Smash hit

“Please help Zahra,” the grandmother said, clutching my hand. “Please don’t let her die, please take her away, please make her better for me.”

I hate big promises. Yet I could not deny this old woman. I looked her in the eye and gave her my word. “Your granddaughter will live,” I told her solemnly. “I’ll make sure she receives the treatment she needs, whatever the cost.”

I did so without a moment’s thought about how I would fulfil my pledge.

IN the morning, I returned to the hospital with a bag of sweets. When I saw Zahra, I realised how stupid I had been. She looked even more fragile and was racked with pain. The last thing she needed was chocolate.

In the eyes of Zahra’s grandmother, however, I could do no wrong. Here was a woman who had been robbed of her son, daughter-in-law and five grandchildren all in one day. Yet when I walked into the ward, her eyes sparkled with hope.

With great excitement, I told her about a medical team arriving that day, about how we were going to make Zahra better.

“You swear it’s true?” Grandmother asked me.

“Yes, it’s true,” I said.

Grandmother began talking. What would she tell Zahra about her dead family when she was older? How could she, a poor Shi’ite woman worn out by years of toil, bring up not one little girl but two? What would the future hold for them now?

I had no answers, but a thought that excited and frightened me was beginning to form in my mind. It became all the more insistent when Grandmother allowed me to hold Hawra. I cradled her head in the crook of my elbow and rocked her slowly. Hawra gurgled back at me.

“God, she’s adorable,” I thought as I touched her skin and smelt the baby fragrance of her soft black hair. I ran my finger across her temple, where there was a slight bruise from her fall. I saw no other injuries.

“Subhanak Ya Rab, Subhan Hikmitak,” I muttered — an Islamic phrase which translates roughly as “God moves in mysterious ways”. Here was a small miracle, an infant unmarked by an inferno that had killed her family and scarred her sister for life. As I pictured the blazing car, the urge to help both girls became irresistible.

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy