‘Maybe it’s this house,’ Manaal said. He parked. They rang the bell but it was the wrong house.

Back in the car they drove through the different tracks and decided to ask around. How many foreigners were living in this area anyway? People were bound to know them.

Yassir asked a man sitting in front of his house, one knee against his chest, picking his toenails. Near him an elderly man was praying, using a newspaper as a mat. The man didn’t seem to know but he gave Yassir several elaborate suggestions.

Yassir asked some people who were walking past but again, they didn’t know. This was taking a long time as everyone he asked seemed willing to engage him in conversation.

‘It’s your turn,’ he said to Manaal when they saw a woman coming out of her house.

She went towards the woman and stood talking to her. Sunset was nearly over by then; the western sky, the houses, the dusty roads were all one colour. Like the flare that burns off the rig, he thought. Manaal stood, a dark silhouette against red and brick. One hand reached out to hold her hair from blowing and her thin elbows made an angle with her head and neck from which the light came through. This is what I would paint, Yassir thought, if I knew how. I would paint Manaal like this, with her elbows sticking out against the setting sun.

When she came back she seemed pleased. ‘We’re nearly there,’ she said, ‘that woman knew them. First right, and it’s the second house.’

As soon as they turned right, Manaal recognised the one-storey house with the blue gate. She got out before him and rang the bell.

Ronan K. was older than Yassir had imagined. He looked like a football coach, overweight yet light in his movements. The light from the lamp near the gate made him look slightly bald. He recognised Manaal, and as they stepped into a large bare courtyard while he closed the gate behind them, she launched into a long explanation of why they had come and how they had nearly got lost on the way.

The house inside had no tiles on the floors – its surface was of uneven textured stone, giving it the appearance that it was unfinished, still in the process of being built. Yet the furniture was arranged in an orderly way, and there were carpets on the floor. Birds rustled in a cage near the kitchen door. On one of the walls there was a painting of the back of a woman in a tobe, balancing a basket on her head.

‘One of yours?’ Yassir asked, but Ronan said no, he did not like to hang his own paintings in the house.