![]() ![]() His rigid brows made him look as though he was annoyed but then he flashed a brief smile, his eyes narrowing into crescents. He was already too old to be considered a boy by a good few years, closer to her own age in fact, but Motichand had explained on the train that the name ‘house boy’ was the label for all male servants here. ![]() ‘Everyone has house boys here.’ĭecember was tall and slim, with a head of thick hair like unspun cotton. ‘And this is December,’ announced Motichand proudly, waving his hand towards the man in the corner of the courtyard, as though he was another feature of the house, like a brand-new radio or a stove. This home was bigger than any she’d ever seen. ![]() It was a larger house than the one that she’d lived in for the past year back in Gujarat, crammed in with Motichand’s brothers and mother. Running along three sides of the yard were a kitchen, a walk-in storeroom, a sitting room with two wooden armchairs, three bedrooms and a small enclosed space with a tap for morning ablutions. The single-storey building was painted pale green like the inside of a pea pod. The house was centred around an open yard. Everything was different, strange, the buildings, the air. How far away her father was, her brothers, her home. They stopped briefly at Motichand’s dukan, which did indeed seem to have anything you could ever need and many things you’d never want, but she couldn’t take it all in. ![]() Outside the train station in Kampala, the roads were three times as wide as those in her village. ![]()
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