‘You is fine, Nadia?’ shouted Darban. Twenty metres further up, his black silhouette was cut out of the sky. The outline of a stiff kaftan, baggy pants and turban: the traditional dress of Kurdish freedom fighters turned profiteers. ‘I’m OK,’ I said. I looked down the valley at my burden. She rose through the gloom […]

’Once upon a time, there lived a girl and a boy called Aneeka and Parvaiz, who had the power to talk to animals.’ Aneeka laughed. ’Tell the one with the ostrich’, she said, voice muffled by her pillow. She was asleep before Isma was done telling the childhood story which their mother had invented for […]