I imagined an attack, an explosion, with his Pakistani friends from the mosque, as he [Bassam] called them; a revenge for the death of Bin Laden, a coup to destabilize Europe further at a time when it seemed to be wavering, cracking like a beautiful, fragile vase, vengeance for the dead Syrian children, for the dead Palestinian children, for dead children in general, that whole absurd rhetoric, the spiral of stupidity, or simply for the pleasure of destruction and fire, what do I know, I watched Bassam in his solitude and his seclusion, ricocheting like a billiard ball in the Street of Thieves against the sad whores, the addicts, the verminous, and the bearded men of the mosque, I saw him again absorbed in resentment in front of that decadent photograph on Rambla Catalunya, لعَلَّ السّاعَة تَ⇒ونُ قَريباً , I saw him ogling Maria’s sex on her doorstep, I pictured him carrying suitcases to Marrakesh, and as the killer with the sword in Tangier, and as a fighter in Mali or Afghanistan, or maybe none of the above, maybe just a man just like me lost in the whirl of the Carrer Robadors, a hollow man, a walking tomb, a man who sought in flames the end of an already dead world, a warrior from a theatre of shadows, … moved by the last breath of hatred, in a cottony emptiness, a cloud, a silent man, a mute man who would blow up in a train, in a plane, in a subway line, for no one, لعَلَّ السّاعَة تَ⇒ونُ قَريباً , perhaps the Hour is approaching, I saw Bassam’s perfectly round head in prayer, I no longer expected answers to my questions, no more answers, an unknown surgeon would soon open Judit’s skull to remove the disease from it, around us the world was on fire and Bassam was standing there, motionless like a snake charmer’s cobra, an empty man whose hour would soon toll, a soldier of despair who carried his corpses in his eyes …