The carpenter mounts the massive steps to the fifth floor. He tries to walk beside Mansur and looks pleadingly at him. His eyes seem to have grown during the week he was incarcerated. The beseeching eyes seem to bulge out of his head. ‘Forgive me, forgive me. I’ll work for you for nothing for the rest of my life. Forgive me.’

Mansur looks straight ahead. He must not buckle now. Sultan has given his verdict and he cannot contradict Sultan. He might be disinherited, thrown out of the house. He feels already that his brother has become Sultan’s favourite. Eqbal can learn computing, Eqbal has been promised a bicycle. If Mansur opposes him now Sultan might sever all ties with him. However much he feels for the carpenter, he cannot risk that.

They wait for the interrogation and registration of the report. The system is that the person reported is imprisoned until innocence or guilt has been proved. Anyone can report anybody and have the person in question imprisoned.

Mansur puts his case to the interrogator. The carpenter squats on the floor. He has long, crooked toes and the nails have thick black edges. His waistcoat and jumper hang in shreds down his back. The trousers hang about his hips.

The interrogator behind the table carefully writes down the two declarations. He writes elegantly and uses carbon paper for a copy.

‘Why are you so keen on postcards from Afghanistan?’ the policeman laughs and finds the matter rather curious. But before the carpenter can answer he continues: ‘Tell me now whom you have sold them to; we all understand that you did not steal them to send to relatives.’

‘I only took two hundred, and Rasul gave me some,’ the carpenter starts tentatively.

‘Rasul never gave you any postcards, that’s a lie,’ says Mansur.

‘You will remember this room as a place where you had the chance to tell the truth,’ says the policeman. Jalaluddin swallows and cracks his knuckles and breathes a sigh of relief when the policeman continues to interrogate Mansur about when, where and how the whole thing happened. Behind the interrogator, through the window, can be seen one of the heights outside Kabul. Little houses cling to the mountainside. The paths zigzag down the mountain. Through the window the carpenter can see people, they look like little ants walking up and down. The houses have been constructed with materials cannibalised from what can be found in war-torn Kabul: some sheets of corrugated iron, a piece of sacking, some plastic, a few bricks, bits and pieces from ruins.

Suddenly the interrogator squats beside him. ‘I know that you have hungry children, and I know that you are not a criminal. I am giving you a last chance. Take it. If you tell me to whom you sold the cards I will let you go. If you don’t tell me I’ll give you several years in prison.’

Mansur is losing interest. This is the hundredth time the carpenter has been asked to admit who he sold the cards to. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he hasn’t sold them to anyone. Mansur looks at his watch and yawns.

Suddenly a name escapes Jalaluddin’s lips, so quietly as to be nearly inaudible.

Mansur leaps up.

The man whose name Jalaluddin muttered owns a kiosk in the market where he sells calendars, pens and cards; cards for religious festivals, weddings, engagements and birthdays – and postcards with motifs from Afghanistan. He had always bought these cards from Sultan’s bookshop, but he hadn’t been there for some time. Mansur remembers him well because he always complained about the prices.

It’s as if a cork has been unstopped; but Jalaluddin still trembles as he talks.

‘He came over to me one afternoon when I was leaving work. We talked and he asked me if I needed money. Of course I did. Then he asked me if I could fetch him some postcards. At first I refused, but then he told me about the money I would get for it. I thought about my children at home. I’m not able to feed the children on a carpenter’s salary. I thought about my wife who was starting to lose her teeth, she’s only thirty. I thought of all the reproachful looks I get at home because I’m not able to earn enough. I thought of the clothes and the shoes I could not afford to buy my children, the doctor we cannot afford, the awful food we have to eat. So I thought if only I took a few, as long as I was working in the bookshop, I could solve some of my problems. Sultan won’t notice. He has so many postcards and so much money. And then I took some cards.’

‘We’ll have to go there and safeguard the evidence,’ the policeman says. He gets up and orders the carpenter, Mansur and another policeman to come with him. They drive to the market and the postcard kiosk. A little boy is serving from behind the hatch.

‘Where is Mahmoud?’ the policeman asks. He is in plain clothes. Mahmoud is having lunch. The policeman shows the boy his identity card and says he wants to look at his postcards. The boy lets them in at the side of the kiosk, into a narrow area between the wall, the stack of wares and the counter. Mansur and a policeman tear the postcards from off the shelves; the ones Sultan has had printed are stuffed into a bag. They count several thousand. But which ones Mahmoud has bought lawfully and which ones he has bought from Jalaluddin it is hard to tell. They take the boy and the postcards to the police station.

A policeman is left behind to wait for Mahmoud. The kiosk is sealed. Mahmoud will not be selling any more thank-you cards today, or pictures of heroes and warriors either, for that matter.

When Mahmoud eventually arrives at the police station, still smelling of kebab, the interrogations start anew. Initially Mahmoud denies ever having set eyes on the carpenter. He says he has bought everything legally, from Sultan, from Yunus, from Eqbal, from Mansur. Then he changes tactics and says, yes, one day the carpenter did approach him, but he never bought anything.

The kiosk owner, too, must spend the night in detention. At last Mansur can get away. In the corridor the carpenter’s father, uncle, nephew and son are waiting. They approach him, reach after him and watch terror-stricken when he hurries away. He can’t bear it any more. Jalaluddin has confessed, Sultan will be pleased, the matter has been solved. Now that the theft and the resale have been proved, the criminal case can begin.

He remembers what the police interrogator had said: ‘This is your last chance. If you confess we will let you go and you can return to your family.’

Mansur feels unwell. He rushes out. His thoughts are on Sultan’s last words before he left. ‘I have risked my life building up my business, I have been imprisoned, I have been beaten. I’ve worked my socks off to try and create something for Afghanistan and a bloody carpenter comes and tries to usurp my life’s work. He will be punished. Don’t be soft, Mansur, don’t you start to buckle.’

In a run-down mud hut in Deh Khudaidad a woman sits and gazes into the air. Her youngest children are crying; they have nothing to eat yet, and wait the return of their grandfather from town. Maybe he’ll have something with him. They rush at him when he enters the gate on his bicycle. But his hands are empty. The luggage carrier is empty too. They halt when they see his dark face. They are quiet for a moment before they start to cry and cling to him. ‘Where is daddy, when will daddy come back?’