some reason, when I said this she stopped drawing, so that the right side of the picture was left without colour. Strangely this reminded me of the white crumbling streets once the war came. The way the colour was washed out of everything. The way the flowers died. She handed it to me.
‘It’s not finished,’ I said.
‘It is.’ She pushed it towards me. Then she lay back down and, resting her head on her hands, she remained silent. I didn’t move for a long time. I just lay there looking at the picture, until Neil popped his head around the door to tell us that we had to leave.
9
I AM SURROUNDED BY MATERIAL, WHAT seem to be coats, and there are shoes on the floor and a vacuum cleaner squashed up in the corner. It is warm in here and there is a boiler above me. To my left, at the end of the corridor, the Moroccan man is standing, staring at me. He walks towards me and silently offers me his hand. He doesn’t say anything, but there is a sombre look on his face, and he leads me into my bedroom. Afra is not there, the bed has been made and her abaya is not on the hanger. But on the cabinet, on my side of the bed, there is a beautiful sketch of the apiaries – the field stretching far and wide, the beehives dotted around, the sun rising. She has even drawn in the kitchen and the tent where we would all sit to have lunch. The colours are wrong, the lines rough and broken, but the picture moves. It breathes: I can almost hear the buzzing of the bees. There are black roses in the field beyond, their colour leaking into the sky.
The Moroccan man sits me down on the bed, unties my laces, takes off my shoes, and lifts up my legs. I hold the picture to my chest.
‘Where is Afra?’ I say.
‘Don’t worry, she’s OK, she’s downstairs. Farida is keeping her company.’
‘Who is Farida?’ I say.
‘The woman from Afghanistan.’
He is gone for a while, and he returns with a glass of water. He holds it to my mouth and I drink it all. Then he adjusts the pillows behind my head, closes the curtains and tells me to get some rest. He shuts the door and leaves me here in the dark.
I remember the alleyways and the sound of running and Mohammed’s red T-shirt, but my body is heavy, my legs and arms like rocks, and I feel burning in my eyes and I close them.
It’s even darker when I wake up. I can hear the sound of laughter – it spreads out across the darkness like the ringing of bells. I head downstairs to the living room, where some of the residents are playing dominoes. Afra is among them and she is leaning over the dining table, there are six dominoes balanced in front of her in a row, and with steady fingers and a look of pure concentration she is trying to place the seventh one next to them. Everyone around the table is holding their breath and watching. She stops and shakes her hands and laughs again. ‘OK, I do it! I do it! You see!’
It is the first time I’ve heard her speak to anyone in weeks, the first time there has been light and laughter in her voice for months.
The Moroccan man spots me standing in the doorway.
‘Geezer!’ he says in English, his eyes alight. ‘Come sit, play. I make you tea.’ He pulls up a chair for me and leads me to it with his hand on my shoulder, and then he goes off into the kitchen.
The other residents glance up at me for a second and nod or say hello, but their attention is back on Afra and the domino. She is sitting up straighter, her hands shaking a little bit now, and I see that she has turned her head slightly towards me. She places the domino too close to the previous one and they all tumble down.
Everyone laughs and cheers and groans and the Afghan woman collects the dominoes and pulls them towards her. She is good at this game. By the time the Moroccan man comes back with the tea she already has fifteen tiles in a row, she is numbering for Afra, who is sitting right beside her.
I drink my tea, which is too sweet, and then I call the GP surgery