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for her single state. At six, I took all things for granted and accepted Mariam for what she was—my benefactress and guardian angel.
    Her rooms were untidy compared with the neatness of my mother’s house. Mariam revelled in untidiness. I soon grew accustomed to the topsy-turviness of her rooms and found them comfortable. Beds (hers a very large and soft one) were usually left unmade, while clothes lay draped over chairs and tables.
    A large water-colour hung on a wall, but Mariam’s bodice and knickers were usually suspended from it, and I cannot recall the subject of the painting. The dressing table was a fascinating place, crowded with all kinds of lotions, mascaras, paints, oils and ointments.
    Mariam would spend much time sitting in front of the mirror running a comb through her long black hair, or preferably having young Mulia, a servant girl, comb it for her. Though a Christian, my aunt retained several Muslim superstitions, and never went into the open with her hair falling loose.
    Once Mulia came into the rooms with her own hair open. ‘You ought not to leave your hair open. Better knot it,’ said Aunt Mariam.
    ‘But I have not yet oiled it, Aunty,’ replied Mulia. ‘How can I put it up?’
    ‘You are too young to understand. There are jinns—aerial spirits—who are easily attracted by long hair and pretty black eyes like yours.’
    ‘Do jinns visit human beings, Aunty?’
    ‘Learned people say so. Though I have never seen a jinn myself, I have seen the effect they can have on one.’
    ‘Oh, do tell about them,’ said Mulia.
    ‘Well, there was once a lovely girl like you, who had a wealth of black hair,’ said Mariam. ‘Quite unaccountably she fell ill, and in spite of every attention and the best medicines, she kept getting worse. She grew as thin as a whipping post, her beauty decayed, and all that remained of it till her dying day was her wonderful head of hair.’
    It did not take me long to make friends in the Dilaram bazaar. At first I was an object of curiosity, and when I came down to play in the street both women and children would examine me as though I was a strange marine creature.
    ‘How fair he is,’ observed Mulia.
    ‘And how black his aunt,’ commented the washerman’s wife, whose face was riddled with the marks of smallpox.
    ‘His skin is very smooth,’ pointed out Mulia, who took considerable pride in having been the first to see me at close quarters. She pinched my cheeks with obvious pleasure.
    ‘His hair and eyes are black,’ remarked Mulia’s ageing mother.
    ‘Is it true that his father was an Englishman?’
    ‘Mariam-bi says so,’ said Mulia. ‘She never lies.’
    ‘True,’ said the washerman’s wife. ‘Whatever her faults—and there are many—she has never been known to lie.’
    My aunt’s other ‘faults’ were a deep mystery to me; nor did anyone try to enlighten me about them.
    Some nights she had me sleep with her, other nights (I often wondered why) she gave me a bed in an adjoining room, although I much preferred remaining with her—especially since, on cold January nights, she provided me with considerable warmth.
    I would curl up into a ball just below her soft tummy. On the other side, behind her knees, slept Leila, an enchanting Siamese cat given to her by an American businessman whose house she would sometimes visit. Every night, before I fell asleep, Mariam would kiss me, very softly, on my closed eyelids. I never fell asleep until I had received this phantom kiss.
    At first I resented the nocturnal visitors that Aunt Mariam frequently received: their arrival meant that I had to sleep in the spare room with Leila. But when I found that these people were impermanent creatures, mere ships that passed in the night, I learned to put up with them.
    I seldom saw those men, though occasionally I caught a glimpse of a beard or an expensive waistcoat or white pyjamas. They did not interest me very much, though I did have a vague idea that they