15I had three options: to hate myself for what I had brought upon my family, to hate my family for what they had done to me or to hate both them and myself because I was one of them.
My doorbell rang and then kept ringing until I opened the door. A shark with its jaws ready to strike, accompanied by a pitiful dolphin, broke into my flat, dragging behind them a net, a tarouf, from which they hadn’t been able to break free. I, the little fish, tried to escape by slipping through the mesh of the net.
‘Nouriya?’ I said in surprise. I was stepping backwards for fear she would grab the collar of my shirt, as she had done the first time. On that occasion she had been at pains to control herself in case anyone in Grandmother’s house noticed. But in my flat, in the tank of the little fish, as Kha
