"Well, you couldn't say together," he answered evenly, staring into my eyes. "But I was, once. I used to live with her."

"You what?"

"I lived with her-for six months."

"What happened?" I asked, gritting my teeth and feeling stupid for it. I had no right to be angry or jealous. I'd never asked Karla about her lovers, and she'd never asked me about mine.

"You don't know, do you?"

"I wouldn't ask, if I knew."

"She dumped me," he said slowly, "just about the time you came along."

"Ah, fuck, man..."

"It's okay," he smiled.

We were silent for a moment, both of us reeling back through the years. I remembered Abdullah, at the sea wall near the Haji Ali Mosque, on the night that I met him with Khaderbhai. I remembered him saying that a woman had taught him the clever phrase he'd used in English. It must've been Karla. Of course it was Karla.

And I remembered the stiffness that was in Khaled's manner when I first met him, and I realised, suddenly, that he must've been hurting then, and maybe blaming me for it. I saw clearly what it must've taken for him to be as friendly and kind to me as he was at the beginning.

"You know," he added after a while, "you really got to go careful with Karla, Lin. She's... angry... you know? And she's hurt.

She's hurt bad, in all the places that count. They really fucked her up when she was a kid. She's a bit crazy. She did something, in the States, before she came to India. And that fucked her up, too."

"What did she do?"

"I don't know. Something pretty serious. She never told me what it was. We talked around it, if you get my meaning. I think Khaderbhai knew about it because, you know, he was the first one to meet her."

"No, I didn't know that," I answered him, frowning with the thought of how little I knew about the woman I'd loved for so long. "Why... why do you think she never told me about Khaderbhai? I knew her a long time-when we were both working for him-and she didn't say a word. I talked about him, but she never said a word. She didn't mention his name once."

"I think she's just loyal to him, you know? I don't think there's anything against you, Lin. She's just incredibly loyal-well, she was incredibly loyal to him. She thought of him like a father, I think. Her own father died when she was a kid. And her stepfather died when she was still pretty young. Khader came along just in time to save her, so he got to be her father."

"You said he was the first one who met her?"

"Yeah, on a plane. It's kind of a weird story, the way she told me. She didn't remember getting on the plane. She was running from something-something she did-and she was in trouble. She ended up going on a few different planes from different airports - for a few days, I think. And then she was on this plane that was going to Singapore from... I don't know... somewhere. And she must've had, like, a nervous breakdown or something, because she cracked up, and the next thing she knew, she was in this cave, in India, with Khaderbhai. And then he left her with Ahmed, who looked after her."

"She told me about him."

"Did she? She doesn't talk about it much. She liked that guy. He nursed her for near about six months until she got herself together again. He brought her back-into the light, like. They were pretty close. I think he was the closest thing to a brother she ever knew."

"Were you with her-I mean, did you know her then, when he was killed?"

"I don't know that he was killed, Lin," Khaled stated, frowning hard as the knot of recollections turned in his memory. "I know Karla believes it-that Madame Zhou killed him, and the girl..."

"Christine."

"Yeah, Christine. But I knew Ahmed pretty well. He was a very gentle guy-a very simple, soft kind of a guy. He was just the type to take poison with his girlfriend, like in a romantic movie, if he thought he couldn't ever be free with her. Khader looked into it, real close, because Ahmed was one of his guys, and he was sure Zhou had nothing to do with it. He cleared her."

"But Karla wouldn't accept it?"

"No, she didn't buy it. And coming on top of everything else, it really fucked her up. Did she ever tell you she loves you?"

I hesitated, partly from reluctance to surrender the little advantage I might've had over him if he believed that she did say it, and partly from loyalty to Karla-because it was her business, after all. In the end, I answered him: I had to know why he'd asked me the question.

"No."

"That's too bad," he said flatly. "I thought you might be the one."

"The one?"

"The one to help her-to break through, I guess. Something really bad happened to that girl. A lot of bad things happened to her.

Khader made it worse, I think."

"How?"

"He put her to work for him. He saved her, when he met her, and he protected her from what she was scared of, back in the States.

But then she met this guy, a politician, and he fell for her pretty hard. Khader needed the guy, so he got her to work for him, and I don't think she was cut out for it."

"What kind of work?"

"You know how beautiful she is-those green eyes, and that white, white skin."

"Ah, fuck," I sighed, remembering a lecture Khader had given me once, about the amount of crime in the sin, and the sin in the crime.

"I don't know what was in Khader's head," Khaled concluded, shaking his own head in doubt and wonder. "It was... out of character, to say the least. I honestly don't think he saw it as ... damaging her. But she, kind of, froze up, inside. It was like her own father... was getting her to do that shit. And I don't think she forgave him for it. But she was incredibly loyal to him, all the same. I never understood it. But that's how I got together with her-I saw all that happening, and I felt kind of sorry for her, if you know what I mean. After a while, one thing led to another. But I never really got through to her. And you didn't, neither. I don't think anyone will. Ever." "Ever is a long time."

"Okay, you got a point. But I'm just trying to warn you. I don't want you to get hurt any more, brother. We've been through too much, na? And I don't want her to get hurt."

He fell silent again. We stared at the rocks and the frosty ground, avoiding one another's eyes. A few shivering minutes passed. At last he took a deep breath and stood up, slapping at the chill in his arms and legs. I stood as well, trembling with cold and stamping my numb feet. At the last possible moment, and with an impulsive rush as if he was breaking through a tangle of vines, Khaled flung his arms around me and hugged me. The strength in his arms was fierce, but his head slowly came to rest against mine as tenderly as the lolling head of a sleeping child.

When he pulled away from me, his face was averted and I couldn't see his eyes. He walked off, and I followed more slowly, hugging my hands under my arms to fight off the cold. It was only when I was alone that I recalled what he'd said to me: I got a bad feeling, Lin. A real bad feeling...

I resolved to talk to him about it, but just at that moment Habib stepped out of a shadow beside me, and I jumped in fright.

"For fuck's sake!" I hissed. "You scared the fuckin' shit outta me! Don't do that shit, Habib!"

"It's okay, it's okay," Mahmoud Melbaaf said, stepping up beside the madman.

Habib garbled something at me, speaking so quickly that I couldn't make out a single clear syllable. His eyes were starting from his head. The effect was exaggerated by the dark, heavy pouches beneath his eyes, which dragged the lower lids with them and showed too much white below the fractured, scattered wheel of the iris.

"What?"

"It's okay," Mahmoud repeated. "He wants to talk with everybody.

He talks to every man, tonight. He comes to me. He asks me to make it English for you, what he says. You are the last, before Khaled. He wants to speak to Khaled last."