'This Nasser character isn't very friendly, is he, Suleiman,' the voice said calmly. I laughed because what he said sounded funny in contrast to Nasser 's desperation. The returning echo of my laughter sounded sinister.

'Don't listen to what he tells you. Hang up, I said,' Nasser shouted.

I heard the other voice say to himself or to someone else beside him or maybe to me, 'This Nasser character likes to play games.'

'Hangup!'

'No, I am not hanging up, you hang up if you want.' My words travelled between them like an arrow, uninterrupted.

The voice exploded in laughter again. Nasser 's line went dead. The voice stopped laughing and listened with me to the unending dial tone. After a couple of seconds, just when I was about to hang up, he said, 'You are wonderful, boy.' I didn't know how to respond. 'Tell me,' he said in a way as if we were old friends. 'How's your mother? You have such a beautiful mother, you know.' I felt my neck stiffen. Then he laughed and repeated what I had said to Nasser, It was Mama who told me to tell you she isn't.. ., and laughed again. My heart quickened and time seemed to slow down. 'Ah yes,' he said, catching his breath, 'what a beautiful mother you have. Great tea she makes, wonderful harisa. There's nothing like home-made harisa.' I suddenly recalled how on the day she minced the red chilli peppers Mama would bar me from entering the kitchen because of how the heat, she said, could burn my eyes. She wore gloves and wrapped a scarf round her mouth and nose like a robber. 'You should be thankful for a mother like that. Are you thankful, Suleiman?' I nodded twice. 'Tell her that if she ever needs drinking company, to call on me. Tell her I too get my medicine from that scoundrel, Majdi. Thank God for Majdi.'

I threw the receiver down. My heart raced like a mouse trapped in a wheel. I stood stiff by the telephone, unable to move. It rang again.

'Hello,' I said, hearing the tremor in my voice repeated by the echo.

'Slooma?' It was Nasser. He was whispering.

' Nasser. Thank God it's you. Who was that man? How come he knew us? He knew things nobody knows. Who is he?' We were brothers now.

'Did you hang up on him like I told you to?'

'Yes.'

'Good boy. Now listen, there isn't much time, I need you to give a message to your mother.' He was still whispering. I didn't like him calling me 'Good boy' but I had never felt such affection for Nasser as I did now. 'Tell her that we are doing all we can to find Ustath Faraj, we don't know where he is, he hasn't turned up here.' I imagined him speaking from the flat on Martyrs' Square. 'We have been expecting him… do you know where he is?'

'Why don't you stuff this telephone up your arse, fucker,' the voice returned again.

'Hang up, Suleiman,' Nasser shouted, and this time I hung up immediately. But as soon as I did, the telephone rang in an odd continuous ring. Fearing it would disturb Mama, I picked it up. It was the same man. His voice was clear, the echo now gone. 'Listen, boy. Do you know Nasser 's family name?' I said nothing, but then he shouted, 'Speak up.'

'No,' I said, remembering Ustath Rashid's interrogation on television.

'Do you know where he lives?'

'No.' Then, fearing what he might say next, I said, 'Yes.'

'Good,' the man said and I thought it was over, but then he said, 'Look, Suleiman, this is how this works. You will tell me where Nasser lives, and I will write it down. OK?' I felt my head nod, then, as if he could see me, he said, 'OK.'

After a short silence he shouted, 'Speak, boy.'

'You know where Martyrs' Square is?'

'Yes,' he said so softly it astonished me.

'He lives in one of the buildings there.' Then in a lame attempt at retreating I said, 'I think. I am not sure.'

'But of course you are… sure,' he said with confidence. I was confused. The pause before the word 'sure' seemed so deliberate I wondered whether he meant of course I was not sure, or of course I was sure. 'And which building on Martyrs' Square are you not sure he lives in?' he said.

'The one right on the square.' His silence was heavy, so empty I felt I had to say more. 'It has green shutters. His is on the top floor, with a red towel on the clothesline in front of the window.'

'Good,' the man said. Then he added, and again I didn't know whether he was speaking to me or to someone else beside him or even to himself, 'The red towel, that's the code, the bastards.'

' Nasser is a very nice person,' I added. But he had hung up.

The afternoon was lending itself to evening. Mama lay in her room dozing. I lay in my bed and, although I couldn't see him, I knew that Sharief was still there, loyal, waiting in his white car, the sun dimming around him, hoping I would remember names or bring the book I had mentioned and place it in his hands, the book that was still beneath my mattress, beneath the place where I slept and dreamed. The book had begun to annoy me like a stone in my shoe, and I felt I couldn't rest until I gave it to him or got rid of it somehow.

The window in my room was open. From where I lay I could see the sky blue and solid above the white garden wall made golden by the sun, the line where they met red and black, a trick of the light. Staring into the sky often made me thirsty; now it was causing a place in my chest to tickle. I wondered how it would be to fly, to be inside the solid blue. One day Baba will take me with him on a business trip, I was certain. I will dress in a suit and tie and walk beside him like a shadow, his 'right hand'. When we board the plane I won't be impressed because flying will be normal to me by then. We will sit and not even look out of the window, busy with more important matters written in long slim columns in newspapers. I will then be a man, heavy with the world. I imagined my life without Baba, I imagined doing all of these things alone, and the tickling in my chest stopped. I hardly ever did something alone with Baba, and to give up this one fantasy saddened me. He was away so often, and when home he was usually distracted by a book or a newspaper. I was perplexed whenever I caught him looking at me with longing.

The only activity Baba and I did alone was the walk together to the mosque on Fridays. Although Mama never herself prayed or insisted that I did, she was still proud to see me dressed in my white jallabia and cap, holding Baba's hand, musked and ready for prayer: a miniature replica of Baba. I didn't look forward to Friday prayer and was always happy when it was over, but I did like the walk with him. I remember holding his hand and squinting against the bright noon sun, our white jallabias glowing in the heat. He was always silent during these walks, no doubt refraining from speech in order to listen to the Quran as it blared off the minaret speaker, recited by Sheikh Mustafa, too loud to be understood. Many times during the prayer I remained standing while all the worshipers bowed. Watching the entire place change colour, I felt frightened to be the only one in the world seeing them like this: a carpet of hunched white backs like seagulls grooming their chests. After the prayer Baba enjoyed introducing me to his friends. They thought it sweet that I was dressed like him. I never went to prayer when Baba was away.

When he was home, Baba seemed distant. Away he seemed closer somehow, more alive in my thoughts. For this reason it was strange when Mama merged us together. She did this by using the plural form of'you'. 'You always leave me alone,' she would say, after I'd come in from playing in the street, meaning both of us, using the you that made Baba and me inseparable. It obliged me to defend him, to say, 'But Baba is working hard for us,' when I had no idea whether he was working hard for us or not. I defended him because I was defending myself. But I know now that that, of course, made us indistinguishable, the man who was her punishment and the boy that sealed her fate.