When she went silent, I saw that the will to live into old age without her beloved son was fading. “Omar, won’t he come back?” she asked as if she were begging, as if I were able to give life to her dream, before the end. She spent whole afternoons lying in her son’s hammock. She grilled fish by the brazier, and kissed Omar’s photograph, saying: “Why are you taking so long, my love? Why? The others have gone, now there’s only us at home, only the two of us …” She took the hammock to his room, and in the nighttime a stifled voice filled the house with suffering. She cried so much, with her hands on her head, her face wet, and I held my breath, thinking she might die at any moment. She didn’t open the windows, tell me to tidy the garden or sweep the veranda. Geckos and dead beetles covered the dusty little altar, the tiles on the front of the house were grimy, and the patron saint’s image was yellowed. Five weeks like this was enough time to take the shine off the house, and give it an air of neglect.

Then, one afternoon in March (it had rained a lot and Rânia had called me to unblock a drain), a man in a cape stopped in front of the shop window, looked inside the lighted store, and came in slowly, leaving a trail of mud on the floor. It was Rochiram. His hair, plastered down and combed back, gave his face a more serious look; now he had gold-rimmed glasses on. The greenish lenses hid his eyes, and this above all made his face look different. Rânia heard the words she’d been expecting: the two brothers’ debts in exchange for Zana’s house. However, she was surprised when he added: “Your brother, the engineer, is in complete agreement.”

A few days later, a truck parked in front of the house and its contents were loaded and moved to Rânia’s bungalow. Zana put the key in the bedroom door, and from the balcony she saw the green tarpaulin covering her old familiar furniture. She saw the altar and the saint she had prayed to so often, and all the objects that had been hers, before and after her marriage to Halim. Nothing was left of the kitchen or the living room. When she came down, the house was like an abyss. She walked through the empty living room and hung Galib’s photograph on the wall where the altar had left its mark. On the bare walls, lighter patches marked the place where things had once hung.