People like her. People who thought even an old robot might be a friend, not just a thing to throw away when you were done with it. She went to visit her mother at the home. Her mother looked good today, more vibrant, talking animatedly when Mariam came in.

“Your father will be back tonight,” her mother said. “And we’ll go out for dinner, and then to that halo-halo place you like. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Yes, Mama. It will be very nice,” Mariam said. Her father was long dead, and the halo-halo place closed down years earlier. She said, “I saw Hameed today.”

“The robot? You always liked him,” her mother said. “Ever since you were a little girl. They’re good with kids.”

Her mother had worked in just such a home as she’d ended up in. That was where Mariam had met Hameed. Her mother could remember the past with startling clarity. It was the present that forever evaded her grasp.

“Yes,” Mariam said. “Are you well, Mama?”

Her mother’s hand rested on hers. Mariam looked at her mother’s hand and marvelled at its spots and wrinkles, remembering again being a child, her mother’s strong hands, how gently she’d wash her in the bath. The hands unlined then, and still unmarked by years and the ravages of time.

“I’m well, Mariam. You worry too much.” Her mother sat back and sighed. “Your father will be back soon . . . then we’ll go out for dinner. We can stop at that halo-halo place you like so much. What do you think, love?”

“I’d like that, Mama,” Mariam said.

Mariam took her shopping through the thronged streets to her apartment block. It had started to rain and the mud overflowed through the broken slab stones of the street. Kids rode around on electric scooters and shopkeepers put out hurricane lamps to hang from their awnings, as the power to this part of the city was often cut unexpectedly if it were needed elsewhere. When she got to her building at last the elevator wasn’t working again. She climbed the stairs, at last reaching the apartment. She unlocked the door. In the small kitchen, she chopped garlic, set a pot of okra in tomato sauce to cook. She went to the balcony, lit a rare, illicit tobacco cigarette. One of her neighbours sold them and, on a night like this, no one was going to report her.

She stood on the balcony, looking out to the desert beyond the city. Lightning flashed out in the direction of Mecca, and the wind howled up here, driving with it rain-sodden sand.