‘That’s an exaggeration. Just a handful of reflections. Impressions of people and places. I guess you could call them fictions. All Lilla’s fault. She collected them from here and there, slung them together and gave them to Flavio, who’s starting a publishing company with a group of colleagues …’

Mehran pauses, and wonders whether anyone will recognise them, Riccarda and even Lilla, and if Marco will read it. But Lilla says he shouldn’t worry, it was all so long ago, and in any case he’s changed all the names, even his own.

‘What’s the book called?’

I wanted a title that echoed the rain. The sounds of gulls crying, a dead flute. And I like the story my mother told of a cloud carrying messages of love across landscapes. On a plane to Karachi one morning, I randomly opened that old translation of Latif’s Risalo Marvi gave me and came upon the Sur Sarang, those lyrics about clouds and the rainfall on the desert, marked with the peacock feather she left in it. That afternoon, my friend Nada played me a recording of a Sindhi wai: it was one of the Songs of Marvi. After those signs, I knew my title.

Mehran pours himself some water, lights a cigarette.

‘I haven’t decided.’

He smiles and turns away.

Author’s Note

In May 1978, a few weeks after my twenty-third birthday, I walked out of the bank where I had been working, on the final day of my training as a junior officer. I had no clear idea of where I was going next.

I had always been curious about Middle Eastern Studies, and arranged to meet the heads of both Persian and Turkish at SOAS that summer, but was told I would have to make a choice. I chose Persian because I knew the script and I could also study Urdu literature along with it.

My university years were not the most eventful or significant of my life. My primary interest was in world music. In my final year, I was busier with French linguistic and cultural studies, which I did at the same time as I prepared for my degree. Three years after leaving SOAS, I went on to study psychoanalysis and philosophy, and embarked on a dissertation on Lacan, Klein and Sartre. In 1987, I published my first short story, ‘The Colour of a Loved Person’s Eyes’, and left behind my dissertation (and academe) to become a working writer in the London of the late eighties.

My professional life was to be dedicated to the English language. But in the nineties, my abandoned interest in Urdu literature resurfaced, and I began to realise what I had learned during the three years of study I had come to think of as lost, or at least forgotten.

My novel is the story of some of the paths I might have taken.

The characters and most of the situations here are imaginary.