Their child, tired of being ignored for so long in the womb, fought for recognition by arriving a couple of weeks prematurely, cheating Henna of her last fortnight of idleness. Henna had travelled the short distance to her father’s house, not to have the child there as family tradition dictated, but with the sole intention of showing off her pregnant prosperity and sophistication to her blood relatives, most of whom she hadn’t seen since her wedding. Caught short when her waters broke on her arrival, Henna found herself obliged to honour tradition despite herself. Even with the aid of child-bearing hips, Henna had a difficult birth as a result of her indolence during her pregnancy, when even the most rudimentary antenatal exercises had been ignored. Squatting on the ill-fated birthing stool on which her mother had died giving birth to a still-born brother, swearing and complaining viciously throughout the whole ordeal, Henna vowed that it was an experience that she wouldn’t be repeating. Too bad for Rashid if it wasn’t a boy.

When their baby girl eventually emerged, Rashid, however, was far from disappointed. He looked in awe at his tiny daughter, so delicate and perfect in snub-nosed profile, with a wide-open mouth screaming to be listened to, demanding that she finally be heard. She wasn’t the milky aristocratic colour of the Karims, but nor did she have the swarthiness she might have inherited from her maternal grandfather. Instead, she was the colour of pale sand, a golden, rosy colour, with an equally golden burnish glowing across her dark-brown downy hair. The names they had discussed before, family names, now seemed prosaic and inappropriate, and insufficient to describe this magical, radiant creature. Rashid tentatively raised this with Henna, knowing that with his collective family behind her even more strongly since his father’s death, Henna would be the one to have her way.

‘You can call her whatever you want,’ said Henna ungraciously, turning over painfully in bed. ‘She’s yours, isn’t she?’

Grateful, despite the bad-tempered tone and Henna’s obvious indifference to their daughter, Rashid suggested naming her Shona Kiran, the Golden One, the Ray of Sunshine, in deference to her colouring, and to all the new optimism in his life she now represented.