I study her face. My mind goes blank – not in the way it went blank when I was staring at the TV.

‘I’m not feeling as well as I should,’ she continues, grim. ‘I’ve been having . . . I had . . . you know . . . I thought it would end today but it hasn’t.’ She makes a face.

‘There’s an extra bed and room!’ Rarely entered except by Gerta. ‘It’s cold and late! You shouldn’t go!’

She smiles, reminiscent.

‘I don’t have anything to wear, though . . .’ she murmurs, casting glances around her. ‘I’m sorry . . .’

‘Kurta? Will a kurta do?’

She mulls over the word.

‘I love kurtas.’

We relax.

After ten minutes, she’s back in the diaphanous top. It stops above her knees. She herself seems to hover above the ground.

‘Does it fit?’

It’s a rhetorical question. She ignores it; floats to the kitchen.

After two days, we meet, like diplomats drawing out an issue, near the Zoologischer Garten. Birgit’s shifted orbit. We walk to – where else – Wittenbergplatz. The shoe shops; the first floor of the Hugendubel, where you can sit for hours with a book; the rotten tooth – everything is a monument here. Nothing is. We stand, undecided.

I spot wagonloads of bratwurst. Pre-Christmas festivity, light, and flame. The würstchen has moved from near the Wittenbergplatz U-Bahn towards the rotten tooth. Faqrul passed on the news. ‘You must go there. Now is the time!’ he said, his voice lit with craving for haraam. That’s why I’m here. I think: ‘Birgit’s vegetarian.’

•

We explore by-lanes; find a handsome, unvisited Chinese restaurant. We order in solitude: soup and fried noodles. Birgit will never not be thin. She eats significantly more than me, but I wonder if she eats when she’s alone.

•

We emerge as if the paparazzi had wind of us. We stride forward. There’s no one on the street. It’s cold.

Half-empty Ku’damm sparkles.

Uhlandstrasse is shabby. It lacks the sharpness that freezing temperatures bring.

Women stand near the U-Bahn entrance. They have the furtiveness of people who pretend they’re busy in order not to work.

‘You know who they are, don’t you,’ says Birgit, lowering her head like she’s at a social gathering.

I glance with vagueness.

‘They turn up at this time.’

She’s smiling. She’s remembering, or has an intimation.

‘I was here, deciding which U-Bahn to take. An Arab came to—maybe thought I was from his part of the world.’ She lifts eyebrows to the headscarf. ‘He asked me how much I’d charge.’

‘You mean—’ My responses are phlegmatic. I ascertain which feels more foreign, the story or our soft conversation.

‘These Arabs . . .’ She smiles at the impetuosity.

Why would an Arab presume a woman in a hijab is on the job?