Chapter 14

Al-Kuwari Towers, Doha, Qatar.

The sun over Doha rose pale and cold, its light turning the white domes and marble of the city into quiet reflections of sorrow. The streets outside the Al-Kuwari compound were hushed; even the usual morning calls of the muezzins seemed softer, restrained, as if the city itself mourned.

When the hearse arrived from the airport, it drew to a stop before the private gate with neither siren nor escort. Its simplicity was fitting — a white vehicle carrying what was said to be his daughter, wrapped and sealed, brought home across continents.

The air smelled faintly of dust, wood, smoky and earthy. Jassim stood still in his courtyard, the sand pressing into the edges of his sandals. He could not bring himself to step forward until one of the attendants bowed slightly and said, “She is here, sir.”

The casket was lifted gently and carried into the small prayer hall beside the family mosque. It remained closed — by order of both the embassy and the religious authorities. They had told him that opening it would dishonour what was left of her; that fire had taken too much, that the body was no longer whole, and that the only proof of who she was lay in a scorched scrap of blue abaya found beside her remains.

That abaya — the one he had once bought for her in Istanbul, sky-blue and soft as sea silk. The one she wore in the Congo.

The women who performed the ghusl al-mayyit had instead performed tayammum — the dry purification — their hands trembling as they passed clean sand gently over the sealed casket, reciting the verses softly. “Bismillāh... ” they had murmured, voices quivering with reverence. No one saw what lay inside; no one tried. It was enough that her name was spoken and that her body, however broken, was purified in intention.

Jassim had waited outside the room during the purification, pacing in silence, his prayer beads clicking softly between his fingers. When the door finally opened, one of the older women gave a small nod. “She is ready.”

Inside the mosque, rows of men gathered for Ṣalāt al-Janāzah. The air was cool, heavy with the scent of rosewater sprinkled upon the carpet. The imam’s voice carried the familiar cadence of the prayer, each phrase rising and falling like a tide of grief. No one spoke beyond the words of supplication; there were no eulogies, no speeches — only the murmured pleas for mercy and forgiveness.

Jassim stood in the first row. His voice joined the others in Ameen, but his heart felt hollow, suspended between disbelief and guilt. He tried to picture her as she had been — laughing, headscarf slipping from her hair, teasing him for being too serious — but the memory refused to come into focus.

Instead, his mind replayed the last conversation they had shared.

“I am myself! If you want loyalty and discipline, get a dog.”

“Nisreen!” he had shouted down the line. “Don’t you speak to me like that!”

Her words had come back, fierce and cold: “You thought sending me here would break me. Well, I am not coming back to Doha. Never again.”

She had hung up, furious. He tried to call her again, certain there would be time to make her see reason. But she had switched her phone off.

Now there was no time left.

The prayer ended. The men lifted the casket and carried it out to the waiting vehicle. At the cemetery, a modest plot had been prepared — a rectangle of sand beneath the clear, pitiless sky. The desert wind tugged at the corners of the shroud draped over the casket.

No coffin was opened. No face was seen. The sealed box was lowered into the ground with quiet precision, its final descent muffled by the soft hiss of shifting sand. Jassim stepped forward when the imam gestured. He took a handful of earth in his palm.

He let the grains slip through his fingers slowly. They fell onto the wood with the softest sound imaginable — like the last note of a prayer fading into silence.

“May Allah forgive you, my daughter,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “You defied me, and I called it rebellion. You sought truth, and I called it folly. May God see what I could not see.”

From his pocket he drew the small, charred piece of blue fabric — all that had returned to him. Under the smell of the burned fabric there still lingered the fragrance of her perfume, the smell of wild roses. He pressed it to his lips, tasting the salt of his own tears, before laying it atop the mound of sand.

The men stepped back. The imam concluded with a brief dua, and then the crowd began to drift away, heads bowed.

Jassim remained, staring at the grave until the world blurred before him.

He thought of her voice — “I am not coming back to Doha.”

And now, in a cruel twist of fate, she had returned — not as the proud, defiant daughter he had argued with, but as something purer, beyond his reach, beyond his control.

The desert was silent. But it was the silence that mattered most – the silence where her voice should have been.

But the desert was silent – silent of the fact that the body inside the casket was not that of Nisreen bint Khalid Al-Kuwari. The truth was whispered by the dry desert wind – but no ear could hear the whispering of the wind. The secret will soon be covered by the whispering, shifting sands...

The farm, Little Eden, Limpopo Province, South Africa.

Dawn came slowly over the Springbokvlakte, a pale shimmer first touching the horizon like breath upon glass. The eastern sky deepened from violet to rose, then to the bruised gold of awakening light. Mist clung low over the acacia scrub and mealie fields, softening every shape into memory. Somewhere beyond the ridge, a jackal gave its last cry of the night, and the air shifted — the moment between darkness and day when even the birds seemed to pause before breaking into song.

At Little Eden the first light brushed the roofs of the sheds and old farmstead, catching on the dew beading along the barbed wire. The scent of dust and wild basil rose from the warming earth. In the far paddock, the cattle stirred, silhouettes moving through the silver haze. The world held its breath as the rim of the sun broke free of the horizon, spilling molten light across the bushveld savannah.

Within minutes, the colours of the land transformed — the grasses flashing amber and green, the sky swelling into a vast, unbroken blue. Heat began to rise already, promising another hard, bright day. But for that brief instant, Little Eden was exactly what its name implied: a quiet, golden world reborn in the tender light of morning.

Leghorn, the rooster, had long ago announced the coming of day from his tower of authority on the roof of the chicken run — a noise so confident and self-satisfied it could wake the dead. By now he was strutting about like a feathered general, pecking at the feed that was scattered for him and his harem of hens. His comb glowed red in the morning sun, his tail feathers spread like a fan, and his whole manner radiated the smugness of one who believed the farm existed purely for his benefit.

Rose eyed him with deep suspicion. We were having a full farmhouse breakfast on the patio. I caught her expression and her muttered words of; “One day, chicken ... one day. Roast chicken sounds awfully good.”

I couldn’t help smiling — that slow, dangerous smile that comes when you remember a private joke. I’d seen what Leghorn could do, and I’d seen what Rose thought she could handle. The day those two met still plays in my mind like a slapstick comedy.

Lydia, my housekeeper, had gone down to the chicken run to collect eggs, humming one of her endless hymns. Rose, ever the volunteer, insisted on tagging along. Lydia had tried to warn her. “Just don’t make eye contact with Leghorn,” she’d said. “He’s got ... opinions.”

It all went fine at first. I watched from the veranda as Rose emerged from the coop, proud as anything, clutching a basket of eggs like trophies. And then it happened. Leghorn came strutting around the corner, stopped dead, and froze. He saw Rose — tall, new, unfamiliar — and I swear something ancient and territorial lit up in his beady little rooster eyes.

He gave this guttural krrr-krrr-AWWWRK! that could strip paint off a door. Rose blinked and frowned. “What’s wrong with him?”