Musawwir was 30 years old when I met him. He was about to finish his M.S. in Physics at McGill. He came from a poor town in Egypt and longed to go back there. He found the unwavering predictability of Canadian life very stiffling. The crowd, chaos, heat and dust of back home beckoned him. Not surprising, considering that he had led a life which even in very mild terms was at least interesting. A good student at the university, he experimented with various forms of narcotics - some of them intravenously injected. After finishing university at the age of 23, he worked at a hotel for a while. When the drudgery bore on him, he left it for a lower paying school teaching job which he enjoyed thoroughly. All the while, addicition to drugs continued. Finally, the school teaching proved too sedate for him.

He had a bunch of friends with who he lived for a while. He is the only child of his parents. He preferred to live with his friends. These friends were firebrand. They occupied land for a living. They worked for the land sharks. They had some basic firearms which Musawwir learned to use as well. On several occassions, he accompanied them in their operations. Life was thrilling.

Then one day, when all of them were stoned at a joint, police swooped in to pick up drug addicts. Musawwir spent a night at police lock up.