Eventually she found herself at the monastery. It was too imposing for her, too masculine. The gargoyles were the colour of guns. The tall slim windows like ghostly sentinels hovering above the ground. She stepped into the cloister. An atmosphere hung all over the building, she felt it on her skin. Salma had raved about the architecture of the monastery, but Iman felt a kind of heaviness. Like a responsibility. Knowledge is heavy. One can gain hold of the treasure and then lose it, or memorise sacred words and forget them.

She was about to turn away when she saw something through the window. A figure in costume. It must be a costume, a brown medieval cloak, warm woollen layers with a rope for a belt. The figure evoked a memory, not of an experience, but of something she had seen on television, an image in a painting or in a book. She pushed open the door of the refectory and when she entered, her knees felt weak. She leant against the door and looked up to see the figure climb up the steps to the pulpit. Before he reached the top, he turned and looked at her. Fierce eyes, dishevelled hair, body tilted forward. She was reminded of the Hoopoe’s story about Nathan. That was how she had imagined him to be, intense and focused, someone who would be too busy for the likes of her. But here he was, stopping to give her a second glance; she had distracted him, delayed him from his prayers. She wished she was not wearing this ridiculous cowboy hat. In her own clothes, with her ordinary hijab, she would have better matched his medieval outfit. They would have understood each other, asked forgiveness from the same God, followed the Ten Commandments, experienced the trajectory of weakness, sin, regret, then redemption. But Nathan and his times were over, the monastery knew it, and the grounds; the silence because there were no more prayers, the blankness because no one knelt. The Nathan she was seeing now was a memory, his prayers did not count. Back out, she told herself. Already the air was thick with misplaced energy, the room closing in. This was a dead end.

Out in the fresh air, she caught her breath and walked towards the boathouse. A boat was moored on the lake. There she found Mullin.

‘Hi lassie,’ he said. He was crouching down in the boat, folding the canopy. ‘How’re ye getting on?’

It was clear that he liked her more than he did either Moni or Salma. Both had come across him in the past few days and complained afterwards that he was rude and gruff.

‘Everything’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for a little boy. He doesn’t talk. We see him on his own, never with his family. Do you know where they’re staying?’