It was a steamingly hot July night, the Nile that year having experienced one of those floodings that occur once every twenty or thirty years and bec… - al-Tayyib Salih

But I would hope you will not entertain the idea, dear sirs, that Mustafa Sa'eed had become an obsession that was ever with me in my comings and goings. Sometimes months would pass without his crossing my mind. In any case, he had died, by drowning or by suicide - God alone knows.

I had not thought of the boys during the whole of the ghastly journey. I had been thinking of her. Again I said to Mahjoub: 'What happened?'

They are my responsibility, and one of the reasons that brings me here each year is to see how they are getting on.