Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.

But who knows their own child? You know bits - certain predictable reactions, a handful of familiar qualities. The rest is impenetrable. And quite right too. You give birth to them. You do not design them.

History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled.

Born in Jerusalem, Wadie Said went from being a dragoman to a salesman in the United States and thence to a hugely successful businessman in Egypt.

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.

All history, of course, is the history of wars.