There was still a long way for them to go, past the Extension, beyond the airport, past Riyadh to the newly built areas of Taif and El-Ma’moura. Not a very practical idea, a drain of the week’s ration of petrol and there was the possibility that the painter would not be in and the whole journey would have been wasted. Manaal was optimistic though. ‘They’ll be in,’ she said, ‘Inshallah. Especially if we get there early enough before they go out anywhere.’ There were no telephones in El-Ma’moura; it was a newly built area with no street numbers, no addresses.

That morning, he had mentioned buying a painting or two to take back to Aberdeen and Manaal had suggested Ronan K. He was English; his wife gave private English lessons (Manaal was once her student). Now in the car when he asked more about him she said, ‘For years he sat doing nothing, he had no job, maybe he was painting. I didn’t know about that until the Hilton commissioned him to do some paintings for the cafeteria. No one knows why this couple live here. They are either crazy or they are spies. Everyone thinks they are spies.’

‘You all like to think these sensational things,’ he said. ‘What is there to spy on anyway?’

‘They’re nice though,’ she said. ‘I hope they are not spies.’ Yassir shook his head, thinking it was hopeless to talk sense to her.

The paintings were not his idea, they were Emma’s. Emma was good with ideas, new suggestions – it was one of the things he admired about her. Yassir didn’t know much about painting. If he walked into a room he would not notice the paintings on the wall and he secretly thought they were an extravagance. But then he felt like that about many of the things Emma bought. What he considered luxuries, she considered necessities. Like the Bambi wallpaper in Samia’s room must be bought to match the curtains, which match the bedspread, which match Thumper on the pillowcase. And there was a Bambi video, a Ladybird book, a pop-up book. He would grumble but she would persuade him. She would say that as a child she had cried in the cinema when Bambi’s mother was shot. Popcorn could not stop the tears, the nasal flood.

This time Emma had asked, ‘What can you get from Khartoum for the house?’ They were eating muesli and watching television.

‘Nothing. There’s nothing there,’ Yassir said.

‘What do tourists get when they go there?’

‘Tourists don’t go there,’ he said. ‘It’s not a touristy place. The only foreigners there are working.’

Once, when Yassir was in university, he had met a British journalist. The journalist was wearing shorts which looked comical because no one else wore shorts unless they were playing sports. He had chatted to Yassir and some of his friends.