know,’ she said. Then, ‘No. I don’t think so. God, you really shouldn’t be asking me. I can’t take responsibility. There are advisors.’
‘Where are they?’
I could see that she was struggling with herself, her eyes sparkling with grievance, her face flushed with anger.
‘If you go to Victoria Square—’
‘I’ve heard about Victoria Square.’
‘If you go there, there is a centre on Elpidos Street – the Hope Centre. They help mothers and children and unaccompanied boys. They will advise you.’ She said this in one breath and then forced a smile.
That night Angeliki returned. She sat down beside the tree and covered her face with talcum powder. She was wearing a black headwrap with silver sequins that sparkled in the light of the fire. She took small purposeful sips of water from a bottle and inspected the wounds on her arms. When Afra sensed her presence, she sat up, more alert, edging closer to her.
‘What you doing?’ Afra said.
‘They say me to drink a lot of water,’ Angeliki replied. ‘Because of my poison blood.’
Afra shook her head.
‘It is, I am telling you. I tell you all about it yesterday! I tell you, my breath it stop and it does not come back. My breath it stop, and they took it. Some people, they want to take your breath. And then they put something in my blood. They poison it, and now my mind is ill.’
Although Afra probably didn’t understand all of what Angeliki was saying, I could see that she was moved by the words and her tone of voice, and when Angeliki stopped talking, Afra reached out and put her hand on Angeliki’s arm.
Angeliki breathed slower now and said, ‘I am glad you are here with me, Afra.’
From deep in the woods came the sound of the rebab, beautiful and full of light, even in the darkness. The notes seemed to touch the flames of the fire, causing them to flicker, and the music was carried away by the wind, deeper into the woods. The sound calmed my mind, but as soon as he stopped playing I was reminded immediately of Nadim’s long nails, of the sharp edge of the knife and the heat across my wrist. The twins had not returned since last night and I wanted to go and find them. I contemplated going back to the empty well to see if they were there or to ask if anyone had seen them, but fear was stopping me from venturing into the woods again. I needed to stay alive for Afra. I waited instead, hoping that the boys would emerge from the shadows and return to their blanket beneath the tree.
It was Mohammed I saw in my nightmares that night, on the boat, his face serious and determined, between flashes of torchlight. Just like that night, there was a moment of darkness, and when the light came back on, he was gone.
It was almost exactly as it had happened that night. I was scanning the water, the black waves, as far as my eye could see in every direction, and then I jumped in, and the waves were high, and I was calling his name and I could hear Afra’s voice from the boat. I went under into the black silence and stayed for as long as I could, feeling with my hands in case I should catch onto something, an arm or a leg. When there was no air left in my lungs, when the pressure of death was pushing down on me, I came back up, gasping into the darkness and the wind. But in my dream one detail was different: Mohammed was not saved by the man, he was not on the boat; in his place, wrapped up in the women’s arms and headscarves, was a little girl with eyes like the night.
I woke up to the sound of shouting. A young boy was screaming something in Farsi, there was movement and noise in the darkness, people waking up and running towards the boy. I got up too, moved towards the commotion. The boy was crying and struggling to breathe and pointing into the woods. A group of men appeared with baseball bats as if they had been waiting for this moment, and they began to run in the direction the boy was pointing. I ran with them, and I soon realised that they were chasing someone. They pounced on him as if they were one huge animal, knocking him to the ground.
That’s when somebody handed