I thought it was a joke. I just looked at him, not sure whether to laugh or not. 'What?' I asked.

'Abdullah is your husband.' he repeated, and I tried to concentrate on the words he was saying, unable to believe that I was hearing them right. My heart was crashing so loudly inside my ribs that I couldn't be sure what I was hearing. I felt short of breath and panic-stricken.

'He can't be my husband.' I still couldn't tell if it was a joke or whether he was being serious. I couldn't understand what was happening.

Mohammed must have been listening outside because he came to the door and looked in.

'What's he talking about, Mohammed?' I asked.

'Abdullah is your husband, Zana,' Mohammed answered and I could see that they were serious now. I was trying to work out in my head what could have happened.

'How can he be my husband,' was all I could think to say. 'What's going on?'

'Your father arranged the marriage in England,' they explained, 'and your sister Nadia is the same. She is married to Gowad's son. We have marriage certificates, so it is real. You are married and Abdullah here is your husband.'

I sat in the breeze from the window, numbed, just shaking my head and saying over and over, 'It can't be. How could it have happened?'

My thoughts were going round and round in my head. Abdul Khada and his two sons went back to talking to one another in Arabic as if I wasn't there. Eventually they went out of the room and left me to cry. I guess they must have gone to have a meal. I didn't care. I just wanted to be back home with Mum. I wanted someone to turn to, someone to make it all come right. I had no idea how to handle the situation.

The room grew dark while I just sat there, staring into space, and then Abdullah came back to the room, and I realised that it was night-time and he intended to sleep with me. Abdul Khada was with him.

'He's not sleeping in here,' I said. 'I want to be alone.'

'He's your husband.' Abdul Khada was firm. 'You must sleep with him.' He pushed the boy in and slammed the door. I heard the bolt being pushed across the door outside.

I didn't look at Abdullah, and he didn't say anything to me. I could sense him moving across the room. He didn't know what to do any more than I did. He climbed into the bed, and I lay down on the blanket on the platform under the windows. I wasn't going to get into bed with him. I didn't sleep that night, I couldn't stop my mind from racing over what had happened, looking at it from every angle, trying to understand what was going on in my life. I heard the wolves and the hyenas howling in the mountains, and the rustling of the animals underneath the floor. In the moonlight I could see the lizards on the ceiling. The hours ticked slowly by.

The next day Abdullah must have told his father that I hadn't slept in the bed. Abdul Khada was furious and began shouting at me. 'Why didn't you sleep with him?' he demanded.

'No way,' I said. 'I don't want to sleep with him.' I felt the panic rising inside me again every time anyone spoke to me. All day I was crying, following Abdul Khada around begging him to tell me what would happen to me, and to let me go home. He told me that I could not go home 'yet'. I grasped at this one ray of hope, believing that if I just hung on I could get through the nightmare and get back to my home in Birmingham.

'When,' I pleaded, 'when can I go home?' But he wouldn't answer me.

Abdullah seemed almost as scared as me. He must have known that someone was being brought over from England for him to marry, but the way I was and the way I dressed must have been a shock to him, different from the women he had known all his life. As far as he was concerned I was unclean and immodest. I guess he was frightened of me, but he was more frightened of his father.

They all ignored me, and left me to wander around the house in a daze. I went into Mohammed's room. Bakela had been ill recently and there were some tablets on the platform, I remembered seeing them before and I went in to look for them. I didn't know what they were for, but I thought if I could swallow enough of them they would be a way out of the nightmare. I went into the room and picked up the bottle. I went back into my room, emptied the tablets into the palm of my hand and swallowed them. Mohammed must have been watching me, because he ran into the room at that moment and got me by the throat, choking me and forcing the tablets back up again.