The days that followed seemed muffled by dread. Anything that was said in them seemed meaningless and empty. I often felt a quiet anger rise in me, and heard the door slam behind me when I only meant to close it. The first few times this happened I went to where Mama and Baba were and looked at them, expecting one of them to tell me off, but neither did. When I helped Mama set the dining table I let the plates fall loudly. And I often threw my shoe at the wall when its lace refused to become untangled. I sensed a silent, nervous wave ripple around these sudden outbursts, making me feel that my influence in this world might not be as insignificant as I had thought. And sometimes, when I was in the bathroom and had flushed the toilet, I heard, in the hiss of the cistern filling up, Mama's voice calling me. The first few times this happened I would walk out in an anxious hurry, yelling, 'Mama?' the silence seeming endless before I got her voice asking, 'Yes, is anything the matter?'

Moosa didn't visit. Once he called, the line crackling, 'Slooma,' I heard him say, then, 'Where's Mama?' It wasn't like him to be so brief. Mama rushed to the telephone, then snapped her fingers and pointed at the pen and pad. I handed them to her. She wrote something down quickly, asking, 'Is it a good school? Are you sure?' Then they were cut off.

One exceptionally warm night I woke up from a bad dream. There was no story, just a deep trembling dread hot in my chest. I saw a soft light coming from the sitting room. I couldn't hear Baba snoring. Mama was spread on the sofa, the covers were off, the window beside her wide open. A cricket outside was piercing the night. There was no room to lie beside her. I stood for a moment, considering my options, then I lay on top of her. I hugged her. She woke up with a sudden jolt. 'In the name of God,' she mumbled quickly, her hand against her chest, her eyes squinting at me. 'Suleiman? What are you doing here? Did you have a bad dream?' She took me by the hand back to my room, turned on the beside lamp, kissed me on the forehead and left.

She never fell ill. She never came to my bed to whisper her secret stories of the past. She seemed quite happy with Baba. Some mornings I even heard them giggle together, but when they saw me they stopped. Their new life together, where Baba never went away and Mama was never ill, distanced me from them, and I began, for the first time ever, to long for the summer to end and for school to begin.

One night I was awakened by the sound of a strange moan. I went to their room and saw Baba on top of her again. But this time it was different. Mama didn't lie beneath helpless, her face turned away, with one hand secretly stretched beside her and open towards the sky. Her eyes were glued to his and her legs curled round him, and the moan wasn't his alone; they both shared the pain, it seemed. I didn't wonder this time whether I should intervene. Nothing, it seemed, could stop them. I wanted to take a step further into the room. Maybe if they see me they will stop, I wondered. I wanted them to stop, or pause for a moment.

I ran out through the kitchen, slamming the door behind me, and up to the roof, hiding where my workshop was. The sky was full of stars, I saw them blur beyond my tears, but there was no moon. I am safe, I thought, they wouldn't be able to see me even if they came up here. I waited, breathing as quietly as I could, hugging my knees and the salty smell of their skin. I recalled Sheikh Mustafa's words: 'These bodies are our vehicle, they will perish while we will continue.' I expected Baba, half naked, his waist wrapped in a towel, to climb up to the roof, angrily calling out my name, followed by Mama, begging him not to hurt me. But no one came. I dried my face and went back. Suddenly the darkness frightened me, and I ran, ran, expecting a hand to reach out and grab me round the neck. I sneaked into the kitchen and tiptoed to my room. Their light was still on, they were awake, talking, discussing something in whispers that Mama in particular was barely able to keep down, not angry, but urgent, excited almost. I slammed my bedroom door behind me.

After a few minutes Mama came in and watched me in the faint light that came from their room. I looked straight back at her, not pretending to be asleep, not pretending anything. She closed the door behind her and went back to Baba. I heard them resume their whispered conversation.

The following morning I felt Mama's weight sink beside me on the bed, then her fingers in my hair. 'You are going on a trip,' she said, 'to Cairo, to visit Moosa and his family and see the Pyramids.'

'But Moosa is here,' I said, my voice made older by sleep.

'He left a couple of weeks ago. He said to tell you he can't wait to see you in Cairo.'

I turned away from her.

'What's the matter, don't you want to see the Pyramids? They are much bigger than Lepcis.'

'I don't want to go,' I cried.

Baba came and hugged me. 'Come, Slooma,' he said.

'Many people would die to see the Pyramids,' Mama said.

'I don't want the Pyramids.'

'You always wanted to fly though, didn't you?' Baba said.

I nodded. 'But school starts soon.'

They both looked at each other and, as if considering carefully what he was going to say, Baba said, 'You will love Cairo,' his voice cut by grief.

They drove me to the airport, arguing about which way to go: Baba wanting to take the direct route, Mama insisting we go via Martyrs' Square. There was something she wanted to buy from there, she said. I was made to sit beside him, she sat in the back. The only time we had sat like this was four years before, when I was five, when they had driven me back from hospital. I had been wearing a white jallabia, the part in front of my groin stained blue-red with iodine. I kept my legs open to relieve the pain, sitting in the front, where there was more leg room, Mama behind, clapping, singing the usual songs. I remembered how I trembled from the shock, from the violation.

Martyrs' Square was thick with people. The sun as wide as the world. Baba parked beside the square.

'I won't be a minute,' Mama said, crossed the square and disappeared.

Baba's hands were clutched round the steering wheel. He had turned the engine off, but the indicator was still ticking. He stared blankly ahead.

I watched the square, thinking about Nasser. I recalled what his father had said in our house: 'People told me they saw a young man run across the square with a typewriter under his arm, chased by a group of Revolutionary Committee men.' I pictured him with his type writer, black and shiny, the same one he had under his arm when I spotted him following Baba into their 'headquarters', their secret location on the square, running barefoot, his eyes wide open with fear, his shirt full of air, for a moment hesitating – 'This way? No, that?' -before turning into the market, hoping to vanish amid the crowds, when one of his pursuers catches him by the shirt, causing him to turn so fast and the typewriter to fly to one side, the same typewriter on which he had tried, at Baba's request, to teach me how to type, his hands above his head now in anticipation, like Ustath Rashid just before he was kicked in the behind – I think now that perhaps anticipation is the root, the source, of all misfortune – screaming like a horse, the way Bahloul the beggar had done, falling to the ground, the rest of his pursuers catching up with him, kicking him with authority, he is yelling now, calling out for his father to come and rescue him because it was all too much too soon, begging, crying, at one moment his face becomes visible through the forest of legs, a line of blood above one eye, the lower lip as fat as a baby aubergine like Baba's was. Why did we have so much respect for the sight of blood? Why is the sun so unforgiving? 'Where is Nasser?' I asked out loud. Baba seemed to wake up from his thoughts. 'Where is Nasser?' I yelled at him. 'Did they kill him too?' He stared at me, his eyes frightened. I thought of clapping my hands in front of him, but instead dived into him. His body yielded. He held me, folded on to me. I remembered Ustath Rashid holding Kareem like this on the bus back from Lepcis, beautiful Lepcis. 'I don't want to leave, I don't want to see the Pyramids,' I tried to say, but my voice was muffled by his clothes.