Bloomsbury Circus

‘Why does that feel even worse?’ she said to her father.

‘When you live in an unjust world you want sports to be a refuge, not a reminder.’

They were being flippant for Zahra’s sake but she could see the fear in them. As long as she could remember, there had been this feeling of threat stalking her, everywhere. Say the wrong thing, turn down the wrong street, allow yourself the mildest transgression, and some creature awful and unknown would swoop down on you, talons tearing into your flesh. And now it was here, in their midst, and it had entered in the guise of an old friend just to drive home the point that nothing, no one, nowhere was safe. She held on to her father, feeling the softness of his flesh, the breakability of his bones.

‘It’ll be OK,’ he told her, more foolish now than he’d ever been.

which meant Maryam didn’t know and couldn’t make everything better simply by knowing.