Maybe he means me, I thought. It was impossible to see his eyes.

I watched him walk in that familiar way – his head pointing up slightly, his polished leather shoes flicking ahead with every step – hoping he would call my name, wave his hand, snap his fingers. I swear if he had I would have leaped into his arms. When he was right there, close enough that if I extended my arm I could touch him, I held my breath and my ears filled with silence. I watched his solemn expression – an expression I admired and feared – caught the scent-edge of his cologne, felt the air swell round him as he walked past. He was immediately followed by Nasser, carrying the black shiny typewriter under one arm. I wished I was him, following Baba like a shadow. They entered one of the buildings overlooking the square. It was a white building with green shutters. Green was the colour of the revolution, but you rarely saw shutters painted in it.

'Didn't I tell you to wait by the sculpture?' I heard Mama say from behind me. I looked back and saw that I had strayed far from Septimus Severus.

I felt sick, anxious that I had somehow done the wrong thing. Baba wasn't on a business trip, but here, in Tripoli, where we should be together. I could have reached out and caught him from where he was heading; why had I not acted?

I sat in the car while she loaded the shopping, still holding on to the sesame sticks. I looked up at the building Baba and Nasser had entered. A window on the top floor shuddered then swung open. Baba appeared through it.

He gazed at the square, no longer wearing the sunglasses, leaning with his hands on the sill like a leader waiting for the clapping and chanting to stop. He hung a small red towel on the clothesline and disappeared inside.

On the way home I was more silent than before, and this time there was no effort in it. As soon as we left Martyrs' Square Mama began craning her neck towards the rear-view mirror. Stopping at the next traffic light, she whispered a prayer to herself. A car stopped so close beside us I could have touched the driver's cheek. Four men dressed in dark safari suits sat looking at us. At first I didn't recognize them, then I remembered. I remembered so suddenly I felt my heart jump. They were the same Revolutionary Committee men who had come a week before and taken Ustath Rashid.

Mama looked ahead, her back a few centimetres away from the backrest, her fists tight round the steering wheel. She released one hand, brought it to my knee and sternly whispered, 'Face forward.'

When the traffic light turned green the car beside us didn't move. Everyone knows you mustn't overtake a Revolutionary Committee car, and if you have to then you must do it discreetly, without showing any pleasure in it. A few cars, unaware of who was parked beside us, began to sound their horns. Mama drove off slowly, looking more at the rear-view mirror than the road ahead. Then she said, 'They are following us, don't look back.' I stared at my bare knees and said the same prayer over and over. I felt the sweat gather between my palms and the wax-paper wrapping of the sesame sticks. It wasn't until we were almost home that Mama said, 'OK, they are gone,' then mumbled to herself, 'Nothing better to do than give us an escort, the rotten rats.'

My heart eased and my back grew taller. The prayer left my lips.

The innocent, Sheikh Mustafa, the imam of our local mosque, had told me, have no cause to fear; only the guilty live in fear.

I didn't help her carry the shopping into the house as was usual. I went straight to my room and dropped the sesame sticks on the bed, shaking the blood back into my arms. I grabbed my picture book on Lepcis Magna. Ten days before I had visited the ancient city for the first and, as it turned out, last time. Images of the deserted city of ruins by the sea still lingered vividly in my mind. I longed to return to it.

I didn't come out until I had to: after she had prepared lunch and set the table and called my name.

When she tore the bread she handed me a piece; and I, noticing she hadn't had any salad, passed her the salad bowl. Midway through the meal she got up and turned on the radio. She left it on a man talking about farming the desert. I got up, said, 'Bless your hands,' and went to my room. 'I will take a nap,' she said after me. My silence made her say things she didn't need to say, she always took a nap in the afternoons, everyone did, everyone except me. I never could nap.

I waited in my room until she had finished washing the dishes and putting away the food, until I was certain she had gone to sleep, then I came out.

I was walking around the house looking for something to do when the telephone rang. I ran to it before it could wake her up. It was Baba. On hearing his voice my heart quickened. I thought he must be calling so soon after I had seen him to explain why he hadn't greeted me.

'Where are you?'

'Abroad. Let me speak to your mother.'

'Where abroad?'

'Abroad,' he repeated, as if it was obvious where that was. 'I'll be home tomorrow.'

'I miss you.'

'Me too. Call your mother.'

'She's asleep. Shall I wake her up?'

'Just let her know I'll be home tomorrow, about lunch time.'

I didn't want the conversation to end so I said, 'We were followed today by that same white car that took Ustath Rashid. We were side by side at the traffic light and I saw their faces. I was so close I could have touched the driver's cheek and I wasn't frightened. Not at all. Not even a little, I wasn't.'

'I'll see you tomorrow,' he said and hung up.

I stood for a while beside the telephone and listened to the thick silence that seemed to descend on our house during those hours in the afternoon, a silence edged by the humming of the fridge in the kitchen and the ticking of the clock in the hallway.

I went to watch Mama sleep. I sat beside her, checking first that her chest was rising and falling with breath. I remembered the words she had told me the night before, 'We are two halves of the same soul, two open pages of the same book,' words that felt like a gift I didn't want.

I was woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of glass shattering. A light was on in the kitchen. Mama was on her knees, talking to herself and collecting pieces of glass from the floor. She was barefoot. When she saw me she covered her mouth with the inside of her wrist, her cupped hand full of broken glass, and giggled that strange nervous giggle that was somewhere between laughter and crying. I ran to fetch her slippers, then threw them to her, but she shook her head and stumbled over to the rubbish bin and emptied her hand. She began sweeping the floor. When the broom reached the slippers she paused then put them on.

I could see her medicine bottle half empty on the breakfast table. There was no glass beside it, just a cigarette burning in an ashtray littered with butts and black-headed matchsticks. Her glass must have shattered. Mama was ill again. I felt my cheeks burn with anger: where is Baba? He should be here because when he's home everything is normal, she is never ill and I am never woken up like this to find everything changed.

She sat down, stood up again, fetched another glass and filled it with medicine. The kitchen reeked of it. The smell made my head heavy. She turned to me. I was still standing in the doorway of the kitchen. She giggled again, asked, 'What?' and rolled her eyes away. 'What's the matter with you? Why are you staring at me like