‘You don’t think I’m human?’ she said. He doubted her ability to feel, and she knew many thought the same, and while she didn’t care what others thought, she did care about him. He was her son, and though buried, her love for him ran deep. And so she cut open her chest and took out her heart for him to see. The words felt trite and saccharine on her tongue but they were the truth, and she knew that the bitter taste left by their sweetness said more about her than her choice of them. ‘Life is about losing,’ she said, ‘losing time, the people we love, our innocence, our ideals. That is all I know of life. So yes, I was afraid, I was afraid of the pain that comes with love. And so…when they told me you’d died, I was relieved. Relieved because I loved you so much that it hurt me. It’s not something I expected until I felt you within me, growing slowly, listening gently to the things I heard.

‘Ahad,’ she said, and for the first time he heard the weight of a mother’s feeling in that address. ‘Great love is not the thing of romance novels. It comes from blood. It comes from opening a vein for family, from seeing your face in each other, in your child, your brother, your father. Seeing yourself look back at you through someone else’s eyes, knowing that you would sacrifice yourself, piece by piece, for them, until there was nothing left of you.’

Ahad was afraid to look at her in case it broke the spell. ‘You were so perfect, so alert,’ she said. ‘But you were unable to protect yourself. How I felt about you, it was such an overwhelming thing I couldn’t look at you. The way I loved you was all-consuming!’ she said. ‘If I had returned to your father…been reunited with you…stayed with you…it would have destroyed me and you. You made me afraid. For the first time in my life I was afraid of everything. You were my weakness.’ She looked at him. ‘But I will make you my strength. If you will let me.’

Hot, salty tears washing away years of anger, loss and loathing flowed down his face as he broke down. And as they flowed she reached over and put her arms around him. He couldn’t tell how long they sat there, or how long he wept, but the velvet night deepened and then abated around them, and the azaan was calling believers to prayer when they finally walked through the door to Pukhtun House. Jia covered her head and showed Ahad the way to the ablution room. ‘Do you pray?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘Good.’