‘I don’t want you furious and I don’t want you pleased with me, Salma. I want to answer to myself, to make my own decisions.’

‘What decisions? You’re not making sense.’

‘I don’t have anything more to say, Salma.’

Salma, of course, did. But she did not want to say, I did this for you and I did that for you, be grateful. It was on the tip of her tongue. She did not want to say that for someone who doesn’t have anywhere to go after this holiday except my house, you sure are acting uppity. She did not want to dish up threatening stories of homelessness and being vulnerable to abuse. These thoughts must have slowed her down for she found herself level with Moni, while Iman was now ahead of them on the path.

Moni said, ‘Salma, I shouldn’t have come with you. I will do my best tomorrow, I promise you, but I don’t know why you insisted on this walk. It’s not for me.’ She was out of breath, but not too much.

‘It’s doing you good, Moni. You need to practise for tomorrow.’ Salma did not sound enthusiastic. Why had she insisted that they go out together when togetherness was not important to either Moni or Iman?

‘Maybe it is doing me good,’ said Moni. ‘But I can’t last much longer.’

‘You’re younger than me, you shouldn’t be so unfit.’ Irritability crept into her voice. Salma’s hopes of improving Moni were dwindling. Perhaps these aspirations had been presumptuous in the first place. Salma wished she were with Amir. But she was not. Here was her life as she had made it, as she had chosen it. From the very first time she had met David in Cairo and he had been happy to let her order for the two of them at restaurants, haggle on his behalf in shops, drive his car, save him from the city’s beggars and swindlers, she had fallen in love with action and autonomy. Freed from Amir’s need for her to be passive and secondary to him, she had surged ahead, enjoying the flex of her muscles, the importance of her voice, the power to achieve a difference. Now, years later, she was wondering if her achievements truly amounted to anything. And why had all these freedoms built up to no more than little pleasures?