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

The world has turned suddenly upside down. Love? Love does not do this. This is hatred. I feel hatred and seek revenge; my adversary is within and I needs (sic) must confront him. Even so, there is still in my mind a modicum of sense that is aware of the irony of the situation. I begin from where Mustafa Sa'eed had left off. Yet he at least made a choice, while I have chosen nothing.

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.

To the people, he is not a person, but an institution