Free Into a Raging Blaze by Andreas Norman, Ian Giles

dry.
    Jamal lived on the top floor of one of the apartment blocks in the Sjöstad district. The open-plan apartment was expansive, with panoramic windows offering a striking view of Stockholm’s southern suburbs, above which the dark night sky was filled with towering rain clouds. It was a quiet place. A lookout. The vaguely minimalist style reminded her of a business hotel. Jamal liked hotels, he had said. He liked it when things left little trace after themselves. The feeling of anonymity made him calm. It said BADAWI on his front door. His family came from Cairo. You couldn’t get further from Cairo than this peaceful suburb in south Stockholm.
    “You never need as many trinkets as you think,” he said once, when she’d asked why he had so little furniture. Half joking, half serious, he added that you should never own more than you could pack and carry away in three hours.
    Jamal’s cell rang. He disappeared into the bedroom and pulled the door shut behind him. She stayed sitting in the living room and looked out of the windows. He sounded agitated. She could hear him speaking low and fast, as if he feared being overheard. Sometimes he raised his voice in small outbursts that she didn’t understand aword of. He sounded different when he spoke Arabic, or perhaps it was just the person he was speaking to who made him sound like that—angry and sharp in a way she had never heard before. The conversation dragged on and eventually she became restless and got up. She heard his terse answers and then what sounded like an attempt at reassurance. Jamal didn’t normally leave the room when talking on the phone. But this didn’t seem to be any ordinary phone call. At the other end was someone who belonged in the other part of his life, the part he never mentioned and that they never talked about.
    Shamefully aware that she was eavesdropping, she moved toward the windows. Jamal never talked about Egypt. It was as if it was a dark secret within him, so hidden away that she almost forgot it existed. It struck her how little she actually knew about this part of his life. He had only mentioned his parents once. His father had had a legal practice in Cairo, he had said. But the father didn’t seem to be alive any longer, because Jamal had talked about him in the past tense. He never mentioned his mother; he said little about growing up in Cairo. Normally, she liked people to have a secret, something of their own. But, right now, all she felt was vague unease.
    She dropped into the sofa again and waited. The morning paper was lying on the coffee table. She leafed through the first part distractedly but nothing caught her interest and she put it down. It was then she caught sight of the small book: a thin volume with a yellow cover—worn and well used, as if it had been in someone’s coat pocket for many years.
    She picked it up, opening it carefully. A collection of poems, she thought with a smile. How lovely to think of Jamal sitting and reading Arabic poetry. What a shame that she didn’t understand what they said. All she could do was look at the rows of ornate characters that flowed into each other in beautiful, yet incomprehensible patterns. Perhaps they were religious texts. The thought that Jamal might be religious had never occurred to her. Perhaps he was a Muslim. To her, religion was something so alien that she hadn’t even considered the possibility. Although, presumably, he wasn’t allthat religious, she reflected immediately, because he drank wine. Then she felt ashamed of her anxious train of thought—as if it was a problem if he were a Muslim. The small, prejudiced worry that had pushed its way forward irritated her. She didn’t want to feel like that, didn’t want to be someone who thought like that.
    One section, in particular, was heavily read. The book opened by itself at a certain point. It was a long poem that stretched across several pages. The paper was well thumbed, discolored and a little glossy