They began to meet there, in the cave, beside the sea. Kamal worked nights at the cooperative, and Giulia worked days at the workshop. They met at midday. They made love at noon, and their embrace had the savour of stolen moments together. The whole of Sicily was hard at work, busy in the office, or the banks, or the markets, but not them. Those hours were theirs alone, they used and abused them, counting one another’s freckles and marks, noting their scars, tasting every portion of each other’s skin. Love-making by day is not the same as by night, there is something bolder, something strangely brutal, about discovering another’s body in in the full light of day.

Meeting one another in this way, it seemed to Giulia that they were like the tarantella dancers that she had watched as a child, at the street balls on summer nights: coming together, touching one another, moving apart – this was the dance of their relationship, governed by the ebb and flow of their work, their days, their nights. Frustrating, disconnected from life, but romantic in equal measure.

Kamal was a man of mystery. Giulia knew nothing about him, or very little. He never spoke of his past life, the life he had been forced to abandon to come here. Sometimes, watching the sea, he would gaze far into the distance; then, his cloak of sorrow would descend, enveloping him completely. For Giulia, water was life, a source of endless pleasure, sensuality itself. She loved to swim, to feel the water slipping over the surface of her body. One day, she had tried to lead him into the water. But Kamal had refused. The sea is a cemetery, he said. She had no idea what he had experienced, what the water had taken from him. He would tell her one day, perhaps. Or perhaps not.

When they were together, they never talked about the future, or the past. Giulia expected nothing of him, nothing but those stolen midday hours. All that mattered was the present, the moment when their bodies would come together as one, like two pieces of a puzzle, melding one into the other, a perfect fit.

Kamal never talked about himself, but he spoke readily about his country. Giulia could listen to him for hours on end. He was like an open book about a place that was deliciously unknown to her. She would close her eyes and feel as if she was stepping aboard a boat on which she was the only passenger. Kamal told her about the mountains of Kashmir, the banks of the River Jhelum, Lake Dhal and its floating hotels. He told her about the red of the trees in autumn, the luxuriant gardens, the tulips spreading as far as the eye could see, to the Himalayas. Giulia urged him to tell her more; she wanted to know, she said. Tell me.