that fear again, the kind that had consumed me in Aleppo, alert to every movement and sound, imagining danger everywhere, expecting that at any moment the worst would happen, that death was near. I felt exposed, as if people were watching me from the woods, and when the wind blew it brought with it whispers: murderer, Nadim is dead, murderer.
I placed my palm on Afra’s chest, feeling her chest rise and fall, matching my breath to hers, slower, steadier. I recalled Mustafa’s British black bees and kept my eyes closed tight until I could see purple fields and rolling hills of lavender and heather, spilling over the edge of the world.
* * *
When I woke up, it was the afternoon. I looked at the step where Nadim should have been sitting, rolling a cigarette. I looked at the white statue – the head and shoulders of a bearded man, the inscription in Greek and the date: 1788–1825, and wondered what kind of a man he was. In my anxious state, I remembered vaguely the stories my mother used to tell me. In these tales statues were not objects of art or reverence – they were evil-averting talismans or guardians of treasure, or human beings or animals who had been turned to stone. In some stories demons entered the statues and spoke through them.
Afra sat beside me and I wished that she could see, wished that she could be the woman she used to be, because Afra had always had a deep understanding of the world; she had a way of seeing things. Afra always knew too much, burdened with the ability to strip people and places of their masks, to find the remnants of the past in the present. I noticed that Nadim had left his rebab on the step of the statue. I walked over and picked it up. I strummed the strings and remembered the beautiful melody that had washed over me and through me like water, quenching the scorched cracks in my mind, like the feeling of the first drop of water on my tongue when the sun sets during the month of Ramadan. That was what Nadim’s music felt like, and this thought alone twisted my mind, distorted my thoughts. I closed my eyes and focused instead on the sound of children playing, laughing, kicking a ball.
11
IT IS THE DAY OF our interview. Afra is sitting beside me on the train and I know that she is nervous. Diomande is standing, holding the rail; there is a free seat for him but he won’t sit down. His tall distorted body is even more prominent in this public place. He looks like a character from a fairy tale, and I find it strange that out of all the people in the carriage I am the only one who knows his secret. Diomande is reading the advice in his notebook, muttering under his breath. ‘This is not a history lesson,’ he says in English, ‘and they do not need to know too much about the last president, unless they ask.’
Eventually we arrive in a place called Croydon. Lucy Fisher meets us at the station and takes us to the centre. It is a tall building on a brown street. Inside we go through checkpoints, barriers, security, where they scan us, search us and get us to sign in. Then we sit in a waiting area with people who look as frightened as we do. And so we wait. Diomande goes in first. Next is Afra, and a few minutes later I am taken to a room at the end of a long corridor.
There are two people sitting in this room, a man and a woman. The man is probably in his early forties; he has shaved off his hair because he is balding on top. He doesn’t look into my eyes, not once. He asks me to sit down, says my name as if he knows me, but his eyes wander. And yet there is an arrogance about him, a subtle smirk on his lips. The woman beside him is a bit older with curly hair. She is sitting very upright and trying to look welcoming. They are both immigration officers. He offers me tea or coffee and I refuse.
He runs through the procedure and says that the interview is being recorded. He reminds me that there will be a second interview. First, he asks me to confirm my name and date of birth and where I was