At first, Shadia was afraid to ask him for his notes. The earring made her afraid. And the long, straight hair that he tied up with a rubber band. She had never seen a man with an earring and such long hair. But then, she had never known such cold, so much rain. His silver earring was the strangeness of the West, another culture shock. She stared at it during classes, her eyes straying from the white scribbles on the blackboard. Most times she could hardly understand anything. Only the notation was familiar. But how did it all fit together? How did this formula lead to this? Her ignorance and the impending exams were horrors she wanted to escape. His long hair, a dull colour between yellow and brown, different shades. It reminded her of a doll she had when she was young. She had spent hours combing that doll’s hair, stroking it. She had longed for such straight hair. When she went to Paradise she would have hair like that. When she ran it would fly behind her; if she bent her head down it would fall over like silk and sweep the flowers on the grass. She watched his pony-tail move as he wrote and then looked up at the board. She pictured her doll, vivid suddenly after years, and felt sick that she was daydreaming in class, not learning a thing.

The first days of term, when the classes started for the MSc in Statistics, she was like someone tossed around by monstrous waves. Battered as she lost her way to the different lecture rooms, fumbled with the photocopying machine, could not find anything in the library. She could scarcely hear or eat or see. Her eyes bulged with fright, watered from the cold. The course required a certain background, a background she didn’t have. So she floundered, she and the other African students, the two Turkish girls and the men from Brunei. As this congregation from the Third World whispered their anxieties in grim Scottish corridors, the girls in nervous giggles, Asafa, the short, round-faced Ethiopian, said in his grave voice, ‘Last year, last year a Nigerian on this very same course committed suicide. Cut his wrists.’

Us and them, she thought. The ones who would do well, the ones who would crawl and sweat and barely pass. Two predetermined groups. Asafa, generous and wise (he was the oldest), leaned over and whispered to Shadia, ‘The Spanish girl is good. Very good.’ His eyes bulged redder than Shadia’s. He cushioned his fears every night in the university pub; she only cried. Their countries were next door neighbours but he had never been to Sudan, and Shadia had never been to Ethiopia. ‘But we meet in Aberdeen!’ she had shrieked when this information was exchanged, giggling furiously. Collective fear had its euphoria.

‘That boy Bryan,’ said Asafa, ‘is excellent.’

‘The one with the earring?’