I am still gazing rather anxiously at the salesman. I hadn’t noticed him before. It is Shariff who dominates Ali Baba’s cave. I had first thought the man to be the husband of one of the village women. His aggressive expression now begins to melt somewhat. A tentative, completely false smile masks his face.

‘Madame,’ Shariff says, ‘Madame don’t get offended. He didn’t mean you.’

Each of us tries to mollify the other. I try to put Shariff at ease and he tries to placate me. But I still feel uneasy with the man who, I have now discovered, is a salesman. The two women are completely oblivious to what is happening. One of them turns aside and taking out a large white handkerchief which has been tucked into her sarong at the waist, begins to mop her perspiring face. As the perspiration trickles down her cheeks, I too begin to feel hot and uncomfortable in the shop.

‘Akke, what about this?’ Their heads together, they are still choosing.

‘Here, take,’ Shariff thrusts a folded saree into my hands. It is viridian, with brilliant green flowers. ‘For presents, very good. Only sixty rupees’.

More and more people are entering the shop. I feel I will be pitched forward into the pile of soft, shimmering silks. My daughter is pressed into a corner against the bundles of silk. Her knees seem to be buckling under her. The parcels in her hands are slipping. Her face is red.

‘If you are buying, buy something and come quickly, or else give me my bus fare and I’ll go home. Look, all the parcels are falling. Don’t blame me if I lose any of them.’

Books, umbrellas, foamtread slippers are being juggled by us. I stand still for a moment, stop being so frenetic. Flimsy pieces of cloth cling to my hands. I look at the cut-pieces again. Would these be suitable for wearing to church on Christmas Day? I think again of my childhood, those Christmases. My mother would take us shopping weeks before the great day with her handbag full of the money my father gave her for all our clothes and shoes. We would sit comfortably on chairs with the foot mirrors before us while the salesman opened box after box, each with its rustling tissue paper.

I feel my head reeling. I would go mad inside this place, day after day, if I were Shariff, shut out from the sun, light, air, all my possessions being touched and tugged at as if they cost nothing. And even the people who wear them—what value do their own lives have? Aren’t we all nothing too?

The babble of voices eddies about my ears. Shariff’s voice suddenly rises shrilly. ‘Be careful of your bags, your purses, your umbrellas,’ he shrieks. I have let my bag slip out of my hands in all the commotion and it lies at my feet.