She repeated the sieving process and squinted to see if any more grains remained. Even now, mid morning, scarcely any light penetrated this smoke-blackened hole of a kitchen. It was a week since she’d seen the sun. A week since she’d said farewell to that funny old Moroccan gentleman and his black slave – ‘Sinan . . . ’ She whispered the name into the darkness. Ali’s name she couldn’t bear even to whisper.
A shapeless figure appeared in the doorway. Her new mistress. ‘The kitchen boy’s not risen from his pallet today,’ she said in her shrill unpleasant voice. ‘Says he’s dying, the lazy brat. Perhaps he is. Been coughing his lungs up these past six months. Hack hack hack, hack hack hack, day and night. Drives you bloody mad.’
Lubna looked at her mistress’s baggy silhouette, and wondered i
