Scene One
In the spacious hall of an old villa on the outskirts of Cairo, **Imam** sat before a large television screen that flickered endlessly with muted colors, broadcasting round-the-clock news of the war in Palestine. He seemed like a prisoner of that glowing box; his eyes fixed, unblinking, his fingers restless around a pack of cigarettes that never left his side, the falling ash piling up on the small table before him.
For weeks now, Imam—the d**g dealer, the abandoned child of the streets as people called him—had become a different man. No longer the hardened figure who cared for nothing but profit, he was suddenly swept by emotions unfamiliar to him. He grieved with the grief of the Palestinians, smiled faintly when a child was pulled alive from beneath the rubble, as if a long-
