Exclusive: Extract from ‘Joseph’s Box’ by Suhayl Saadi

‘Kaaba’

Zuleikha glanced both ways. It were as though she were commencing a Muslim prayer, a namaaz, which back in the cold rain of Glasgow, would have been normal, routine, even, but which here, in this assertively Roman Catholic country, seemed almost blasphemous. She tried to conjure up the face of her son, Daoud, but could not. She sprang up, tried to breathe. Zuleikha was a scientist, not a penitent.

As soon as she emerged into the room, she realized that the structure down which she had been descending was neither a well nor a tower, but an enormous chimney whose upper portion had been removed and on whose hearth she had been standing. She brushed her clothes down as well as she could. She was in a small, low-ceiling’d room whose walls seemed to have been whitewashed fairly recently.