Jax had been awake well before Khalil’s alarm should have gone off at 6.15 am, just as it had every morning since Khalil had moved into the two-out cell. After realising Khalil had passed out before setting the alarm, Jax had thought of setting it, but decided against it. He thought Khalil would blame himself for forgetting to set the alarm – but blaming the cheap watch was just as good. Khalil would also blame the flu for his sore head, rather than think it was a drug-induced hangover.

Jax watched from his bed, covers on and head propped up on his pillow, as Khalil took a moment to steady himself after standing. The inmate rubbed his eyes and yawned before leaning down to pull the prayer mat from under his bed.

‘Better late than never,’ Khalil said to Jax.

Jax suspected this wasn’t the first time Khalil had been late for his morning prayer.

Khalil unfurled his mat, blue with a white tapestry of a mosque. Half of the now grubby, once-white tassels had fallen out. Khalil’s prayer mat was plain compared to others Jax had seen. Even Afghan farmers prayed on better mats. He couldn’t be sure what the material was without touching it, but he was certain it was not Egyptian cotton like the one his platoon interpreter used to roll out.

Khalil positioned the mat below the cell window, got down on his knees and faced the sun. Jax had almost corrected him the first time he’d watched Khalil pray: he wanted to point out that Mecca was due west and that therefore he should be looking away from the rising sun, at least in Australia, not towards it. But an infidel like Jax was not supposed to know things about Mecca.

Jax wondered how Khalil would have reacted if he’d told him that Muslims once prayed to Jerusalem instead of Mecca, the sudden switch in the second year of the Hijra casting doubt on the validity of the entire religion. And that even though he was facing the wrong way, he was also facing the right way because while most Muslims think that God won’t be listening if you are not facing Mecca, according to the Prophet Muhammad, God can be found by looking either east or west. Either way. Doesn’t matter. Jax wondered exactly how much Khalil knew about Islam at all. The religion he was prepared to kill himself for.