Once the pregnancy had been thus dishonestly and enthusiastically achieved, Henna was completely indifferent to both Rashid and the new life growing inside her. Only the heartbeat at Henna’s occasional check-ups reminded her about the child. All she cared about was that she would now be afforded truly special treatment, and was able to loll lazily in the house or on the veranda, flicking through her film magazines, playing her imported Elvis Presley records and shouting occasional orders to the servants to bring her sweets from town, or to make her tea with condensed milk and fried pastry delicacies. In the spirit of the swinging sixties, she cut her hair daringly short, right up to her shoulders, and wore it loose in a shining bob like one of her favourite film idols. Her inlaws looked on indulgently - Henna had become their little princess and could do no wrong. Of course they didn’t mind Henna’s below-average grades in her examinations - she had far more important things to worry about now. Thus pampered to her heart’s content, in pregnancy Henna became beautiful once more, and her skin lost its teenage imperfections and began to glow. Rashid’s vain little brother, Aziz, returned from his English boarding school and developed a thumping crush on her, competing with the servants to fulfil her tiniest requests for the reward of a smile or a patronizing pat.

Rashid, mystified by the shift of power in his family household that had occurred, simply accepted it, in the same way he had always accepted his father’s omnipresent disapproval. This paternal censure was magnified when he finally finished his studies, as he started training for accountancy rather than taking over the running of the family properties. He still nursed a secret hope that he and Henna would be able to move abroad one day, to the green and pleasant lands in which he had been educated, and believed that a professional qualification would pave the way. As it happened, with his father’s death they were forced to move abroad faster than he thought, to a land much greener and wetter than the England of his idyllic student memories.