Capital

concerns, that’s the person they never tell. Don’t get around to telling. Typical. Classic. That’s this place all over.’
    Shahid picked up his prayer shawl, his prayer mat, his Qur’an, his toothbrush, and his sweater. He pulled on his shoelaceless trainers.
    ‘I’m ready,’ he said.
    ‘Typical,’ said the policeman one last time, not to Shahid but to the air at large, still happily shaking his head. He led Shahid out of the cell, down the corridors Shahid was starting to know so well, and to the lift. They went down four floors to an office with a counter, on top of which Shahid’s tracksuit bottoms – the ones he’d been wearing when he was arrested – were sitting. The custody sergeant, a fat man with cold eyes, gave him a clipboard with a form to sign, and he signed it. Then the other policeman led him through a glass-metal-mesh door and there were Ahmed, Usman, Rohinka, Mrs Kamal and Mrs Principle, all of them jumping to their feet as soon as they saw him and all of them looking worried, happy, shiny-eyed. Then Shahid’s own eyes began to blur too.
    ‘Who’s running the shop?’ he tried to say, but his voice cracked halfway through and it came out as a sob, as Shahid burst into tears.

91
     
     
    It sometimes seemed to Rohinka as if she got no sleep at all – literally none, ever. She knew that she must, of course, because if she didn’t – if she literally never went out, not for a second – she would by now have died or gone mad. But there were times when those two states didn’t seem all that far away. And as for the fact that she never slept, well, one sign of it was that whenever Fatima came into the room in the morning – any time from half past five – Rohinka could hear her coming. Perhaps it was only that she was so attuned to her daughter’s waking that the first footfall woke her from her shallow, expectant sleep. That was more likely, Rohinka supposed. Not that it felt as if it made much difference: either way, all day and every day, she was on the ragged edge of exhaustion.
    She was always already awake by the time her daughter came in the room and began her patented three-step process for rousing her mother: first, for about a minute, simply stand beside the bed – very very close to the edge of the bed, ideally about a quarter-inch or so – and wait for the first sign of life. Second, begin to tap her mother on the shoulder with the flat of her hand, a cross between a tap and a pat, not violent, respectful even, but firm, insistent. Third, she would simply clamber over Rohinka, using her as a climbing-obstacle-cum-plaything like something at the recreation centre, and launch herself into the gap in the bed beside her. By that point there was no longer any mileage for Rohinka in pretending to be asleep.
    Today was the same. She heard Fatima coming from the landing, her feet light but purposeful, in no hurry – she knew what she was doing. Mohammed, in his cot in their room, showed no sign of waking, as he tended not to do – a blessing, Rohinka supposed. At 5.30 a.m., one child was enough.
    So today was the same as always. But today was different too, because today was the day that Mrs Kamal was taking a plane back to Lahore. Usman would be travelling with her, a trip with several overlapping agendas: he would help Mrs Kamal with the journey (though anyone less in need of help Rohinka couldn’t think of – still, her notional frailty had sometimes to be deferred to); he was himself claiming that he wanted to ‘chill out in Lahore for a bit’; and he had succumbed to his mother’s bullying to go and meet some potential marriage partners. Well, maybe it would work out for him. Usman had not been quite himself recently. Not that he spoke more, or showed more interest in the children, or anything like that, but he was less angry and more preoccupied. He had trimmed his beard and stopped irritating Ahmed by pretending to refuse to serve alcohol. Perhaps it was no more than that he was growing up a little.
    As soon as Fatima came in the room and stood by the bed, Rohinka did something which amazed her daughter: she got up.
    ‘Mummy!’ said Fatima. ‘What are you doing?!’
    ‘Mamaji leaves today,’ said her mother. ‘There’s lots to do. You can help me.’
    ‘Shall I go and wake her up?’
    Fatima, for all her indefatigability, her unstoppability, her take-no-prisoners approach to life, was very wary of her grandmother. (Who, predictably, doted on