Heart of the Night

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I looked at him closely and said, “I remember you very well.” b He bent over my desk, his foggy sight fixed on me. His proximity, his roaming look, and his efforts to see clearly, revealed his weak eyesight. Seeming unaware of his closeness to me and the small size of the quiet room, he said in a harsh, high-pitched tone, “You do! I do not trust my memory anymore, and on top of that I do not see very well.”

“The days of Khan Jaafar cannot be forgotten!” I said.

“Welcome. You are from that district then?”

I introduced myself and invited him to sit down. He said, “We do not belong to the same generation but there are things impossible to forget.” He sat down. “I believe I changed completely. Time has placed on my face an ugly mask of its own making, not the one my father gave me.”

He proudly introduced himself, though he did not need to. “Al-Rawi. I am Jaafar al-Rawi, Jaafar Ibrahim Sayyid al-Rawi.”

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