The stillness when Sarah left was a physical weight. It fell on Dawud harder than mobs' fear, harder than clerics' words. He had chosen the myth over the woman, the System over the simple, human touch. Whether this decision was right or wrong was a philosophical luxury he could no longer afford. It just was a hard, cold fact in the empty room.
He stood up, driven by a numb survival reflex. The printer's shop was gone the moment he'd sat through the meeting with the corporate types. He took the bare essentials—the data-slate, the satphone, a water bottle—and melted into Cairo night, a specter among specters.
He descended into the maze of slums of Manshiyat Naser, the "Garbage City," where the forgotten survived on the detritus of the city above. It was a fortress of despair, its narrow, s
