Nothing came of all that. We still shared the same room and whispered to each other at night. I saw her face in the moonlight and it looked like Nasrin’s face: dried up, turned inward. The whole time she kept talking about the four days she had been on the run, how she had been afraid but also had the feeling of complete freedom. Something happened during that time that she never told me about. Under her pillow she kept a gleaming metallic nut with bevelled edges. Sometimes when she thought I was sleeping she would get it out and look at it. Someone must have given it to her, but why would anyone give her something like that? What was it she wasn’t telling me? I don’t know. Of all the riddles I have been given, this is the biggest: the gleaming nut that Fatti kept hidden under her pillow.
It was a time I don’t like to think about. Fatti was so afraid of being beaten that she wet herself, even though she was nineteen years old. I remember her saying, ‘I’m going to be slaughtered. I’m going to end up in a slaughterhouse.’ I didn’t understand then what she was talking about. The following year Fatti was married to Faruk and they moved to Hedemora. She still had no children after two years. We had moved to Gothenburg by then and I wanted to visit her but was not allowed to. I couldn’t even call her since only Faruk answered the phone. When he wasn’t at home he disconnected the line. Then it happened again. Fatti ran away. She ran away in the dead of winter wearing only her nightdress. I don’t know what had happened but I think Faruk used to beat her because she didn’t have any children. When Faruk dragged her back she refused to sleep in the same room as him. It didn’t help that Mum talked to her, and Nasrin. She didn’t care about being beaten any more. She had made up her mind. She didn’t want to be married to Faruk.
