The narrator begins his story with his return to his home, a “small village at the bend of the Nile” (3) after seven years studying in Europe. He had “longed” for his fellow villagers, but upon arriving, he feels a strange sense of separation that does not clear until the next morning. Just as he begins to feel rooted in his new reality, he recalls that a man he had never met was present at his arrival. He learns from his father that the man is Mustafa Sa’eed, a foreigner who has married Mahmoud’s daughter Hosna. Unsettled, he continues to search for a sense of stability and goes to his grandfather, who is able to give him more information about the man. He learns Mustafa is from Khartoum and well respected within the village. 

The narrator’s next two months send him into frequent contact with the stranger: First, Mustafa visits him at home, laughing when he learns the narrator completed his thesis on an English poet and thus earning the narrator’s ire. The narrator dines at Mustafa’s home and notes his intelligence at a meeting of the Agricultural Project Committee. He remains suspicious of the man but is utterly stunned when he encounters him at a bar.