‘You still don’t get it, do you? I’ve tried to get Baba’s approval my whole life. Now, at last, I understand the world he lives in. He wanted to make me tougher, strong enough to deal with life, but he also wanted to distance us from his work, to live like respectable white people. He expected too much too quickly.

‘He wanted us to be spotless and know nothing about where our family money comes from, and what he has to do to earn it, so that no one can use it against us. But his plan didn’t work. We can’t have the lives he wants us as a family to have while the business exists as it does. Someone has to act as a buffer or the past will bleed into all our lives. I need to be that buffer, so that you and Maria and Ben can get out.

‘Do you remember the goat herder’s daughter, Jia, the one who Mama put through school?’

‘The one who killed herself?’

Zan nodded. ‘You know why?’

Jia shook her head.

‘Not really. I remember Mama blaming herself.’

‘She was really bright. Graduated top of her class, but after she finished her MA, she no longer fitted anywhere. She knew there was a better life out there than the slums – she had seen it. But the people in that world didn’t accept her, they didn’t want her to marry their sons, live in their houses, be their equal. In the end, the fight broke her. Change has to be slow, has to be incremental, otherwise people don’t accept it. We have to do it together. I have to help Baba evolve the business, clean it up now, so that by the time you are ready to leave, the past is buried. The business holds our family together. If we dismantle it too fast, it will collapse and we can’t live like ordinary people yet. We need the money to clear the way.

‘You can still stay out of all of this, Jia – keep your head down and your hands clean. I will stay to make sure that happens. And I will stay so that the rest of you don’t have to. It’s OK – I want this, don’t you see? I finally feel like Akbar Khan’s eldest son, and I am a Pukhtun: my place is with my family. Baba knows his world, and I know this one. Together, we can find a way forward.’

Jia wanted to make him see that sacrificing himself was no answer, that their father loved him and he did not need to prove himself to him, but she could tell that he was gone; he was too far down the rabbit hole to come back.