o friends, with monsoons, longing for

the loved one comes again.

The rain pours on the desert sands,

on hills and vales around,

at early dawn we rise to hear

the churn’s soft, humming sound.

The cloud, with colours rich and bright,

paints towers in the skies,

brings zither, violin, tambour

and flute, to give delight.

Herdsmen’s wives about their necks

of blossoms garlands wind,

cucumbers, mushrooms, vegetables,

fruit of every kind.

I hope the rain will water well

the parched and longing plain.

Beloved, come! my life sustain,

all seasons turn to spring.

I was immersed in Latif’s words and Elsa Kazi’s translations, from which I was choosing excerpts, when, at nine, the doorbell rang. I marked my page with the peacock feather Marvi had placed in the book, went to the door, and there she was: wrapped up in a great beige cape in a wheelchair pushed by Sumirah, the Javanese carer. Her eyes were lined with kohl, her lips ruby-red; her face, nestling in a hood, had some of its prior glamour. She had brought me two brown paper bags full of my favourite Persian food, lamb kebabs and buttery rice and yoghurt with dill and hot bread fresh from the oven, and though she didn’t share the meal, she sat and watched me eat.

‘Hey, I’ve been looking at that book you gave me, the Kazi translations. Weren’t we supposed to rework some of those poems?’

‘We can do it at the seaside, when it’s warmer. Next year! Let’s hope it’s a better one. Do you know anyone who might want to rent my flat? I’m moving to Brighton this month,’ she said. ‘I’m happiest by the sea. It takes me back to Karachi.’

Soon after eleven, she went off in her wheelchair to see the old year out with her friends.

I left the curtains undrawn and watched fireworks light up the London sky.

1999

A few days before her birthday in April, she phoned to invite me to celebrate with her in Brighton. The day before the party, Sumirah called to say: ‘Come over immediately, she’s in and out of a coma, she asked for you this morning.’ I thought it was one of Marvi’s jokes, but it was true: she’d kept her word, about not living to see forty.

Memory: Marvi dancing. Dressed in black. The fragile wrists. And then the fall.

Marvi died six years to the month (and almost to the day) after Riccarda. I saw her face, almost free of pain, one final time, at the mosque where we read funeral prayers before they flew her coffin to Sindh, to bury her in the cemetery by the ancient shrine where her ancestors lay.