Mariam had her hands flat on the floor, ready, because the call was coming and she wanted to feel which way it pulled.
She was sitting on the rug in the front room with her back against the sofa. Her mother had stuck silver foil over the big window again, with tape, the same as in the long day, and the sun came through the cracks between the pieces in thin hot lines that lay across the rug. Mariam had been counting the lines. There were eleven. Earlier there had been ten, and now there were eleven because the tape at the top was coming off.
The night had been one night. She had sat on the balcony for all of it with her mother and looked at the stars until she fell asleep against the railing, and when she woke up it was morning, and her mother said the morning would last a month. Mariam had asked if that meant no school for a month. Her mother had said there had been no school for a year, so what was the difference, and then she had laughed in a way that was nearly crying.
At the dawn call, in the dark, she had turned round from the calendar wall by herself. But the pull had always been strongest in the daytime, when the sun came through the foil. Mariam wanted to be sure. Down in the street the mosque speaker clicked. Mariam knew that click. It meant the man was about to start.
She pressed her hands on the rug and waited for the pull.
The pull was like this. When the call started, something inside her turned, the way you turn when someone calls your name in the playground and you didn't see who. It turned her to the wall with the calendar on it, the north-east wall, and it held her there, and it was not frightening. That was the worst part, Mama said. It was not frightening at all. It was like being asked to wait for someone, and you know they're coming, and you want to be the one who sees them first.
The man in the mosque took a breath. She heard it in the speaker. Then he started.
Nothing turned.
Mariam sat still on the rug and checked. She checked the way you check a tooth with your tongue after the dentist. Nothing pulled. The wall with the calendar was just a wall. The calendar was still on last year's month because nobody had turned it.
The call went on, long and slow, the first line, the second. And it sounded different. It sounded like the bell at school.
The school bell had been her favourite thing at school, before there was no school. It went at the end of break, very loud, and everyone stopped whatever they were doing. Even the big boys stopped. Then you went to your line. You did not have to think which way your line was, because the bell told you. You heard it and your feet knew. It was not like being asked to wait. It was like being told, nicely, where to go.
Mariam got up. Her feet knew.
They did not take her to the calendar wall. They took her to the window, the big one with the foil, and she stood in front of it with the hot lines of sun on her face and her arms and listened to the rest of the call coming in through the glass. She did not know which way the line went yet. She only knew it was not the calendar way. She put her hand flat on the foil. It was warm.
When the call finished she stayed there a little bit longer, the way you stay in the line after the bell stops, until the teacher says go in.
Baba was on the sofa. He was always on the sofa now.
He had been on the sofa since they came back from the camp. He was fatter than before, with his shirt tight over his middle, and his face was pink and smooth, and he smiled at everything. He smiled at the television, which only showed pictures of the sun. He smiled at Mama when she brought his tea. He smiled at Mariam. Before the camp he had shouted sometimes, and slammed the bathroom door, and once he had cried in the car. Now he only smiled. Mariam did not like the smiling. It was like a picture of Baba stuck on the front of Baba.
Uncle's chair was still pushed against the wall where he had left it, before they went to the camp. Nobody sat in it. Uncle used to sit in it with his legs over the arm and do the voice of the fox from the cartoon, the one who says everything twice, until Mama told him to stop because Mariam would never go to sleep. At the camp he had gone quiet like Baba. He had stopped doing the fox. Then one day the man showed everybody his fire, and Uncle walked into it. Uncle had not come back from the camp. Baba said Uncle walked into the man's fire and it was water. Mariam had heard him say it to Mr Ahmed in the kitchen, in a voice like a person reading out the weather.
"Good girl," Baba said, because she was standing at the window. He did not look round from the television.
"Did you hear it, Baba?"
"Hear what, darling?"
She looked at him. He was smiling at the sun on the screen.
"Nothing," she said.
Mama had heard it. Mama was in the kitchen doorway with a tea towel over her shoulder, and her face had gone the way it went when Mariam had a fever and then the fever broke, all tight and then all loose at once. She did not say anything. She went back into the kitchen. Mariam heard the tap go on, very hard, and stay on.
Mr Ahmed came when the clock said three and Mama's notebook said the afternoon prayer.
He had his bag, the brown one, and his tired face, and he took his shoes off at the door the way he always did and put them side by side. Mama had rung him. Mariam had heard her on the phone before dawn, at the end of the one night, saying "She turned round, she turned round," and crying.
He did not sit on the chair. He sat on the floor, on the rug, in the hot lines of sun, with his back against the other end of the sofa from her, so they were both on the floor. Baba did not move his feet to make room. Mr Ahmed did not seem to mind.
First he asked if he could read something over her, and she said yes, because he always asked and it never hurt. He read the Throne Verse in Arabic, not loud, with his eyes closed. Mariam waited for the pull to come and fight him, the way it had come every other time and made her stand still and stubborn. It did not come. He finished and opened his eyes and looked at her, and he looked surprised, and then he looked tired in a better way.
"Your mother says you went to the window at noon," he said.
"Yes."
"Not the wall."
"No."
He nodded. He did not write it down yet. He usually wrote things down straight away in his notebook, but today he kept his hand on top of the notebook and looked at her, the way grown-ups look when they want the answer and aren't only being polite.
"Can you tell me what changed?"
Mariam thought about it. She thought about the pull, and the playground, and being asked to wait. She thought about how, in the camp, before Uncle walked into the fire, she had seen the man in the chair once, from far away, between the tents, and he had not looked at her, but she had felt him know she was there, the way you feel a teacher know you're talking even with her back turned. And she thought about the one night, the dark one, when she had sat on the balcony with Mama and looked at the stars, and somewhere far away, in the middle of the night, something had happened that made the pull let go all at once, like a hand opening.
She did not know how to say all of that. She said the part she knew.
"He doesn't call me any more," she said. "He's busy."