Polygon

The sea was a step away, round the corner.

That’s life. We move from difficult age to difficult age. Just when we relax because one difficult time is over – wham – we get embroiled in the next one.’

I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.’
Martha knew what he meant.

‘The best, the funniest, cleverest, the most enjoyable writer in Scotland today.

I looked at Jenny, remembering her in her crib, the way her fingers played in mine, the way her cheek lay hot on my skin. I wished I had the power to give her safe passage through this life, but truth is, it would have taken a real witch to do that

In this country everything was labelled, everything had a name. She had got used to the explicitness, all the signs and polite rules

a Middle-East historian and a lecturer in Third World Politics. He had recently written a book called The Illusion of an Islamic Threat.

In this country, when she spoke to people, they seemed wary, on their guard as if any minute she would say something out of place, embarrassing.

. She filled black bag after black bag, an evacuation. Tearing letters, dropping magazines in the bin, a furious dismantling of the life they had lived, the home they made. Only Allah is eternal, only Allah is eternal. Photographs, books, towels, sheets. Strip and dump into a black bag. Temporary, this life is temporary, fleeting. Why is this lesson so hard to learn?

‘I love your mother more than you,’ she had teased him, hugging her aunt, kissing her cheeks, putting her head on her shoulder. ‘Go away, Tarig, we want to talk,’ she would say laughing. ‘We are going to gossip about you,’ Mahasen would say to him, ‘in little pieces.’ The word for ‘gossip’ meant cutting, too.

This was the Mahasen who now frowned when mentioning Sammar’s name. ‘That idiot girl.’