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have gotten depressed after that, and people thought he’d gone crazy, because “shame on him for what he did, there is a God after all! Really, there is a God.” (She says that matter-of-factly rather than contemplatively.) “Plus, how can he sleep in peace? Of course he going to go crazy. There’s nobody in the neighborhood—we all jammed in there together you know—nobody talk to him no more. The man who works at the grocery store next to our house is like a brother to me and more, he watch out for Mom when I’m away. He told my brother: ‘Don’t come here no more. Shame on you. The house is for the two girls’” (Koko explains: he meant me and my sister). “I’m the one who paid for the house! Yeah, he told him that if he goes to his store he breaks both his legs! Yeah! Because he did wrong, nobody talking to him now.” (She gets worked up and raises her voice, abandoning her commitment to her morning whispering, but I don’t interrupt her). “It’s all his wife’s doing! My brother was good man, and I loved him a lot and he loved me. This is all because of his wife, the cow! She teach at the university you know.” (I get shocked by what she says, and check to see if I heard correctly. She pauses for a dramatic effect, then repeats what she said.) “Yes, yes, yes! A university professor, so not an idiot! A lot of learning in her!” (As in, she’s very educated.) “But she greedy, shame on her; it’s not right what she did!”

Then, all of a sudden, she looks at me as if she were seeing me for the first time, and scoffs: “Look at you! Go take a shower!”

Given the state of my appearance, I let her boss me around this time and don’t fire off a comeback. All right, I’ll shower, miss know-it-all, maybe the water will wash off me the dust of the night before.

I stand naked in the bathtub and let the affectionate drops of water fall on me.

I feel safe under the water. Alone here, the drops create all my sounds and bounds and thoughts. I close my eyes, silently surrendering to the internal universe that inhabits every person, including me. Here, my internal world can safely come out. And I can settle its unresolved problems. They slip down my skin. Their traces wash off me as if they never existed.

I conjure up last night, so I can rinse it off.

Now the loud voice in the bar gets louder . . .

We were four young women; beautiful, charming, intelligent, of course. Each of us had a look of her own, her own style.

We ventured beyond Hamra Street this time. We were determined to break our evening routine and change our mood.

Stay fresh, we’re on a trip! That was our night’s slogan that we’d taken from the Egyptian movie Saidi at the American University. And we were truly fresh on our trip to Achrafieh, which was only a five-minute drive from Hamra by night. But distance is not measured in length only, just as time is not measured only by the hands of a clock. We reached the door of a quiet pub, Time Out, suitable for the three of us and our thirty-something selves that were quickly catching up with us (I’m thirty-two all of a sudden). Zeezee, who was our youngest (twenty-eight) and had to do what we asked of her, went inside to see if there was a table for us.

We were weary of life and our bodies were no longer what they once had been, so she had to respect our opinions, experiences, and advice, which we were never too shy to give whether she asked for them or not. And part of respecting our seniority was to never ask us to party more than our energy allowed. The concept of partying itself had become more than our energy could allow anyway. God we were growing old! Quelle horreur!

Zeezee came back to tell us that there were tables available, but that the pub would close in an hour. That was what the waiter had told her in an attempt, and not a particularly subtle one, to get rid of her. What? Had somebody told him we planned to move in, lay down carpets, and grow old in his pub? Maybe he was right to say that, though. It was getting late after all. But why limit ourselves to one hour, when we were feeling this fraiche.

We hadn’t discussed whether we should stay before we set out in the car. Zeezee had made it clear in her way, sounding like our friend Shwikar, that staying was out of the question, and that was that. As if, maybe, it was shameful to consider an hour enough time to party outside Hamra. And our conviction that it was, verified our physical and emotional old age. Thirty-two was suddenly a very earnest number. Or maybe it was me who felt that way, and that my three other friends were, deep down, true party animals bewitched by the night and ready to catch the morning stars with the palms of their hands.

Shwikar said: “Should we head to Pacifico?”

Ooh la la!

When we were younger, in our late teens, we used to go to Pacifico a lot, addictively a lot. But, even then, the reason it was so special to us was that it was a bar that attracted an older crowd, even if only slightly, even if suggestively. And sure enough, it had a dining area that older people ate in, or, to be precise, richer people. Its prices were not suitable for those with a limited income (and we were still university students back then). I had a friend who used to pay the bartender with kisses. She liked the bartender and he liked her, so we used to go to the bar during his night shifts. We