The first time they slept together, when they were lying next to each other afterwards, she lifted his hand from where it lay on his chest and held it up and he knew she was looking at his palm, at the difference in pigment between the lines and the soft pads of flesh, and he thought maybe he would forgive her that one but then he used to catch her staring at him in bed, sometimes, when they were both pretending to be asleep, and felt annoyed with how she was making such a big deal out of it. He grew to like her less and less, and after a while it made him think badly of himself as a man, to be sleeping with a woman he didn’t really care for just because he needed to feel someone else’s body against his once in a while. It wasn’t honourable. He expected her to cry when he ended their relationship but instead she put on a still face and said quietly that she understood. It was okay for her, she said, to say that the differences between them didn’t matter, but she could see how it wasn’t okay for him and maybe he was never really going to love a woman who wasn’t from his own community. At that point he felt like throwing her against the wall but he didn’t, he thanked her for her understanding, even though she was completely missing the point.

So that was it. He had nearly gone to a prostitute once, so desperate had he felt at his lowest, but the thought of how much he would hate himself afterwards kept him from it. There was always porn, of course – the young men in the hostel were all obsessed with it – but he would rather close his eyes and think about home, about Aasiya, who he had loved, and Najimo, who he hadn’t but who had been the best sex ever because it was forbidden – it was like crunching shushumow fresh from the pan, crisp and hot and sugary, it was like cramming in a whole mouthful at once, indelicately – and what those women had in common was that the feel of them in his arms was so soft, so fine. Najimo, she was so loud, that braying laugh of hers, but she melted in his arms. Sometimes the past seemed like enough, in comparison with the disappointments of the present.