“I left him and took myself off, having become certain about a fact which was later on to cost me much peace of mind: that in one form or another I was in love with Hosna Bint Mahmoud, the widow of Mustafa Sa’eed, and that I – like him and Wad Rayyes and millions of others – was not immune from the germ of contagion that oozes from the body of the universe.”
