Today he would become a man. His father had said it was time; after all, tomorrow, Sayid would leave for Cairo University. His hand now rested on the corroded rail of the cracked, concrete stairway as he gazed up at the apartment above. Outside, the sun was unobscured and blinding in its brilliance, but here there was darkness in the corners of a hallway that was illuminated only by a single overhead light. He pushed off the rail and stepped heavily up the stairs.

The room reeked of an unfamiliar mustiness that caused his stomach to turn just a little. He fought the sensation and looked around her tiny apartment: one bed, one vanity, one chair, one mirror, one nightstand, one closet. He realized that she must actually live here, but there were no personal effects except for a framed photograph, which lay face down on the nightstand. For a fleeting moment Sayid felt an almost overwhelming urge to right the frame. Who would peer forth from the photo? A child? Or, worse yet, a husband?

"Aren't you going to come in?" she asked.

He stepped through the door and closed it. She stood just against the bed. Her hair was thick, like Nadia's.

Now why had he thought of her? He hadn't talked to Nadia in years, not since puberty, not since the boys had been separated from the girls in school—that was the way it was done; otherwise there would be too many distractions, too many temptations. He had sometimes seen Nadia in the schoolyard after that, when the young women spilled out of class, and he stood leaning against the wall; he had seen her, but he had not spoken to her.

Nadia was a spoiled thing—smart, to be sure, but her daddy's riches entitled her to success whether she earned it or not. He supposed she did earn it, but she made it all seem so effortless as she glided across the schoolyard, the young men trailing after her at a cautious distance, waiting for a glance or a smile or a bone. Sayid did not follow. He always hung back at the wall. He had not neared her since childhood. She had humiliated him in those days, shoving him down in the dirt, and for what? Because she could? Because subjugation pleased her? She had always been a cipher to him, and puzzles were a waste of time. So why did he think of her now?

"You can come closer." The woman was smiling indulgently. He didn't want to be indulged. He wasn't a child. Not anymore. He wasn't some joke for girls to giggle over in the schoolyard. He stepped forward, boldly—he thought, but her condescending smile did not fade. He leaned in aggressively to kiss her, and she stopped him with a hand on his lips. "No, no," she scolded. "Kissing is too personal. It's extra." She dropped her hand. "Your father didn't pay for that."

She began to disrobe, and soon enough, she was standing naked before him. He had never seen a naked woman, except in that picture his friend Omar had somehow gotten from a Western magazine. That woman was nothing like this one. The woman in the magazine was blonde and air brushed and blue eyed and slender and tall—amazingly tall—and on weekends Sayid and Omar would race behind Omar's house, unearth the secret box, and draw her out. They would pass the picture back and forth and gloat to one another about how they would travel the world, find a woman just like her, and seduce her.

Omar said that when he was an oil sultan, he would take her on a king-sized bed in the Ritz Carlton right in front of the bubbling Jacuzzi. Sayid said he would have her on some secluded, Western beach, just as the surf was rolling in. He had never seen the ocean. He had never even seen a lake. But somehow, the scene sounded right to him. And Omar would always laugh, and tell him he was dreaming, and punch him on the shoulder, and then they would tussle, and Omar would pin him. Omar would always win because Sayid was the slower one, the weaker one, even though Omar was smaller. But that didn't matter. Sayid and Omar would both get into the elite Republican Guard: Omar on his merits, Sayid on his father's name.

Certainly Sayid was bright, but his father had made sure the young man understood that intelligence wasn't enough for the Republican Guard, not nearly enough. Sayid, his father had reminded him, wasn't the strongest of the boys. He wasn't the fastest. He wasn't the tallest. He couldn't shoot nearly as well as he should. His father had taken him shooting almost every week, but Sayid never held the gun exactly right: his grip was always a millimeter off; his position was always a centimeter too high; he never had his sights lined up quite right; and even when he managed to shoot a very close group, his father assured him it was mostly luck. But it didn't matter. After University, he would coast into the Republic Guard on his father's name, just as he was about to coast into manhood on his father's money.

"Aren't you going to do anything?" the woman asked.

Sayid blinked. She wasn't beautiful. Not really. Not like that nude photo of the Western woman. Not even like Nadia with all of her clothes on, her hair hidden by a scarf in those later days, the way it hadn't been when they were children.

"Well?" she asked.

It wasn't that he wasn't aroused. After all, a woman was standing there, exposed, and her body was well formed. But it was also real, and flawed, and marked. It was used.

"Aren't you going to do anything?"

The sunlight was painful. Little daggers pierced his eyes in jagged thrusts. He shielded them and walked quickly down the street. He heard his father's footsteps: hard and disciplined and falling fast behind him. In a moment the man was beside him. "Well?" he asked.

Sayid kept walking.

"Well? Aren't you going to thank me?"

Sayid lowered his hand to his side. He felt his father's eyes boring into him, reading him, examining him. His father snorted and turned the heat of his gaze away. "You didn't go through with it, did you?" he asked, the disdain dripping from his voice. "You couldn't even follow through with that." He stopped in the middle of the street and shook his head while Sayid kept walking.

"You like to waste my money, do you?" his father called after him. "Are you going to waste it in Cairo too? You think you got in because of your grades? Because of the test? Do you think that was enough? Do you really think being smart is enough? It takes money, too, Sayid. And if I have to teach you a little humility, I'll cut you off. Don't you forget it. In a heartbeat, I'll—"

Sayid kicked the dirt in the street. The cloud rose higher and faster than he expected, and he choked on the dust. But he worked it out with a determined cough, and then he turned a corner where his father's voice could not reach him.