“We’ll take care of Yunes,” he said. “Anyway, he no longer needs attention and the question of whether he should stay here is still on the table. I’m in the process of getting his papers ready for his transfer to Dar al-Ajazah.^* People like him are put there, not in a hospital. His condition’s hopeless, and clinically he’s dead.”

Do you see what that son-of-a-bitch doctor wants? He wants to throw you into a home. Yunes — Abu Salem, Izz al-Din, Adam — is to end up in Dar al-Ajazah? May lightening strike him! Do you know what this means? Listen to me, please. I didn’t promise Amjad that I’d consider the proposal seriously out of concern for myself. After all, what can they do to me? It’s God that decides when we die. I said I’d consider the proposal because the idea of that place struck terror in my heart. Do you know what moving you there would mean? You would rot alive — yes, you’d rot and the worms and the ulcers would devour you. I didn’t tell you about Adnan because I didn’t want to upset you, but I’m the only one who visited him, because they sent for me, and while I was there Dr. Karim Jaber showed me something horrifying.

“I’m not a relative of the patient,” I told him.

“Precisely,” he answered. “We reviewed his medical file and found the report you wrote, and we’d like to discuss his condition with you.”

When I said I knew nothing about neurological diseases, he eyed me with distaste and corrected me: Mr. Adnan’s illness was not neurological but psychiatric. He was suffering from schizophrenia and received electric shock therapy.

I’ll spare you the excruciating details of the doctor’s diagnosis since I was certain he understood absolutely nothing. He invited me to see Adnan and we walked through the place, which could have been called anything but a hospital.

Heaps of lunatics, the smells of lunatics, the sounds of lunatics.

Moans from every corner.

Moans rising like smoke.

In front of the cluster of slums that previously was the Sabra camp, there stands a dingy yellow building enclosed on all sides called Dar al-Ajazah.

In this enclosure, which isn’t part of our world, I walked and walked until I got to a room that looked nothing like other rooms and saw an old man tied up in chains; they told me it was Adnan.

We walked through the first floor, where the larger wards are. “Here,” said Dr. Karim, “is where we put the nondangerous patients.”

We walked among them. They clung to our clothes as though they wanted something they couldn’t articulate. The musty smell of food and the sight of the patients in their soiled white garments gave the impression that the rooms hadn’t been aired for years.

I told Dr. Karim that I could barely breathe because of the poor ventilation, but he just patted me on the shoulder, saying that the hospital had been built to the proper standards and was equivalent to the best in Europe.

“And the odor?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” he said. “It’s the natural odor of a group of people. Any indiscriminate mixture of humans or animals gives off a strong and penetrating odor, that’s all.”

We continued through the halls, which opened onto the patients’ rooms, and I noticed that they were all in pajamas. I wanted to ask why they weren’t wearing clothes, but I held back.

We went up to the second floor, and there I saw!

On the first floor the conditions were more or less humane. The patients’ rooms opened onto relatively large halls, and they could choose to stay with their companions in the hall or sit in their rooms, in each of which were four beds.

Upstairs was unbelievable.

We came first to a large ward full of cots with metal sides. “These are the incapacitated,” he said. Then we turned right and entered the hall of horrors. I saw thirty children tied to their beds, immobilized. “These are the mentally retarded,” he said with a smile.

“But this is torture,” I said.

“It’s better this way, for them and for us,” he replied.

He led me down the long corridor and said we were coming to the “dangerous” ward.

There I saw Adnan.

It wasn’t a ward, or a hall, or a room. It was a cluster of small, dark cells, and Adnan was tied with a metal chain to a bed fenced with metal bars. He was snoring.

The doctor went up to him and tried to wake him. “Adnan! Adnan!” he said.

The patient fidgeted and his snoring grew more staccato.

The doctor put his hand on the black metal siding surrounding Adnan’s bed and launched into a lengthy explanation of his case. He said they’d made a mistake. “It seems the doctor on duty didn’t read Adnan’s medical file carefully and had him tied down. You understand, the man had spent twenty years in solitary confinement under restraint, and when he saw the restraints here he went into convulsions, so the doctor was forced to give him shock therapy. Then he had him tied to his bed, and his condition began to deteriorate. He wouldn’t stop screaming and trying to attack the nurses, and he’s very lucky they didn’t kill him. These errors can occur, of course, but as soon as I got back, I took things in hand. As you can see, there’s not much hope and his condition’s getting worse.”

“But he’s still tied up!” I said.

“Of course, of course,” answered the doctor. “I was away, as I told you, and I had no choice but to tie him up so he wouldn’t endanger himself and the nurses.”

“You ordered this?”

“Yes, Sir, absolutely. As you can see, the physician can be forced to take harsh measures. What could I do? As soon as I undid his restraints, he started beating one of the nurses and fractured his hand. So I ordered him to be taken back to shock therapy and tied down.”

“But he’s half-dead now!”

“Precisely. That’s why I called you in,” replied Dr. Karim. “I don’t think he’ll get up again after the last shock treatment. I’d like you to get in touch with his family and explain the situation to them so they can come visit him before he dies. Maybe if he sees one of his children he’ll improve a little. Can you get in touch with them?”

That’s where Dr. Amjad wants to send you — to the place where they chained Adnan up, tortured and killed him; to the place where Adnan hovered on the verge of death for six months between the shock-therapy room and his cell before taking his last breath.

“Impossible!” I said to Amjad.

I told him I’d give the matter some thought, gave him the impression that I would accept, and then implored him to leave you here. I said it was a scandal. I begged. I insisted that it was out of the question.

I talked and talked and talked, I forget now what I said. I begged him not to transfer you to the home, and he promised to reconsider, so I felt better. I left his office in good spirits, but now I am sad.

I’m here before you confused, scared, despairing.

But in Amjad’s office I was pleased that he would reconsider the situation, which meant that I’d remain here, and if I stay you stay, or vice versa.

When he does reconsider, he’ll realize that he can’t expel you from the hospital because that would be shameful. True, the hospital resembles a prison, and true, we’re both prisoners here, but it’s better than dying.

But no.

I shouldn’t have given in to his conditions. I should have threatened him, don’t you think?

In your room I saw the scene with new eyes, and I imagined what I should have said and said it, or basically did.

It was 9 a.m. and I’d finished giving you your morning bath and was standing in front of the window drinking tea and smoking an American cigarette when I found Zainab in the room.

She said Dr. Amjad was expecting me.

I threw my cigarette out the window, put the teacup on the table and followed her. The doctor was reading the newspaper. He moved it a little to one side, said, “Please sit down,” and went on with his reading. I accepted his kind invitation, sat down, and waited. But he didn’t interrupt his reading, muttering in disapproval as he read. Finally he threw the paper onto the desk, greeted me, and fell silent again.