Chapter One

       Fajar

      It was early afternoon. I had suffered through all of my morning lessons almost screaming with pain when the teacher called me into his room and ordered me to sit on a plastic stool. My tooth was abscessed and swollen, and I felt like one side of my head was light as air, and the other side made of bricks. Even though my tooth was throbbing, I was curious. I had never been in a teacher’s room before. It was neat and bare, like the dormitory that I slept in at night with the other boys. A plaque bearing the ninety-nine names of Allah was hanging sternly on the wall above the bed, and there was also a washbasin, and a number of books were lined up along a shelf.

      The room was not right for the teacher’s large body and kind face. I wondered if this man, whose name was Dedi, would not like a wife and perhaps a young son, and also why he did not have a television. He washed his hands at the basin and then shocked me by putting one fat hairy finger right inside my mouth.

       Bite.

      Against my beliefs regarding the biting of a teacher, but in accordance with the laws of obedience, I clamped down on his finger as hard as I could. A shock of pain was followed by a burst of warm, foul-tasting liquid, which I spat into Dedi’s handkerchief.

      Bite again.

      After that he tied one end of a piece of thread to my tooth and the other end to the handle of the door of his room. I felt the blood drain quickly from my face and I tried to tell him that I would ask my family to send money for the dentist, but his arm moved swiftly to the door and it was over. He gave me some medicine to take, and then he was showing me out of the room when the headmaster found us, approaching with his nervous, birdlike manner, head cocked to one side as if testing each word.

      Your father has gone to Allah, Fajar.

      Both men turned their eyes on me, thoughtfully, as if they were weighing up all of the consequences of that one piece of news – the way that each difficulty would now line up against the next and crash down on my small frame.

      Within the hour, Teacher Dedi walked me down the road to the bus stop. His large hand rested on my shoulder for a moment before I got on and paid the driver and found my seat. I turned to wave, but there was only a square white back bobbing along the road in a cloud of smoke.

      As the bus started moving, my tongue sought out the place where the rotted tooth had been so cleverly removed, leaving a satisfying new gap. Then I turned my attention to a rooster that was staring at me from its seat on the lap of a young woman. Rain began to strike at the windows of the bus, but then stopped as if changing its mind. I looked at the chicken and pretended not notice the woman, who had a large birthmark on her face and sat staring out at the grey, threatening sky. I was trying to think a clear path through the fuzziness of the medicine.

       My father has gone to Allah. But how? Is he in Paradise already? Doesn’t he know that he is urgently needed at home?

      The concept of death had not taken a definite shape in my mind, although I had seen it before in the form of a motionless, doll-like form that had once been the next-door-neighbour’s baby. But I couldn’t see that my father had anything to do with that. A tiny voice crept in to offer some advice.

      It might be a mistake, it whispered.

      I watched the people getting on and off the bus with their children and animals and packages, as the journey passed slowly, with many stops.

      As we neared the centre of the city, the buildings grew taller and the sky became dirty with smoke from the traffic. I got off the bus on a side road. There were scraps of rubbish blowing around in the street as the wind was picking up for a storm. My eyes began to sting with grit and heat.

      I crossed the high bridge over the motorway, which was swarming with beeping cars and motorbikes and people heaving carts through the murky air. I was home. I could hear the praying coming from our house as I went along the back alleys until I saw that some relatives of ours standing in the front yard. A flash of lightning gave them a strange yellow glow for a moment and then the youngest boy began waving and shouting to me. My father should be greeting them, I thought stupidly, and my mother, and they should not be standing there in the heat and wind with the storm coming.

      In truth, our house is not large, and inside was full of other relatives. I could not find my mother, but my eldest sister came forward to greet me. I saw that she