JUDGE: This is all very interesting but could you please ask the witness about the refuge on Papa Astrid?

Three days after the wedding, Mariam and her husband took a flight out of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan, Asia, to Heathrow, London, England, Europe, from where he took her right across the city, to Wood Green, and into McDonald’s for a celebratory treat of chips and milkshake. Already, she was stunned by England’s whiteness, greyness, blackness. People, weather, clothing. As he led her inside the restaurant she could tell from his swagger that he thought she was being offered every Pakistani village girl’s dream. To dine at McDonald’s in London, to eat hot thin chips in your fingers dipped in tomato ketchup – wasn’t that something to tell the people back home? Well, he was partly wrong, partly right. Her aunt, who never spoke about her father’s family’s African roots, would have frowned at the dirty, tacky street, the poor, grubby clients – mostly Sheedi type people. Mariam remembered Father reminding her that England was a melting pot, so he had heard, a good place for someone from their community, even if the food was very bland. But yes, the girls at her school would have been excited by McDonald’s, which wasn’t available in Mirpur Khas – but was spoken of as existing in Hyderabad and Karachi.

TRANSLATOR: She isn’t saying anything about refuge. She is saying she got married to a decent fellow.

JUDGE: I believe she went there just before Eva’s disappearance? Rather, Mariam was the first to disappear.

Back at the flat, he turned on all the lights, and she saw what her home was. It was not really a home at all but a zone of stockpiled produce. The bedroom was stacked high with bags. There were boxes of books and pamphlets all the way down the hallway to the kitchen (which, she saw with a shudder, was next to the toilet). There was no space to sit down in the front room. Boxes, boxes, boxes.

TRANSLATOR: She is complaining only about the home her husband has brought her to.

He showed her everything she needed to know about the business on her second day in England. He made her try on every female garment, so that she would understand the ties and Velcro patches. (Why else, she wondered, did he think she left her homeland?) She would apprentice herself to him, learning the patter and the trade, and how to drive, and once she had done these things to his satisfaction, he would let her loose in a van of her own, kitted out with stuff just for ladies. It was her task to take notes, on everywhere they went, so that she could remember how to get there.