‘I’m not going, Murtada. I am not going anywhere.’

‘Just send me the copies, Moni, and we can discuss all that later. A step at a time.’ He spoke as if all she needed was for him to jolly her along.

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m not at home. I told you all this. I told you about the respite for Adam and the trip with Salma.’

‘Ah yes, I remember now. How inconvenient! When will you get back? Can’t you cut your visit short for this?’

‘That’s not the point,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘I told you a thousand times. Here is the best place for Adam. Here is where he’s getting the right treatment, he might even go to a special school. He—’

‘But I am not there, Moni. I am here, and I want my wife and son with me. It’s as simple as that.’

She became angry now, but still she was conscious of her surroundings, the lunchtime restaurant, people coming in and leaving while she argued out loud in Arabic. ‘You don’t even say his name,’ she said, and that was a mistake because it brought tears to her eyes. ‘You don’t even say Adam. You can’t bring yourself to say it.’ She did not want to sob in public, so she hung up.

He immediately called her back. ‘Adam. There, I’m saying his name. Adam. Happy? Listen, I’m earning well here. I don’t pay a penny in taxes. If you expect me to give this up and come back to you, then you’re dreaming. We need to move on, Moni.’

No, it was not enough.

‘You need to get back on track, Moni. Be fair to yourself. Get this through your head, Adam isn’t going to get better—’

‘He is getting better. Not cured. But the massage therapy and the cognitive therapy are helping. In little ways. In Saudi there will be nothing for him. He’ll be stuck at home all day, every day.’

‘I’ll get help. I promise you. I’ll get you a Filipina.’

‘I don’t want a Filipina!’ People looked up from their plates as she shouted into her phone.

‘Moni, you’re being unreasonable. This isn’t how we imagined our future. This isn’t what we planned.’

He was right: the togetherness, the love, her banking career were all expendable. Life was about getting through each day; it was no longer about futures. ‘It’s fine that you come back for holidays,’ she said.

‘A month,’ he snorted. ‘Out of the twelve. One month in which you get to play the part of a wife. That sounds fair to you?’

‘No one is stopping you from coming back. Get a job here.’

‘It’s that easy, is it? And even if I do get a job as I had before, why live where I’m not wanted? Here I come and go as I like without ever having to justify myself. On Fridays I wear my jellabiya and saunter to the mosque in my slippers. There is no pressure to prove anything. I do my work and get paid. No nonsense.’