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on nothing felt quite so alarming.
    That first night we ate some kind of stew outside with about twenty strangers that Dad called our ‘close’ family. I sat between Jaddah and Lamyah. There wasn’t a moment when one of them wasn’t telling me something. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t understand what. Like them, I ate with my right hand. (Dad had briefed me on the plane – left hand for wiping your bum, right hand for everything else.)
    I was so desperate for sleep when the party eventually broke up that I didn’t mind the mattress on the floor, even when I discovered I was sharing with Lamyah and Maryam and that the animals were tucked up on the floor below.
    * * *
    The next day I chose to hang around with Jaddah , helping her cook. Mum and Dad made bad jokes about me poisoning the village, but left me to it. At home I was never interested, but there’s a world of difference between opening a packet from Tesco and making food from things you’ve picked (or slaughtered) yourself. I chopped green stuff while Jaddah pulled apart a goat. I was rather proud that I managed not to gag. After that, we swept the floors and I beat the bedding with Lamyah. Hugo would have called me a skivvy. The idea of him wouldn’t sit properly in my head, so I tucked him away.
    In the afternoon, while I used sign language and a few basic words to talk to Lamyah and some of the other girls, the men sat chewing khat – Dad included. He said it was traditional. I said it was drugs. They looked funny, chewing away, the balls of leaves making one cheek bulge like a hamster.
    It was nice seeing Dad back where he belonged. A part of me that I had always found irrelevant became something to celebrate.
    Days went by. The whole community just got on with the routine of living. Herding goats. Picking vegetables. I even milked a cow, pretty unsuccessfully. More successful were my cooking lessons. Jaddah taught me to make all sorts, but my favourite was the bread with a hot egg and coriander middle.
    I quickly got to know the other teenagers, who all seemed a lot more grown up than me. We took long walks, stopping in the shade where I gave Englishlessons. Hilarious. You wouldn’t think you could joke with people who don’t share your language, but you can. I taught them text talk.
    LOL. OMG. YOLO.
    Although I slept at Dad’s sister’s, we visited every other house in the village, drinking tea and doling out the gifts we’d brought with us – T-shirts, belts, jewellery, make-up and, bizarrely, watches. Time didn’t seem to matter – except for when the call to prayer rang out and everything stopped.
    It was a beautiful place, like Dad said it would be – very green and totally wild. (Nothing like a desert.) I felt completely at home, which made no sense to me at all. And didn’t want to leave, which made no sense to Mum (who, after three weeks on a floor, missed her bed) or Dad (who was itching to get back to pre-season football training). It was hard to put into words … I suppose I felt special.
    After days of begging, driving Mum and Dad crazy, they finally agreed I could stay on. I waved them off without a care.
    From the minute they left, Lamyah and I were hardly ever more than a metre apart – which was odd, given how much I liked my own company. We were busy all day, tended to spend the evening with Jaddah – I taught her to play charades using Lamyah as a very bad translator – and slept like the dead. In the nanosecond between awake and coma, I imagined living in the village for real.
    Way too soon, the day came for me to be driven back to the airport. I made Lamyah promise to come and visit me ASAP. ( Jaddah said she’d never left the mountain and wasn’t going to – at least, I think that’s what she said.) The whole village came to see me off, but I only had eyes for Lamyah and Jaddah . Their weeping faces were engraved on my retina.

4
    Arriving back in Buckingham at the beginning of August, everything was Strange,