I heard one yawn then say, 'It's getting late.'

'We should search the house now,' the pockmarked man insisted.

'Come on, don't be so stubborn.'

'Tomorrow's another day,' another one said benevolently.

Then we heard Moosa close the door, drive home the bolt.

I looked up at Mama. She was soundlessly mouthing words to God.

Moosa came through the hallway swing-doors and went straight into the sitting room. He sat down, speaking to himself, reciting verses from the Holy Quran and adding in his own bits. 'Concealer, conceal our faults, protect this house and rid it of all evil, keep away from it all who don't wish it well.' Then he quickly repeated, 'Concealer, conceal our faults. Concealer, conceal our faults.' Mama and I watched him. He stood up, walked around the room, adjusting the curtains, opening some windows. He collected the tray of food that we were sitting around before the men interrupted us, and took it to the kitchen. He returned, sat down and lit a cigarette. He dragged on it hard and when he exhaled he made a whistling sound.

'What did they tell you?' Mama asked him.

He sat on the edge of his seat, his eyes fixed on the space between him and the floor. He looked like he was never going to speak again.

'What did they say?' she asked again, raising her voice. He looked at her. 'Have you gone deaf?'

He jiggled his leg and exhaled another whistling tunnel of smoke. He brought his finger to his lips and looked quickly in my direction.

'Suleiman,' Mama said. 'Go and practise your scales.'

I never asked to play the piano. It was one of those activities imposed upon me, like school, chess and the infinitely recurring, and therefore seemingly pointless, clipping of my toenails and fingernails. All of which, under the general disadvantage of being a boy, I had to carry out with the necessary degree of earnestness. But, walking to the piano, I felt completely exhausted. I wanted to go and wash and change out of my clothes before anyone discovered I had peed myself. But sometimes you are set on a course and, although you see no sense in it, you are still propelled forward towards it.

At the end of the long and dark hallway a light came from the reception room. Smoke hovered at its mouth. I took short steps and stopped to look behind me. When I reached the room I saw clouds floating in the centre; they were alive with bright silver edges, intertwining like snakes. Sitting on the floor in the sitting room, trying to make sense of what I was hearing, I had imagined Moosa opening the windows, but not even the curtains had been drawn. The room was like a smoke-filled box. The men's places were stamped into the soft cushion-seats. I counted them: seven plus Moosa. Seven. They couldn't have all fitted into one car. Only one car came for Ustath Rashid, but they sent two for Baba: four in one, and three in the other, with room for one more, reserved for Baba. In front of each a tea glass stood on the coffee table or, where that was beyond comfortable reach, on the floor or balanced precariously on an armrest. All were empty except for one. I went to it. I sat in the man's place. His seat was still warm. This is where the rude one with the old woman's voice must have sat, I imagined. Only he could be stupid enough to refuse Mama's tea. I remembered his face, how close I was to it at the traffic light, the way he pushed Mama's medicine bottle against her stomach. I recalled how he beat Ustath Rashid. I wondered what it would be like to slap a man, to kick him like that in the behind. I held his tea glass. Cooling, the hot milk had created a skin on the surface, at its centre the wrinkled form of a flower or a burn. I blew it carefully to one side and gulped the whole thing in one go. Only after I had emptied it did I realize it wasn't sugared. The bitterness ran through me like a wave.

The bread basket was empty save for crumbs and some of the soft inside of the bread which, from its colour and the way it was rolled into small balls, had been used to wipe hands and mouths clean. I had seen men do this before and once tried it, but Baba said it was vulgar and disrespectful to the bread, to God's gift. Olive stones were strewn on the coffee table, some were even thrown in with the remaining olives, dirtying them. Cigarette butts stood leaning on one another in the empty tea glasses like dead crickets.

From where the men were sitting – from where I was now sitting – they would have been able to see the photograph of Baba on the wall. It was the size of a magazine cover and hung alone, too high up. In fact, it was so high you could easily miss it. In it Baba was dressed in a suit, and behind him there was another photograph of trees in sunlight. It was almost believable

that he was standing among the trees and in the sunlight. He was smiling and his eyes looked up into the top left-hand corner of the frame. His cheeks looked too red to be natural, his lips too purple. The photographer painted over it to make Baba look more handsome, less dark. For a long time I believed that photograph: that on that day Baba was in fact standing among trees washed in warm sunlight, his face as pale and pink as an Englishman's. And so, when I realized that the whole thing was a trick, I felt cheated and didn't mind at all that it was hung too high where it could easily be forgotten.

Mama was the one who had insisted I take up an instrument. I was given a choice: the oud, the eighty-one-string qanun or the piano. I opted for the piano because it seemed to be the easiest one to play. I was quick to learn, and enjoyed playing for Mama. Sometimes when I came to the end of a piece Baba would clap from another room, shouting, 'Bravo. Encore,' and other times he remained silent.

I suddenly noticed a deep painful thumping in my head. I thought I had better start playing or else Mama might worry where I had gone. I lifted the piano lid, it seemed heavier than usual. My eyes felt hot in their sockets. I pressed my cold fingers against them. At this moment Moosa walked in. 'It's so stuffy in here,' he said, and opened the windows. He walked across to the dining room on the opposite side of the hallway and opened the windows there too, and only then did the air move. The smoke disappeared and the breeze that came was a night breeze lightened by the sea. Breathing it seemed to wash my insides. The thumping in my head eased.

'Enchant us, maestro,' Moosa said, then pulled out the cushion-seats and beat them together in pairs as if he was clapping. He stacked the tea glasses on top of one another, placed them on the tray and carried it all to the kitchen. He returned with the vacuum cleaner and began hunting all the scattered bread crumbs.

I found Mama in the kitchen, washing dishes.

'Urn Suleiman,' Moosa yelled above the hum of the vacuum cleaner, 'leave those for tomorrow.'

'It's all right,' she said softly to herself. 'They won't take a minute.' She knew he couldn't hear her. Why speak if no one can hear you? I felt my cheeks burn with an anger that seemed to come from nowhere. She tilted her head and mumbled a few more words to herself, words that were impossible to hear, wasted words, like food thrown away, like the ripened mulberries in the dirt, good only for ants, like the bread used to wipe mouths and hands, like the few good olives that were soiled with olive-stones that had been scraped with teeth, had tongues curled round them, sucking them dry. Her back shuddered. Mama was crying. I felt my anger doubling. I slapped the table. She jumped, her soapy hand on her chest. 'What's the matter?' she said, turned off the running water, and sat beside me. She placed her hand on my knee. 'What's the matter, habibi?' she whispered. She held my hand and shook it gently as if to wake me up, to remind me of something, and asked again in a whisper, 'What's the matter, habibi, light of my eyes?' She looked older. I longed for how things had been.