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something in her drinking water.’
    People were now standing up, their voices louder, one man nodding to himself and saying, ‘The influence of the West has been the biggest calamity to befall the planet since Noah’s flood.’
    ‘I returned because I lived in guilt for all these years and months,’ the midwife said. ‘There was nothing I could have done back then but I should have done something . You did not have a son, you had a daughter –’
    ‘That’s enough. You are an apostate and a blasphemer.’
    ‘I am a Muslim!’
    ‘Then how do you explain this?’ Timur said. A man had appeared and handed him a small cloth bundle. ‘This is yours? We found it a minute ago in the boat you have hired to take away my wife.’
    ‘Yes, it is mine.’

    Timur pulled out a crucifix on a chain. ‘I will not untie the bundle but those of you who need further proof will find a desecrated copy of our beloved Quran in it.’
    There were wails and sounds of deepest genuine anguish from everyone. The three accused protested their innocence but their voices were drowned out as a number of men and women moved forwards and began to beat them, pulling them to the floor by their hair and clothes. They were screaming desolately as a pack of policemen arrived and took them away, the worshippers striking them constantly, a few spitting on them. Timur handed over the evidence to a policeman, who kissed the bundle repeatedly before pressing it to his heart, and held the swinging crucifix at arm’s length as though carrying a dead rat by the tail. Apostasy was punishable by death, as was blasphemy, but it was possible the case would not reach the courts – the women would be murdered within the next few days in the police cells, either by their fellow criminals or by the policemen, so repugnant were the crimes they were accused of.
    As the people returned to their worship, Timur went into the white room. His mother lay on the mattress at the far end, conscious but with her eyes half shut. The servant girls were massaging her feet and head. Philomena had administered nothing but a mild sedative but Razia thought she was dying.
    ‘Tell them not to bury me in the public cemetery,’ she said, ‘or the grave robbers will dig me up to get at all the gold in my bones.’
    Leila stood just a few feet from Timur. ‘I had no knowledge of any of it,’ she said, trembling.
    ‘You’d better be telling the truth,’ he said. He had discovered nothing to implicate her: the envelope Philomena had tried to pass on had contained just one sentence from the midwife, telling her she would be free before nightfall. He leaned towards her and added in a lowered voice, ‘And you’d better give me a son this time, because if it’s a girl again, I’ll drown you in the river out there.’
    It was almost a whisper but the boatman whom Timur had hired to come in and carry his mother out, and who was just entering the room, heard it clearly. It was Wamaq. He did not react – either to the words or to suddenly finding himself face to face with Leila again. The old woman had revived and was saying that they would not be returning to the mansion, that she intended to carry out Allah’s wish and stay in the mosque for ten days. Timur waved his hand in Wamaq’s direction and he nodded and left the room.

V
     
    F inishing work an hour later, Wamaq walked to the caravanserai and saw the motorbike leaning on its kickstand in its usual place. Qes had decided to return from the mansion. He found him outside the barbershop, reading the rates for a bath painted on the glass front. He went and stood beside him. 
    PLAIN WATER: 5 RUPEES.
WITH LIFEBUOY SOAP: 8 RUPEES.
WITH LUX BEAUTY SOAP: 12 RUPEES.
     
    Qes didn’t acknowledge his brother, moving around him to enter the shop. Wamaq went in after him. Later, in clean clothes, their wet hair and sparse moustaches retaining the furrows of the comb they had run through them, Wamaq followed Qes wordlessly to a food shop