Recently, a young man of nineteen or twenty years old came to live in the upper room of the house adjacent to mine. I reckon he is a student from the upper or middle schools in Egypt, for I used to see him from the window of my office room, and some of the windows of his room were very close to mine. I would see before me a pale, thin, withdrawn young man sitting at a desk lamp in one of the corners of the room, looking at a book, or writing in a notebook, or memorizing a passage, or reviewing a lesson. I didn’t pay much attention to his affairs until I returned to my house a few days ago after midnight on a cold winter night. I entered my office room for some matters, and the light shone upon him. There he was, sitting in that same position in front of his companion (perhaps a book or notebook), with his face leaning over an open notebook on his desk. I thought that perhaps due to the fatigue of studying and the pain of staying up late, a drowsiness had overcome his eyelids, preventing him from going to his bed, and he had fallen asleep in his place. I didn’t move from my spot until he raised his head, and then I saw that his eyes were stained with tears, and the page of his notebook on which he had been leaning had been wet with his tears, which had erased some of its words and mingled some of its ink with others. Then, it was not long before he regained himself, picked up his pen, and returned to the matter he was engaged in.
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