preacher, accessible to everyone. Ya‘ni, imagine you are a poor Muslim farmer. What is the word ‘nation’ to you? You never had one before. You have never travelled, don’t read, why would you want one now? Ya‘ni, it’s quite abstract—you have your land, your livelihood, and your religion. So the question—how to get these people involved—we show them, there is a threat to your land, you deserve to be a citizen, you deserve rights. This is what we have tried. But now what Qassam is doing, appealing directly to their faith …”
They heard the front door. Then, the voice of Midhat’s youngest daughter:
“Ahlen!”
“Hi baba,” said Midhat, leaning back and placing his hands on his chest.
“Stop it. I said stop it.”
“What’s going on?” said Midhat.
Nuzha poked her head through the door. “They’re fine, just squabbling. Good evening, oh Hani keefak, I didn’t see you, shu akhbarak.” She grinned with her head to the side. She was out of breath. “Where’s Sahar?”
“Salon,” Midhat replied. “Hi baba—oh but what’s happened to your shirt?”
Khaled had appeared under Nuzha’s arm, with a face of thunder.
“Ghada put dirt on me.”
Midhat glanced at Hani, and then back at his son. “Yalla, wash it quickly before your mother sees.”
“I’ll do it,” said Nuzha.
The telephone rang in the salon. Midhat heaved to his feet and nudged Khaled aside. Fatima looked up from the sofa as he walked in.
“The children are here?”
He nodded and reached for the receiver. This was a gesture he loved to make, the one strong hand stretching out to the instrument clearing its brassy throat. But the instant the disc met his ear this pleasure was sapped by an odd, arak-infused sadness, a passing vision of a man proud of his telephone.
“This is the operator. Eli Kahen is calling for Midhat Kamal.”
“Midhat Kamal with you.”
The line crackled.
“Midhat!”
“With you.”
“Midhat there’s been a fire!”
“What?”
“A fire! Fire in the shop! Someone set fire to the shop!”
“No.”
“Yes!”
“I’m coming now.”
The mouthpiece rattled on the hook.
“What’s happened?” said Fatima.
“Baba tell him to stop it,” shrieked Ghada. She ran into the room.
“Baba!”
“NOT NOW,” boomed Midhat.
Ghada flinched by the doorway.
“What’s happened?” said Fatima, getting to her feet.
“Nothing,” said Midhat. “There’s just a problem at the shop.”
Hani drove. The sky hung like a black liquid on the point of bursting. Already Midhat was imagining Fatima’s reaction when he told her. Her shame, always her shame. For himself, failure did not mortify him the way it once had; he had some sense now that the broken edges were part of the whole, and the future narrowed to a point. If there was only one outcome, what was the point of being afraid? But Fatima—she was balanced so precariously between her notions of what was done and not done, of who had seen and not seen, that such a disaster would drive her to the floor in a rage. Two roads from the shop, a burning smell reached the passenger seat. Was that smoke, floating in the dark above the rooftops?
“No no no no.” He clasped his sweating hands together. “No no no no.”
They turned the corner on a crowd of people. The blaze appeared to be quenched. British police uniforms; dismounted horses; two Model T Ford Tenders parked at angles with spent hosepipes unfurled. Hani pulled up and Midhat clambered out, peering through the foggy darkness. A terrible, acrid smell hit him, at once sweet and sour, and as he walked down the incline, scraps of burnt matter flew erratically through the air around him like black butterflies. Someone called his name. Eli ran forward, the thinness of his legs exposed as the wind drew his trousers back. His hands were black, and Midhat saw he had been weeping.
The building looked blinded. The window glass was broken, the stonework charred with vast upward streaks. A sedate plume of smoke billowed up, unfurling into a shapeless fog and smothering the stars. A fireman waited for them to unbolt the warm metal safety door and then led the way into the interior. It was hard to see, the beam of the fireman’s wind-up electric torch kept catching on swirls of grey. The room smelled, peculiarly, of old meat. The boxes at the top of the stairs appeared untouched, the char reaching only partway up the banister. But as they entered Butrus’s room, the stench doubled with a sourness of destroyed fabric. A policeman pointed at the table, collapsed into a pile of cinders, and said: this was where the fire started. Then he pointed at the back window