jiggle. 'Enough,' he said.

'Now you say "enough", after pushing him and pushing him.'

'I never wished him harm.'

'It's different for you. You are Egyptian. The most they could do is deport you.'

'I would give my life for him.'

'You can die ten times over, it would do no good now.'

Moosa's lips were red, and a purple shadow covered his cheek bones. He looked as if he had been slapped. I wondered if that was the way he looked when the man from the Revolutionary Committee, the one with the old woman's voice, shouted at him, asking all of those questions about where he lived and who he lived with, questions you would ask a small boy lost in the street.

'You can't blame me for this,' he said.

'You are children playing with fire. How many times I told him: "Walk by the wall, feed your family, stay home, let them alone, look the other way, this is their time not ours, work hard and get us out of here, let me see the clouds above my country, Faraj, I want to look down and see it a distant map, reduced to lines, reduced to an idea. For your son's sake. In five years he'll be fourteen, they'll make a soldier out of him, send him to Chad." How many times I repeated it! "Five years!" he would mock. "In five years everything will be different." Now look where his recklessness has led us.'

'Bu Suleiman is an honourable man who wants a better Libya for you and for Suleiman.'

'And who does he think he is to want that,' Mama yelled back. Her voice was strained, it made it impossible to argue with her. 'They are mighty. He thinks he alone can beat them?'

'He's not alone.'

'Oh, my apology, I forgot about the handful of men with nothing better to do but hide together in a flat on Martyrs' Square and write pamphlets criticizing the regime. Why hasn't anybody thought of that, I wonder? Of course, that was the answer all along; how foolish of me. Look now where it has led you. A massacre is in the making. God knows if Rashid will make it, the poor man, stupid enough to believe your dreams.'

'They are his dreams too. Have hope, strengthen your heart.'

'Don't patronize me. You are all fools, including Rashid and Faraj. But no, I must be a good wife, loyal and unquestioning, support my man regardless. I'll support nothing that puts my son in danger. Faraj can fly after his dreams all he wants, but not me, I won't follow. I will get my son out of this place if it takes the last of me.'

Mama seemed to have boundless anger; all it needed was a word, a gesture, to come lashing out. Moosa seemed to know this; he kept his eyes on the table. She paced the room.

'Inflating his chest,' she said under her breath, then louder, 'Inflating his chest,' as if the first time was a thought, a rehearsal of what was to come. 'Yes, that's what you do when you sit at his feet, reading and rereading to him the newspaper articles that you know kindle the fire in his heart, urging him on, pushing -always pushing – and if the printed words weren't hot enough you would add in your own bits, because you need a hero, you need someone to pluck you out of your own failures, a pair of strong hands always there to rescue you and send you to places you don't belong, to be something, to prove to your good father that in the end you were right to go against his will, that unlike everyone else you don't need a university degree because you were destined for greatness, riding the wave, clutching the coat-tails of history, while all along you knew that the man you chose to lead you was no hero, but an ordinary man, a family man, inflating his chest, making him think he had powers he didn't have, that he could face the volcano, and you – what did you do? – beating the drum that urged him on, nudging him forward, forward.'

She sat opposite Moosa. I was sitting in between them. The kitchen table was still covered with breakfast. And suddenly she laughed. It was astonishing to hear her laugh at this moment.

'Even the location of the flat,' she said, 'your headquarters on Martyrs' Square, was your idea. How indiscreet! It's hardly out of the way, hardly underground, now, is it? Wasn't it you who told him that one day it'll be a museum?' Moosa stared wide-eyed at her. 'I remember now how you put it: "Like Sigmund Freud's home in London," you had told him, "like Constantine Cavafy's flat in Alexandria, where people have to pay to enter," stoking the fire. "Had to be conveniently located," you had argued. How considerate of you. That's what I call forward planning!' she said and laughed alone. We waited for her to stop.

I held my stomach, doubled over and began rocking.

'What's the matter?' Moosa asked.