‘I can sort of remember it from there. This and that. Lying in one of the consulting rooms, all bandaged up like a mummy. This one nurse crying all the time. One of them was called Mel and one of them was Janey. I think it was Janey who cried all the time. Doctor Catell, unshaven, pumping me full of painkillers and antibiotics and stuff, cleaning my wounds, trying to stitch me up. It felt like all the nerves in my skin had been exposed, rubbed with grit. Like I’d been deep-fried. I remember a lot of screaming. He must’ve given me the most righteous painkillers he had. All pointless, he told me, but it seemed I wasn’t ready to die yet. The Koran says everything that happens has been planned by Allah. It’s all worked out.’

‘Fate,’ said Ella. ‘Isaac was going on about it. Something called a funny word, like Kermit?’

‘Kismet,’ said Malik and he chuckled. ‘Kermit. Yeah, it’s all the same thing. Fate, kismet, Kermit, Qadar. That’s one of the main teachings of Islam – Qadar. It’s all written down somewhere, everything that happens to you. Like we’re all just characters in a book. So why do you think I wasn’t allowed to die? Why do you think that is? I sometimes thought it was because there was something Allah wanted me to do. That I had a purpose. Other times I thought maybe he was just laughing at me. And lots of times I lost any faith I might have had. Didn’t believe in anything. I’d have been happy to die back then, instead of screaming all night. Dr Chris didn’t know how I survived, said I’d lost so much blood I must’ve had only, like, half a litre left in me.

‘I don’t know exactly how long it went on like that, me lying there, him looking more tired every day, the one nurse crying, the other one going slowly nuts, the kids shouting out. Yeah, there were others. I wasn’t the only one. There were six of us in all, me and another couple of boys and three girls. Time just sort of passed. Didn’t know what was day and what was night, while Chris tried to look after me and the nurses, and his other patients.

‘Then one of the boys died and there were five of us, and then it was clear that a nurse had the disease, and Chris and the other nurse, the crying one, had to shut her outside. And she stayed out there, wailing and weeping and screaming and banging on the doors, saying she was all right, then making weird sounds and using made-up language. In the end she was just, like, grunting and swearing and sniffing at the doors and windows. And then one day Chris went out and hit her with something until she was quiet.