‘They’re all against me – my mother, my brother. There’s no point talking to them. They don’t understand. Otherwise, they say, I will have to abandon my studies and go back home. No degree. I don’t have a choice. We will be separated either way.’

‘No, we won’t, because you’re going to stand up to them.’

‘I told them.’ He shook his head. ‘I told them that all I wanted was to live without sin. That’s all. That’s why I married you.’ He shrugged off her hands and moved away.

‘They’ll come round. We just need to stick it out.’

‘They said I should have asked their permission. But they would have said no, of course. That’s why I didn’t tell them. They’re forcing me to divorce you. I brought all your things. They’re in the car.’

‘You’re throwing me out! Out of my own home?’

‘It’s finished, Iman. I’ll transfer your stuff to Salma’s car.’

‘Where am I meant to go?’ She picked up small rocks and started to stone him.

‘Stop it.’ He blocked a stone with his arm, but the next one hit him on the forehead. ‘You mad bitch,’ he yelled, crouching on the ground and covering his face with his arms.

‘Coward,’ she shouted. She scrabbled on her knees in the dirt. ‘Eunuch. Sissy!’ Swear words in Kurdish that he couldn’t understand, insults in Arabic which he could. ‘Mummy’s boy,’ she screamed. ‘You’re not a man. I’m hitting you and you’re not hitting me back. Hit me back!’ She stood up and dropped the stone in her hand, launched at him, punching his shoulders and slapping his ears.

He let her kick him and he let her pull his hair and then they both cried.

Afterwards, they did not walk amiably back to his car, fetch her things and transfer them to Salma’s car. Ibrahim did this by himself. And Iman, drained after her outburst, lay down on her coat on the sand. When her phone rang, she saw it was Salma, but she didn’t pick up. The pain was in her torso and her head. Her legs and arms felt light and distant. Instead of Ibrahim, she found herself thinking of her siblings and her village, the way it changed during the war. Indoors, the women kept their homes clean, washed and ironed their family’s clothes. Men went to the barber even when the children couldn’t go to school. Women sugared the excess hair from their legs and armpits, even after the rationing started. ‘Don’t come back,’ that’s what they said to her whenever she phoned. ‘You’re envied,’ her mother said. ‘You’re lucky,’ her cousin said. So did her neighbour and her best friend. None of them wanted her back. For her own good, of course. But still, it felt, at times, like a rejection. She wanted them to say the opposite: come back, we need you, we miss you, we are waiting for you with open arms. Instead, they said, stay where you are, and with time a coolness grew in these conversations. Her family had less and less patience for her trials or complaints, and to mask jealousy there was now a faint contempt. A refusal to listen or understand. ‘Stay put, my girl. Don’t come back.’