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a dark room with a woman who wanted to die, I thought. She might never come out again.
    ‘Stay with the women,’ Mum ordered.
    I looked over at the silent veiled wives who waited for me, and my breath caught in my throat. ‘Please,’ I appealed, my voice wild. ‘Bilal, tell her please.’
    Mum stood unsure. I could feel her staring at me. ‘It’s just that they’re tired,’ she said, and we all walked in silence round to the back of the house.
    The old lady was lying in her bed when Ahmed ushered us into the room. Startled by the light, she sat up. Her face was striped with thin lines of dried black blood where she had dragged her nails hard across it. My mother sat on the edge of the bed and rummaged in her bag. She pulled out a large bound book. It was her copy of the I Ching . She undid the twist in the velvet pouch Bilal had made for her and poured the three large coins into her hand, warming them in her palm as she always did before she told a fortune. Ahmed’s aunt watched her with a glimmer of light in her yellow eyes. Mum handed her the coins. They were Arabic coins with stars on one side and the head of the King on the other.
    ‘I want you to throw the coins for me,’ Mum said. Bilal spoke to the aunt softly in Arabic and she scattered the three coins on to the bedspread with a thin worn hand.
    Mum made a line in pencil in the back of the book and nodded for her to throw again. The old lady threw the coins six times and Mum made a pattern of six broken and unbroken lines, three on each side of a space.
    Mum opened the book. The old lady was sitting a little straighter with her shawl held tightly around her shoulders. Mum began to read. ‘Persistence brings good fortune. It will be of advantage to cross the great river. The Superior Man will pass this time in feasting and enjoyment…’ Bilal translated in a low murmur as she read and the old lady blinked in concentration with her head slightly on one side. Mum read on and on about lakes and rivers and turning-points until my mind began to wander away from the room.
    ‘Do you think we’ll get a chapter of Bluebeard tonight?’ I whispered.
    ‘Shhh.’
    ‘We haven’t had any story for ages.’
    The reading was over. There was a silence. Then the old lady smiled and, looking towards Ahmed, commanded him in a startlingly strong voice to bring mint tea and bread. Ahmed hurried out like a small boy. I could hear him shouting out the order as he ran through the house.
    Once she had drunk a glass of tea and chewed at the soft inside of a roll, the old lady pushed back the covers and began to climb out of bed. Ahmed smiled a tender smile as her narrow feet touched the floor. She walked slowly over to a painted chest which stood under the window and, opening it, took out a sky-blue caftan. She reached up and held it against my mother’s shoulders.
    ‘Thank you,’ my mother said, taking it from her.
    With the faintest of smiles the old lady climbed back into bed and motioned for us all to go away.
    It was mid-morning when we arrived back in Bilal’s village. I could see Fatima standing in the doorway of her father’s house. I waved and began to run towards her, but instead of coming to meet us she turned and darted inside letting the curtain fall across the door.
    ‘Fatima,’ Bilal called after her. ‘Fatima,’ he ordered, and she reappeared, limping slightly and with a split across her lip.
    ‘What happened to you?’ Mum gasped, but Bilal took his sister roughly by the shoulders and began to question her in a voice which shook with anger. Fatima spoke a few tearful words with her head bowed and her eyes on the ground.
    ‘What’s happened?’
    ‘It’s nothing,’ Bilal said. ‘Let’s get inside.’
    The familiar cool of the house had turned so cold it made me shiver. Finally Bilal spoke. ‘It is important that Fatima will not make bad her reputation. If she is not good, she will not be married.’
    Mum was silent. She looked at him with cold,