Читать книгу Strangers - Danuta Reah - Страница 14

Supporters of a man who was executed in Saudi Arabia last week, today accused the government of failing to intervene. Haroun Patel, a Pakistani national who was a student in the UK in 2003, was convicted of smuggling heroin in Riyadh. A spokesperson said, ‘Her Majesty’s government is unable to intervene in cases involving nationals from other countries.’

An execution. She remembered that first morning with Damien O’Neill, when she’d found her way to as-Sa’ah Square. It’s known colloquially as Chop-Chop Square…

Early April. In early April, she and Joe hadn’t even met. When that article was written, when people were reading it, she was running along the tow path with Shadow dancing ahead of her, and just a week or two later, Joe would be running along that path towards her, the course of their lives about to change for ever.

As she read on, the images of the Kingdom that she was starting to form in her mind melted and changed. They were confused and disparate images: the houses in the old city, tall with small, shuttered windows, houses built close together creating narrow, shadowed alleyways that protected the inhabitants from the relentless sun; the compound with its sharp-edged shadows cast by the buildings, the blinding reflections that enclosed the watcher in brightness, the dryness, like ashes, that the light left behind.

And she didn’t know any more what she was seeing.