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hallway, she could hear Tala’s hectoring tone. The girl was lucky anyone would marry her, she thought to herself, let alone a gem like Hani.
    ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Tala said.
    ‘I’m not Jewish,’ Leyla answered with a slight smile.
    Tala laughed. ‘Why not?’
    ‘Why aren’t you?’
    ‘I don’t subscribe to any religion,’ Tala explained.
    ‘So you live without any faith?’ asked Leyla, feeling more controlled now, more like her father. She waited for a response, but for a few moments Tala only met her gaze intently.
    ‘I didn’t say that,’ she said gently.
    Disarmed and disconcerted, Leyla looked away. ‘Why should my beliefs offend you?’
    ‘They don’t,’ Tala smiled. ‘I just want to know why they don’t offend you.’
    Leyla suddenly longed for just a small touch of her father’s sales techniques. He would never have let the conversation get this far out of hand. He would already have converted to Islam the woman with the expressive hair, sitting on the floor.
    ‘Okay,’ Leyla said, desperately. ‘I’ve been brought up to follow this religion, this path. Is that so bad?’ Leyla detected an edge of whining defensiveness in her own ears that was not attractive.
    ‘Yes’ Tala said. ‘Why aren’t you Jewish? Just by choosing one of these paths, you’re implying there’s something better about the one chosen, aren’t you?’
    ‘Maybe not better, just preferred,’ Leyla replied.
    ‘But did you prefer Islam? Or do you prefer it because it’s what you were brought up with? How would your parents feel if you ‘preferred’ Judaism?’
    ‘It’s more than a preference,’ Leyla said, desperately. ‘It’s faith.’
    ‘I see,’ Tala said, smiling. ‘Faith. So no questioning allowed.’
    ‘You just questioned me.’
    ‘And you didn’t proclaim a fatwa on my head,’ she laughed.
    ‘Thank you!’
    The cold wind of the London night caught Leyla with violence on the side of her head as they left. Ali reached for her hand, but she could not bring herself to take hold of something which brought so little comfort, so little emotion of any kind. She felt raw, as though the scars had been picked from old, dried wounds, and the exposed cuts were now being dipped into salt water. She glanced up, towards the old lamps of the park, to the gracious brick buildings whose warm interiors spoke of comfortable, pleasurable lives. But these gave her not an ounce of consolation, no salve to spread over the mental beating she had just received.
    They got into the car.
    ‘Did you like them?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ she replied and she was speaking the truth, at least partly. Some corner of her battered mind was grateful for the exchange that had just happened, was inspired by the simple, yet undeniably clear possibilities that this unknown girl had casually placed before her, as though offering a tray of sweetmeats. But the rest of her was relieved to sink into the leather seats of Ali’s car and to shut the door and enclose herself in the small, warm space with only him beside her.
     

Chapter Three
    They had dinner, just the three of them, at a nearby Italian restaurant. Omar had known the place for years from his constant visits to London, and liked it because the service was efficient and he was not made to wait half an hour between courses. Reema liked it because the lighting was sensitive to a woman’s complexion and the clams in the spaghetti vongole were (correctly) removed from their shells, thereby saving her the irritating task of picking at stubbornly attached bits of seafood in the semi-darkness. Tala, on the other hand, had decided inwardly that she would never visit the restaurant again – it was gloomy inside, and the suspicions raised by the overly rapid service of the food were confirmed when she tasted it. Nothing was freshly cooked. Her father ate too quickly to fully taste anything, and her mother’s taste buds must have been annihilated by years of heavy