He's up early and touching up his beard with a comb in the mirror. He has a long thin nose and wide nostrils; he holds his chin up to the light to inspect his teeth. A shred of chicken is dislodged from between his upper teeth with the sharp end of a splinter from the window sill. Outside it is not quite morning. The dogs are still prowling the alley below, sniffing at the cans lining the back of a storage shed. Barking is heard down the street, and a light goes on over the tanner's shop. He can see the old man beginning to move about, putting on his soiled apron and arranging his shirt. The day is not far off. The night was slow, grinding along on rusty stars. The first patrol will come down the street with the Americans hanging off the sides of the jeep from the weight of their assault guns. He knows their routine; it is always the same thing. A slowing down before the first apartment block, and then stopping to turn off the headlights, to wait. A man will come out in black clothes and speak to them briefly. Then they'll go again, slowly, down the street, looking up to see who is watching. He knows to turn out the sink lamp and lean on the wall. Afterward, the light creeps up over the rooftops, little by little, making inky shadows of the antennas, filling in the murky details of the old bird sheds, the standing pools of water from the rain last night. All things sharply etched, until that last dull wire gets its brush of gold and fades again into the bleached daylight. Stirrings below, old men and women getting up to feed themselves. Prayer among the school children in the courtyard behind, their voices rising up the air shaft and coming through the walls with that mushy, indistinct murmur of pigeons. Under the bed, a collection of old shoes, a box of letters, some towels he has been hoarding against the day he will live in the basement, where there is only the leaking water from a pipe, no sinks. That is always a boundary of his future. He prepares a small amount of coffee from a tin, placing his dented saucepan over a Primus stove, putting out the saucer of coarse sugar and his smudged glass. The city awakens with a clatter of donkey hooves, the coughing of a truck. He sits on his rumpled sheets and drinks the coffee, staring out into the brilliance.