upset, and the doctor may have also picked up on it, as he puts the flashlight down and asks no more questions. He sits again at his desk, scratching the side of his face.
‘Mrs Ibrahim,’ he says, ‘can you explain to me how you became blind?’
‘It was a bomb,’ she says.
‘Can you tell me a bit more about it?’
Afra shifts in her chair, rolling the marble around in her fingers.
‘Sami, my son,’ she says, ‘he was playing in the garden. I let him play there beneath the tree, but I was watching him from the window – there’d been no bombs for two days and I thought it would be all right. He was a child, he wanted to play in the garden with his friends, but there were no children left. He couldn’t be inside all the time, it was like a prison for him. He put on his favourite red T-shirt and jean shorts and he asked me if he could play in the garden, and when I looked into his eyes I couldn’t say no, because he was a boy, Dr Faruk, a boy who wanted to play.’ Afra’s voice is strong and steady.
‘I understand,’ he says. ‘Please go on.’
‘I heard a whistle first, in the sky, and I ran outside to call him.’ She stops talking and inhales sharply as if she has just surfaced from beneath water. I wish she would stop talking now. ‘As I reached the door, there was a loud explosion and bright light, in the back of the garden, I’m sure, not right near Sami, but the force was strong. It was so loud the sky ripped open.’
I notice the sound of chairs moving in other rooms, the laughter of a child.
‘And then what happened?’
‘I don’t know. I was holding Sami in my arms, and my husband was beside me and I could hear his voice, but I couldn’t see anything at all.’
‘What was the last thing you saw?’
‘Sami’s eyes. They were looking up at the sky.’
Afra begins to cry in a way that I have never seen her cry. She is bent over and crying from her chest and the doctor gets up from his desk and sits beside her, and I feel that I am far away, that there is a growing desert between me and them. I can see the doctor offering her a tissue, then giving her some water, and I can see Afra’s body folded over, but I can’t hear her, and he is saying something, gentle words, sorry words, but my heart is thumping too loud for me to hear anything on the outside and I am so far from them. His voice is louder now and I try to focus. He is sitting at his desk with his glasses on, looking straight at me. I can tell that he has said something I didn’t hear. Then he looks at Afra.
‘Mrs Ibrahim, your pupils are reacting to the light, dilating and constricting in exactly the way I would expect them to if you could see.’
‘What does that mean?’ she says.
‘I’m not sure at the moment. You will need to have some X-rays taken. There is a possibility that the force of the explosion or the bright light damaged the retina in some way, but it is also possible that the blindness you are experiencing is the result of severe trauma – sometimes our bodies can find ways to cope when we are faced with things that are too much for us to bear. You saw your son die, Mrs Ibrahim, and maybe something in you had to shut down. In a way something similar happens when we faint out of shock. I can’t tell you for sure. We will only have the answer when you have more tests.’ For that brief moment, just as he finishes his words, he looks much smaller, hands clasped together, eyes darting now and then to the left of the room at a photograph on a cabinet of a beautiful girl in her twenties in a hat and graduation gown. He catches my gaze and looks away.
Then he scribbles on a piece of paper and says, ‘And how are you, Mr Ibrahim?’
‘Everything is fine with me.’
I notice out of the corner of my eye that Afra has straightened her back.
‘Actually, Dr Faruk,’ she says, ‘I think my husband is unwell.’
‘What seems to be the problem?’ He looks from Afra to me.
‘I’m just having a bit of trouble sleeping,’ I say.