He picked up a pencil and began to scribble something on a sheet of paper. He wasn’t writing: he was drawing. But not in the unthinking manner of an angry man. I could see the hint of a self-assured smile beneath that blond moustache, and at the corners of his mouth. His hand was moving swiftly across the page. He kept narrowing his eyes, to look at it more closely. I could tell from that confident smile of his that he was pleased with what he saw. Finally, he put down his pencil, to study it more carefully, while I stared at him, unabashed. For now he was wearing an expression I had never seen before. The sort of expression that people wear only when they are grieving for someone. My surprise made me curious. I couldn’t keep still. I was just about to stand up when he rose from his chair, and went off to find the secretaries again. In one leap, I was at his desk, I reached for the page. Then I froze, bewildered.

For here was a sketch, the size of a palm, of Hamdi. In a few masterful lines, he had captured the man’s essence. Perhaps someone else would not have seen the resemblance; perhaps, looking at it line by line, the resemblance disappeared, but for someone who had just watched Hamdi hollering in this same room, there was no mistaking him. The mouth was an unspeakably vulgar rectangle, howling with an animal rage. In the eyes – two dashes – I could see both the desire to bore a hole through the object of his fury, and the frustration of failing to do so. The nose, squashed against his cheeks, made him look even more savage … Yes, this was the man who had stormed into this room only minutes earlier, or rather, this was the likeness of his soul. But this was not what had left me stunned. Since coming to this firm, many months before, I had made a string of judgements about Hamdi. Sometimes I had tried to make excuses for him, but mostly I’d been thinking ill of him. Unable to find the old friend in the man of consequence, I could see neither. But now Raif Efendi had summed him up in just a few well-placed lines, and I could no longer see Hamdi in the same way. Despite his wild and primitive expression, there was something pitiable there too. Nowhere had I seen the line between cruelty and wretchedness so clearly drawn. It was as if I were seeing my friend of ten years for the first time.

At the same time, and in one flash, this drawing explained Raif Efendi to me. For now I could well understand his unwavering serenity and his reluctance to form relationships. For how could a man so intimately acquainted with his surroundings, and so clear and sharp in his observations of others, ever know anger or excitement? What choice did a man like this have, in the face of small-minded attacks, but to stand firm like a rock? Our longings, our disappointments, our fits of rage – we succumb to them when something unexpected happens to us, something that seems to make no sense.