am already tired of this exchange. There is a white shawl across the arm of my chair and I hold it out to her. She shakes out the folds and twirls it like a matador’s cape, and I am struck by the grace of the sudden movement and, yes, the happy exuberance of it. It’s pretty to see. Then she seems to remember herself. She knots my shawl awkwardly over her breasts so it veils her stomach.
‘Sit down.’
Obediently, she perches on a wooden stool and leans forward.
‘Y’know, I don’t know what to call you. You’re my grandmother and everything, but it doesn’t seem right to say Granny. D’you know what I mean?’
It hardly matters what she calls me. It’s a long time since I have been anything except Mum-reese or Doctor Black. ‘My name is Iris.’
‘Is that what you want me to say?’
I rest my head on the cushions and close my eyes.
After a minute, maybe more, she murmurs, ‘Iris?’
The line of sunlight is creeping towards us. I rouse myself again.
‘Have you told your mother where you are? You’ll have to go back home right away. You do realise that, don’t you? It’s very inconvenient, this … this appearance in my house. You must telephone her at once, tell her where you are, and say I told you, to …’
A shadow crosses the child’s face.
‘Yeah. I know, I know. Thing is …’ she half stands and rummages under the shawl in the tight pocket of her trousers. She produces a small silvery object. ‘My mobile doesn’t work out here.’
‘Is that a telephone? You can use the one here, I suppose. It’s through there. Mamdooh will show you.’
‘Right. OK. Um … I’m really hungry, though. Is there something to eat, maybe, before I call home and tell them everything’s cool?’
‘Auntie is bringing it.’
Auntie and Mamdooh arrive together. Auntie’s quite lively with curiosity now but Mamdooh is offended, I can see from the way he puts down the tray with exaggerated care and doesn’t look at the girl. It doesn’t matter. She’ll be going back where she came from, maybe not today but certainly tomorrow. What was her name?
It comes back to me surprisingly easily. Ruby.
Ruby’s eyes lit up at the sight of breakfast. She was very hungry indeed, and here was a bowl of fat purple figs and – lifting a little beaded cloth that covered a bowl – thick creamy yoghurt. There was a basket of coarse bread, a glass dish of honey and a plate of crumbly, sticky little cakes. There was also a battered silver pot, a tiny wisp of steam rising from the spout.
‘Thank you, Mamdooh. Thank you, Auntie,’ Iris said. ‘We’ll look after ourselves now.’
Ruby drew her stool closer.
‘Pour me some tea, please,’ Iris ordered. Ruby did as she was told and put the glass on the table beside her. The tea smelled of summertime.
‘Mm,’ Ruby said, after a long swallow. ‘That’s so good. What is it?’
‘Don’t you know? Mint tea.’
‘I like it. We don’t have it at home. Well, maybe Mum does. She drinks those herb tea things, but I shouldn’t think they’re like yours. Can I try some of this?’
Iris nodded. She watched as the girl spooned honey onto bread and ate, biting off thick chunks and chewing with strong white teeth. Honey dribbled down her chin and she wiped it off with her fingers before greedily licking them too. After the bread and honey she turned her attention to the figs.
‘How do you eat these?’
Iris showed her, slicing open the skin to reveal the velvet and seed-pearl interior. Ruby ate, her smudged eyes screwed up in a comical spasm of pleasure. She followed the figs with most of the bowl of yoghurt and then drank more tea.
‘Aren’t you going to eat anything?’ she asked.
‘I’ll have one of those.’ Iris pointed to the triangles of baklava. Ruby put the pastry on a plate, handling it as if it were burning hot so as to be seen to limit the contact from her own fingers, and set it next to Iris’s glass of tea. Then she stretched out her legs, sighing with satisfaction as she looked around the little courtyard.
‘It’s like another world. Well, it is another world, of course. Glorious Araby.’
‘What did you say?’
‘When? Oh, that. I dunno, it’s from a poem or something, isn’t it? Don’t ask me who wrote it or anything. I suppose I read it or heard it. Probably bloody Radio 4, it’s always on in our house. You know how some things you don’t try to remember, quite weird things like bits of poems or whatever, they just stay in your mind? And other things you’re supposed to remember, however hard you try it’s just like, phhhhht, and they’re gone? Stuff you’re supposed to learn for exams, mainly?’
‘If it matters, you will remember it. You have to hope for that.’
‘Depends on what you reckon matters.’ Ruby laughed, then caught sight of her grandmother’s face. It had fallen suddenly into lines of anguish and the powdery skin under her eyes looked damp with tears.
She bit her lip. ‘Did I say something wrong?’
Iris reached a hand inside the sleeve of her robe and brought out a handkerchief. She dried her eyes carefully and tucked the hanky away again.
‘I am becoming forgetful myself,’ she said. She made a little gesture with her hands, swimming them through the air and then closing them on nothing. It made Ruby think that memories were slippery, like fish.
‘That must be frightening, sometimes,’ she ventured.
‘It is.’
‘What can you do?’
Iris turned her head to look full at her. ‘Try to … try to capture what you can’t bear to be without.’
Ruby didn’t understand this but she nodded anyway. The sound of water splashing from the little spout filled the courtyard. The sun had crept closer and now the thin stream sparkled like a diamond necklace.
‘Well,’ Iris said in a different voice. ‘Have you had quite enough to eat?’
‘Maybe one more of these.’
She bit into another pastry. Sugary flakes stuck to her lips and she darted her tongue to retrieve them.
Mamdooh came through one of the arches and stooped beside Iris’s chair. It was time to move it further into the shade. As she watched him helping her grandmother and settling her again Ruby noticed he wore the same tender expression as last night, as if Iris were a little child.
While they were talking quietly together, Ruby stared up into the parallelogram of sapphire-blue sky. She could just see the tips of towers, topped with slim bulbs of stone and spikes bearing crescent moons. There was a whole city on the other side of these walls, the teeming place she had seen out of the taxi windows last night. Now that she had found her feet she was longing to explore it.
‘Mamdooh is going to the market now,’ Iris said.
Ruby leapt up so eagerly that her stool tipped over. ‘Can I go with him?’
Iris lifted her hand. ‘You will have to ask Mamdooh.’
‘Please may I come with you?’
He had round cheeks, rounded eyelids, full lips the colour of the breakfast figs, but his bald head was all speckled and his eyes were milky. His stomach made a sizeable mound under his long white robe. He didn’t look as old as Iris or Auntie, but he wasn’t young by any means. He looked Ruby up and down as she stood there with Iris’s shawl knotted round her midriff.
‘To