I was thinking of my father, of how he shivered in a damp cell, mourning his son and not knowing whether his daughter was dead too. He did not mourn for long. They told my aunt it was a heart attack, but that was a lie often told and we knew it for what it was. She told me over the phone, while I stood in a phone box in a city I did not know, in a country that was not my own, and I cried because he was dead, and I cried because I would never see him again, and I cried because I was not there for him, and I cried because I was cold and on my own and my father would never hold me and say “Hush, hush,” again. I told my aunt that I wanted to come back to the funeral, and she said I could not, that it was not safe. “You need to know why, child,” she said. “It is time you knew the truth, past time”, and she told me other things, things I knew already, but had not allowed myself to believe, and then my money ran out and that was that.Safira poked her head around the door. She was nervous, like a little mouse, always watchful, always timid.
