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rootless exiles. They change continuously as if there’s a factory producing new versions all the time. They’re like nouns and verbs ungoverned by rules, indeclinable, or arithmetical problems where numbers and logic interweave and every time the teacher and the studentthink of solving them together their brain cells hit a concrete wall, so they despair and leave them unsolved, for today’s enemies are tomorrow’s allies and vice versa.
    Even though my only solution is to feel resentment towards everyone, like the hostages, I have no alternative but to follow the uncomfortable daily routine. I read, play cards, grow bored with reading, puzzle over chess moves. I play cards alone, seeing a pattern emerge from the numbers, which I both believe and disbelieve.
    Again I shake my head as the hostages do, finding no rhyme or reason in it all. Who kidnapped them? Who’s kidnapping me? Is this a civil war, an international war, or a capitalist war? It’s odd how I grow accustomed to this routine, how they do, how hope remains that times will change and new life return.
    All the same, I’m always thinking about death. It’s there, and sometimes it’s coming towards me. I open my eyes or keep them closed, depending on whether I’m interested in seeing and eating and staying alive or indifferent and without hope. In this game of mine, when my eyes are open I see the crumbling walls of my room, the new windowpane, which is actually a thick plastic bag, and the marks left by the mirror which splintered and scattered on the floor in an earlier round of fighting. So far I haven’t thought of painting over the place where it hung. For now people don’t even renew the façades of their houses. I leave everything as it is. Like the hostages, I don’t think about trying to achieve anything.
    If I wanted to recall exactly how I was kidnapped, I’d have to go back a few years to the time I took cover in the shelter and the shock of realization that hit me as I crouchedthere. I’d only gone down there for the sake of my friend Hayat, who’d arrived on a visit to be greeted by a flare-up of violence. She was terrified, like a passenger in an aircraft which was about to explode in midair. She hid her head in my lap, and I tried not to think about the stale smell of the shelter. As I huddled there motionless, looking at the rank walls, I knew I wasn’t free. I swore to myself that I would never willingly let this feeling take me over, that I had to confront it.
    Looking back, I think I was kidnapped twice. The second time, I was driving through winding streets, some partly cordoned off to protect an embassy, a hospital, a party headquarters. Among the cars, which were missing paint and headlights, I was queen of the road and I nudged and pushed and kept my hand on the horn until I reached Simon’s building. The trembling in me surged ahead of me as I ran to find him. I was happy. My meetings with Simon gave me a feeling of warmth and excitement, snatching me right out of the city as it surged back and forth between uproar and fragrant calm. For Simon was the noise at the heart of events and at the same time he was, like me, outside them. Our eyes shone and our breathing grew faster whenever we were close to one another. I waited until we lay down naked on the sofa. Then the drugged sensation and the love took over, and the feeling that I wanted to have my pleasure whatever happened. It is only when we got up and dressed that I knew I didn’t love him.
    I was still indulging in pleasant fantasies of what lay ahead of me when the traffic came to a halt. There was a sound of firing, and people vanished, abandoning their carsso that the street was transformed into a frightening, noisy garage. As I hesitated, trying to decide whether to go back home or keep on to Simon’s, a gang of youths fell on the car and hauled me out, and drove off leaving me alone there, dumbfounded at the sight of my beloved car submitting to someone else’s