Hamza had felt his whole body loosen, the brandy and the tranquillizer combining in a blissful oblivion. He had drowned. He was sure of it. He remembered the dark, the world collapsing beneath them. Flashes of the Doctor’s pale face and the noise. Deafening. Howling. And then he had swum. Willing his numb arms, his heavy legs, as the water’s iciness seeped into his every pore. It was so dark that air and water were the same colour. Both smothering. And in the darkness dawned faces in his mind: his wife, his mother, his brother, his son. Up and down they turned and then disappeared. And as he slipped further away from his body, he felt a release. His father was there again. His voice under the fierce sun: ‘Let go! Don’t fight! Let go!’ Hamza had felt the life drain from his numb hands. Could not feel his legs, his heat flooding to his heart. He could not breathe the air, it wasn’t enough – what about breathing water? The thought had slid into his mind so easily, so effortlessly. The simple serenity that the thought brought him. The blessed feeling of the interchange of air and water, water and air. Over and over again in an unending cycle of life and death. And then, the quiet. The offering up of oneself. The peace.

Hamza lay for a moment in the broken boat and breathed. Watching his chest rise and fall. Stubbornly, relentlessly, confounding everything he remembered, the daylight a sharp triangle on his chest through the chink in the door. He lifted his fingers and let them glow in its luminosity. Stunningly beautiful. He smiled, pulled himself up, stumbled towards the door, and edged it open. His eyes narrowed. The salt in the air. The nonchalant sea. He sat in the doorway looking out for a moment, breathing properly for the first time in years.