Whisking out their two British passports from her handbag, Lateefa waved them under the official’s nose. ‘If we had come into the country with these,’ she shouted, ‘you would not have treated us in this way! For a whole year I have not come home and this is the treatment I get. You treat foreigners better!’ There were reasons, other than Lateefa’s patriotic sentiments, why they left London on their British passport and entered Egypt with their Egyptian ones. It saved them £20 each, the cost of the visa, and it saved them the inconvenience, in Cairo, of registering themselves at the nearest police station as all foreigners had to do. The burgundy booklets worked liked magic. The custom official cleared his throat, ‘Calm down Madam, we don’t want you to come into Cairo so upset, have a nice stay.’

Lateefa narrated this to Khalid, with embellishments and a few gentle additions from Nadia. At a traffic light, cars bumper to bumper, a hand scraped Nadia’s window. A man with no legs, on what she could only think of as a skateboard, was meandering through the cars. She gasped and cringed back from the face, just the ravaged face, suddenly appearing at the window. Lateefa glanced back at her and smiled, ‘The spoilt young lady from Europe.’ The nails scratched on to Khalid’s window. Unperturbed he dropped a note without even turning to look at the man who clattered away to another car. Khalid and Lateefa continued their conversation, ‘The sons of donkeys,’ he chuckled. ‘They probably wanted you to bribe your way out of customs.’ In the back seat, Nadia fought back nausea and tears. That roaming, wanting man, half-human, half-skateboard, would feature in her nightmares.

On the next day, when Khalid came home from work, he took Nadia aside and said, ‘You and I are going on a special outing. Tonight you’re going to meet my fiancée!’ He laughed when Nadia squealed in surprise. ‘Believe me,’ he said. ‘This summer is going to be completely different!’

Nadia had met other Egyptian girls before, distant relatives, family friends. She would find herself thrown in their company, hardly understanding what they were saying, shy and out of place. They would be polite to her but friendships never developed and she would always feel weary after such encounters, resentful of another of Lateefa’s attempts to find companions for her. But Reem was different. And what was pivotal about her was that she spoke English. From the very first words, Nadia was drawn in. ‘I’ve heard so much about you. Khalid told me about the time he visited you in London.’ Everything was out in the open and clear. Nadia could talk back; she did not need to grapple with mouthfuls of Arabic words or run translations through her head.