Port Sudan. “It was in Port Sudan that I learned about A’s death. Postal conditions in these countries are such that this news reached me long after my friend had passed away. A clerk in rags, with a face disfigured by leprosy, the owner of a large black revolver tied to his belt with a braided buffalo whip, handed me a letter at the end of the day. His lipless face with rooster-crested ears bore the stamp of an eternal grin. It seemed that his body was hewn from the sardonic tree of the dance of death. Like almost everyone who survived in this city, his main occupation was racketeering and murder. How he managed to get the envelope, I don’t know. Maybe he stole it from Death itself.”