In the warm water, Moni relaxed. Bobbing on the surface, she gazed at the walls of the cave, paintings in blues and reds. They were children’s paintings, flowers as big as faces, bodies as thin as sticks, mops of hair and everyone smiling. Moni smiled too. She did not know how to swim but she was not afraid of this water, not worried that she would sink. The water was washing her, and she had always appreciated cleanliness, enjoyed the smells of soap and detergent, the scent of lemons and pine. In the water, the stiffness of her body eased. She could spread her legs out, she could raise up her arms and stretch. How good that felt, to be tall and straight again! But it was only in the water. As soon as she stepped out of the pool, she sprang back into a ball, her knees up to her chest, her arms tight around her knees, neck craned forward.

Salma too, in the water, became her former self. The strength flowed back into her arms and legs. She could stand up, her feet touching the slippery bottom of the pool, her weight held up by the warm water. It was just like normal, how it had always been. She was not doomed to life flat on her back. The three of them were heading in the right direction; they were surely returning. This optimism lingered even when she pulled herself out of the water and found that, again, she had no strength. Again, she was unable to stand up tall or even to crawl. The water had not altered any of them. The water only showed them what they could be. But ‘only’ was not the right word, for the water gave them what was just as important as change. The water gave them hope. The water made them stronger in faith.

So, on they went. Through the valley of fear, where shadows played with their minds and sudden noises made their skin crawl. They saw visions of their own future deaths, the ultimate agony and ugliness, the loneliness of the grave. And that was not all. In the valley were spectres of known fears so that Salma submitted again to Amir’s scalpel and Moni was made smaller and smaller by the boy’s growing body. Iman was in a war zone again, dodging gunfire, stumbling over a corpse, touching softness that was mangled flesh, limbs torn off and flung. In the valley of fear, the three of them clung to each other as the shadows pounded them with nightmares and squeezed their hearts with fright.