We knew the Baku flat very well, because it had belonged to his relatives. Once upon a time it had been home to his grandfather Baladadash, who had a massive wineskin of a stomach that dangled right down to his knees, and his father’s step-brother Amirgusein, a moneylender who was famous throughout the city. In our student days we all dressed ourselves on money borrowed on interest from Amirgusein: he usually lent at eight per cent a month, but as students we were given a fifty per cent discount.
In the post-war years Rafik’s mother often brought us all to this flat with the three big rooms overlooking the sea and locked us into one of them before going on to work. Times were hard: eighty-year-old Baladadash, half wasted away, used to wander through the other two rooms with his stomach
