Once in a while, though, I googled your name as if checking up on an old friend. Your career had taken another direction. You started to write for children. You teamed up with your brother, the artist, and wrote picture books in which you upgraded the One Thousand and One Nights for a modern, technologically savvy global readership. I admired you for working with your brother. It showed how authentic you were, still tied to our family values. Actually, I only bought one of your new books, the one modelled on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. By then my sons were too old and my daughters’ preferred the Power Puff Girls. (This was long before you wrote Sindy, the Sailor, the modern female incarnation of Sindbad). When the twins were very young they rejected anything that had a whiff of African or Muslim culture about it – including your books. This disappointed me because I wanted them to have pride in their heritage. Thankfully, it was a phase and they got over it as they became older and more conscious.

The birth of the twins had been a watershed for me. I was determined not to have any more children and to complete my distance learning degree. To be honest, I still raised the radio’s volume when you were interviewed on Woman’s Hour, I still admired your new hairstyle in that photo in The Telegraph, but my interest had lost its edge.

The next time I met you was fifteen years later, in Abu Dhabi. We had moved for my husband’s work and after settling in, I too found a job. I became first an assistant then a coordinator in an educational non-profit foundation which promoted a love of reading among children. My life changed when I started to earn my own money. I could now afford a part-time maid and to pay for the children’s school bus. Freed from the weight of the school run and the bulk of the housework, I poured myself into my new job and I began to enjoy myself. To take delight in the malls and the beach. I relaxed in this family oriented environment, where children stayed up late and the pace of life was slower.