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of the time), but with an undertone of challenge and worldliness that had not been there before. It was the voice of a young Englishwoman making her way in the world. Is this what parents do, she wondered, study their children as they turn into men and women they learn to grow cautious of? And what do they think as they look at us? Do they think how difficult, how tedious, how she’s failed me? She had never had parents or family, not really, not so she could compare what she knew now with what she thought she knew before. And Abbas never mentioned (or almost never mentioned) his parents, so it was all guesswork for her, making things up on the hoof.
    ‘He’ll have to retire now, won’t he?’ Hanna said, and then took a sip of wine. ‘Will you be able to get all his paperwork in order or do you want help with that?’
    ‘Yes, yes, he’ll have to retire now,’ Maryam replied. If he lives. The questions were meant kindly, but Hanna had taken to speaking to her in this insisting way, as if she was likely to be forgetful. ‘We’ll have to wait for the doctor, but I should think they’ll say he must retire,’ Maryam said.
    ‘All right, tell me if you need help,’ Hanna said. She stepped forward and gave her mother a quick embrace. ‘Nick sends his love. He’s sorry he couldn’t come. He’s commuting to Brighton and it’s wearing him down, but we’re moving in a fortnight. He’s found a place to rent and I’ve got some supply teaching all set up. It’s going to be hectic for a while, but I can come if you need me.’
    ‘Yes, I will, but now I just want him to get better,’ Maryam said, and could not prevent her voice from quavering.
     
    The next day they went to see Abbas before Hanna returned to London, and afterwards Jamal stayed behind at the hospital while Maryam went to drop Hanna off at the station. He sat beside his father’s bed, looking at his face, tranquil and composed despite the tubes, and he smiled. He didn’t think he was going to die yet. He was breathing regularly, his eyes closed, silent and unreachable, as if he was in one of his distant places. But the ashy skin on his face, the wrinkled hands, the shallow rising and falling of his flaccid neck told him that he had been through pain, was going through pain. His father was often silent, and preferred solitude, so perhaps he was not in agony where he was. It was just a fancy, a bit of wishful thinking on his son’s part. Ma often said how alike they were in their love of silence, Jamal and Abbas, and perhaps they were, but Ba’s silences were sometimes dark and his solitariness had a feeling of menace, as if he had gone somewhere where it would not be pleasant to meet him. At those times, his face turned sour, turned down, frowning, his eyes glowing with a kind of ache or shame. When he spoke in that state, even when he spoke to Ma, his voice was harsh and his words were cruel. Jamal hated that, but most of all he hated that he spoke to Ma like that. It made him shudder with anxiety for what that voice would lead to, for the unhappiness he knew it must cause Ma. He sat beside his father’s bed, looking at his lean face, serene after suffering, and thought that he did not want to think about those dark silences and those growling words. He wanted to think about his other Ba, so that if he could feel his thoughts as he sat beside him, it would give him strength to fight off the assailant one more time.
    When they were children, and Ba was in the mood and they were not being too boisterous, he loved to tell them stories. (He would think about that Ba, the laughing storyteller who lost himself in his tales.) He just started and they immediately fell in. He sometimes even shouted fallen to hurry them to their places. Fallen was what children said when they played soldiers, he explained. Fall in. What children? Where? But those were questions he did not bother to answer. He just hushed them and motioned for them to come closer. They sat as