My Eye is a Button on Your Dress: A Story from the collection, I Am Heathcliff. Hanan al-Shaykh

      We were in a nightclub called Aladdin, in Pyramid Street. I remember that everyone in the club was having a siesta, even the cats, as he had insisted on seeing me in the middle of the day. I was surprised when he asked to meet me there, and I suggested instead that we meet on the balcony of the Mina House Hotel, but he objected, and not as gently as usual.

      ‘No, no.’ And surrounded by the scary pictures of artistes, singers, and dancers, and the smell of cigarettes, he announced, the moment I sat down opposite him, that he loved me more than anyone else in the world, even more than he loved himself, and would love me for ever, for I had entered the pores of his skin and lived inside him, but that present circumstances were against us continuing our relationship.