Abu could hear the rats scamper and scream, yet still when he passed in through the gap, the boy’s hand around his wrist, he could feel them underfoot, stumbling clumsily against his boots. It was perfectly dark, but the boy pulled a pocket torch, and by its soft red light they groped their way inside and back through a dozen deserted rooms. The plaster on the walls had crumbled down to lath, and lay in heaps on the muddy floor.

They passed through corridors as complicated as the streets outside, up stairs, through rooms, until in that house or another they reached rooms progressively less dilapidated. They passed rooms full of people. Abu could hear soft conversations through closed doors, and occasionally voices raised as if in high-pitched anger. Light shone above the transoms. But always, out of several closed doors, the boy picked one that led, not to the sound of voices or to light, but to another dark corridor lined with closed doors. Or they would pass through a series of square unfurnished rooms with a closed door in the middle of each wall, and Abu would know there was some life behind two out of the four, but the boy always chose a door that led them through another square unfurnished room.

Finally they stopped before a door identical to all the rest, set in a wall of grimy, rose-patterned paper.

Here the boy shined his flashlight over Abu and looked him carefully in the face. Then he turned and began drumming softly on the door with the heel of his hand. Abu was soberer now, but still he couldn’t distinguish any rhythm to the knocking, or any effect either, for the sound of talking on the other side of the door went on uninterrupted. The boy tilted his hand so that his knuckles sounded on the wood, but still nothing happened. After a while he stopped, and shone the light in Abu’s face again. He seemed unsure of what to do.

“Is the door locked?” asked the prince.

“I don’t know.”

Abu reached for the knob. The door opened partway, until blocked by some obstruction inside. But the gap was wide enough to step through, and Abu could see part of a table with a few men grouped around it, talking by the light of a kerosene lamp. He stepped inside, and the boy followed.

The room was indistinct in so much darkness, but Abu got the impression of vast space. Other pools of light suggested tables farther in. All around lay piles of crates and barrels, and boxes tied in black sacking.

A man got up from the table and came towards them. He had grown his hair long, but Abu could see that part of his right ear had been cut away, and he was branded on his forehead and his cheek. His right thumb and forefinger had been sewn together in a circle, the penalty for smuggling, second offense. At the table the men were playing cards, and drinking, and smoking foreign cigarettes scented with cardamom and clove.