Think of these last hours as our night of celebration.

Until day breaks I’ll be your guest

Without you I will never be at rest:

(For once we’re parted, we won’t meet again till judgement day.)

From Zehr-i-Ishq, by Shauq

Many years later, a friend looks at Mehran’s album of photographs and says: ‘You changed as you grew older. In your twenties, you look out on the world in a way that’s both trusting and seductive. Your body’s relaxed, yet you seem poised to fly. The photographs of your thirties are reticent. Edgy. Tense, as if you’re withdrawing from the camera’s eye. Witholding yourself. Your face changed. And your posture. What happened?’

I study images of Mehran. Alone in a park, running, reading, poised to climb a tree. Slender, with a sharp jawline, strong teeth, thick untidy black hair which he has attempted to tame with gel. Smiling at the face behind a camera. A young man captured forever in a lover’s gaze.

1987

There’s a later picture in the album, with a date pencilled in the lower right hand corner: July 1987. The man, in profile, in a blue and white shirt with cropped sleeves; brown, smiling, nibbling a woman’s ear. She’s laughing. Dressed in red, hair very short, she’s dark, voluptuous. Happy.

He remembers her dancing the first time they met. She’s tall, dark-skinned, dressed in black, a short dress like a T-shirt, revealing long brown legs. She’s dancing to sax music, swaying in an unchoreographed way, swaying like a tree. Then someone changes the music and plays a desert melody, high sweet male voices over a wind instrument, jangling mandolin, two sets of drums. Her movements change. She’s slower, her head moves from side to side, her arms are sinuous above her head, her wrists twine around each other in a series of deft, subtle movements. This is something, he thinks, she’s been doing since childhood: not learned, but absorbed and part of her, at variance with her short hair, her short dress. Then, suddenly, she sways, falls. Everyone in the room rushes towards her. But before anyone reaches her she’s up, and laughing. A choreographed fall?

He’s invited to a birthday party by an old friend and it happens to be at Marvi’s house, just a short walk away on Clifton Hill.

She greets him at the door.

‘Mehran.’

‘I know. I used to see you at the café by the canal. I know your girlfriend, slightly. Did she mention me? Marvi Ansari.’

‘Ah, yes … Like Umar’s Marvi?’

‘Ha-a! Few people know that story. My name’s actually Mariam, but I prefer Marvi. I’m Sindhi. Or my father is. My husband’s called Umar Sumro too. You’re Sindhi?’

‘Half.’

‘How’s Ayla?’

‘In America. She left last autumn.’

‘I know. But … what news? Is she surviving the Midwest? Or shouldn’t I be asking?’