The man in the faded turban at the front of the dray clicked his tongue and drew the mule to the side of the hot bitumen. Malika waited for the policeman and the boy – Tahir, he had mumbled once – to get off before clambering down herself.

They waited at the roadside for a car and then a bus to pass, before hurrying across. Their feet stirred up the white dust that lay everywhere around them as they followed the path to the village, coating Malika’s leggings and the policeman’s black trousers, just as it had whitewashed the roofs of the homes that
lay ahead. Passing wooden gates, they followed a corridor between bleached, mud-brick houses to a clearing where the branches of a giant fig tree spread wide, almost touching the buildings.

The policeman motioned for them to wait beneath the tree and crossed to the far end of the clearing, where two old men were sitting cross-legged in the dust. They looked at him as he squatted in front of them.

The air was cool under the branches. Malika marvelled at their size, at the way the roots grew down from them towards the ground, as if searching for a home. The morning had been long and her mouth was as dry as her stomach was empty. She sat and picked up a dusty leaf, rubbing it between her fingers. She smiled as her fingers became speckled white and the leaf’s deep green colour emerged. It was the same dust that had lain across the road they travelled on that morning, with the train line constantly beside them. The policeman had told Tahir that the line connected the towns of the north with Lahore and the other great cities of the south. Malika liked the thought of towns being connected, if only by dust and noisy trains…

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