The city was acknowledging his departure, recognising his need for a farewell. Headlamps of cars jerked in the badly lit streets, thin people in white floated like clouds. Voices, rumbling lorries, trucks leaning to one side snorting fumes. On a junction with a busier road, a small bus went past carrying a wedding party. It was lit inside, an orange light that caught the singing faces, the clapping hands. Ululations, the sound of a drum, lines from a song. Yassir drove on and gathered around him what he would take back with him, the things he could not deliver. Not the beads, not the paintings, but other things. Things devoid of the sense of their own worth. Manaal’s silhouette against the rig’s flare, against a sky dyed with kerkadeh. The scent of soap and shampoo in his car, a man picking his toenails, a page from a newspaper spread out as a mat. A voice that said, ‘I see the planes circling at night, I see their lights, all the people going away. Manaal saying, ‘You could have made it easier for her, you could have been more kind.’

The Ostrich

‘You look like something from the Third World,’ he said, and I let myself feel hurt, glancing downwards so that he would not see the look in my eyes. I didn’t answer his taunting smile like he expected me to, didn’t say, ‘And where do you come from?’ I let him put his arm around me by way of greeting and gave him the trolley with my suitcases to push.

He must have seen me first, I thought, while I was scanning the faces of the people who were waiting at the terminal, he must have been watching me all the time. And I suddenly felt ashamed, not only for myself, but for everyone else who arrived with me on that airplane. Our shabby luggage, our stammering in front of the immigration officer, our clothes that seemed natural a few hours back, now crumpled and out of place.

So I didn’t tell him about the baby, though I imagined I would tell him right away in the airport as soon as we met. Nor did I confess that at times I longed not to return, that in Khartoum I felt everything was real and our life in London a hibernation.