As he walked with heavy steps out of a bar Kamil al-Mihsal was arrested in the middle of the night and accused of being an important member of a secret religious organization that was responsible for many assassinations. He felt fear and surprise at the same time, but his surprise got the better of his fear, and he laughed and laughed until slaps, blows, and kicks descended upon him. He begged his interrogators to ask about him and his way of life, for he had never once gone into a mosque. He gambled and got drunk every night, had to be carried home, and had no concern in life other than chasing and winning beautiful women. But the interrogators mocked his explanations, claiming they were nothing more than a very craftily designed mask behind which he hid in order to commit the ugliest deeds.
Kamil al-Mihsal spent many months between life and death in the dungeons of the interrogators, where he was pressed to disclose what he did not know and had no connection with, and was then left in prison for many years until he was convinced he would get out only after he was dead.
Unexpectedly, the government came to a secret agreement with clandestine religious organizations and started to release their members from prison, but no one paid any attention to Kamil al-Mihsal. He complained, protested, and pleaded, but was told contemptuously and firmly that he was a debauched non-believer and had no connection with religion and politics and therefore could not benefit from the formal accord just reached. He was angry and decided to escape, and did escape from a prison which no one had been able to escape from before. His fellow prisoners were envious because he would now be able to breathe fresh air not as a prisoner but as a free man. The official agencies in charge went absolutely mad. They considered what had taken place a challenge to their authority and a diminution of its awe-inspiring power. They issued orders to have him arrested again and brought back to his cell beaten and broken and bound up with the heaviest of shackles. Their merciless men spread like excited wasps in search of him. They broke into homes at night and interrogated anyone who was thought to have any connection with Kamil al-Mihsal, but they never succeeded in catching him. It seemed he had evaporated. Of course he was not water that can evaporate but was so brilliant at disguise that even his own mother would not have been able to recognize him. If he had stopped her in the street and said he was her son she would have denied it angrily and hostilely. He could also forge whatever papers and official documents he needed, and had enough money to live comfortably, feeling at ease in the world outside a prison which now appeared novel, attractive, ambiguous, savage, and confusing, and worthy of being taken by storm.
The official agencies in charge despaired of catching Kamil al-Mihsal and circulated rumors that claimed he had either fled to a foreign country or had been secretly murdered by partners in crime whom he had betrayed. Yet Kamil al-Mihsal was not murdered and did not emigrate, but lived well-disguised in his own country. He met by chance a woman whom he loved and respected, and he married her and became a father to a son who, when he had grown up, broke into a military barracks to steal weapons. He was sentenced to ten years and was a model prisoner who never complained or pleaded, feeling the same love for his cell as he would for the home in which was born, and every time he saw himself in his sleep wandering around freely in the streets he woke up in terror, as though he were walking in his own funeral.