Excerpt from The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Deqo guesses that it is Stalin.

An older man appears, carrying a leather bag into Karl Marx's room. He looks back, smirking, as Stalin continues to pour curses onto his head. He enters the room without knocking and then the glowing strip of light underneath Karl Marx's door is extinguished.

All through the night Deqo is woken by slamming doors, raised voices and other more mysterious sounds. She feels more anxiety here than in the ditch, but also insatiable curiosity. She suspects the origins of her own story lie in a place like this, that it is time to uncover the facts of her birth. Her eyes remain wide in the dark, her ears attuned to every little squeak, her dreams evaporating like mist. It had been far easier to sleep in the ditch, where it was too dark to see and so quiet at times that she could hear the blood rushing through her veins.

*   *   *

The morning comes, bright and demanding, just as Deqo is falling asleep. She resists its call for as long as possible before realising just how late it is. She eats the canjeero that someone has placed beside her on a tin plate and washes her face and arms under the weak flow of the courtyard tap, unsure if she is allowed in the bathroom.

Shaking her arms dry, she peeps into Stalin's open door and, finding it empty, grabs a cloth from the kitchen to start work. To her it is just an excuse to touch interesting things; she has no idea how to clean the various jars, instruments and trinkets scattered around the room, but she enjoys handling them, turning them around in the light and imagining their use. Eventually her attention turns to the mattress on the floor with its sheets entwined into floral ropes; she shakes them out, smoothes them back over the bed just as she has seen the nurses do in the hospital, and then lifts the striped pillow. She does a double take at the sight of the butcher's knife hidden beneath it. She doesn't touch but leans over to take a closer look: the blade is a long, wide slice of silver, the black handle has grooves moulded into it so that it can easily fit into a hand, and around the point where metal meets plastic is a dark stain that might be rust or old blood.

'Get out of here, thief!' a girl shouts before pushing past Deqo and grabbing the knife, pointing it at her face. 'Who told you that you could enter my room?'

Deqo raises her hands in terror and points to the courtyard. 'Nasra,' she stutters.

'Nasra! Did you bring this street kid into the house?' the girl yells.

Nasra joins them in the tiny room and pushes the knife away from Deqo. 'Stalin, what are you thinking? I said she could work here. You can't just stick a knife in every stranger's face.' She sighs. 'Didn't you see her asleep in the kitchen?'

'I went out to buy my breakfast.' Stalin looks Deqo up and down. 'You shown her to anyone yet?'

Nasra glares at Stalin before ushering Deqo out of the room. 'Go to Karl Marx's room, she won't say anything to you.'

Nasra closes the door and stays behind with Stalin.

Deqo looks over her shoulder. Still trembling slightly, she decides to stay out of Stalin's room in future and leave her to clean it on her own. Stalin is the opposite of Nasra: stocky, muscular, stern-faced, her hair pulled back from her face and pomaded – she looks ready to beat someone to a pulp. What did she mean about showing me to someone, wonders Deqo. I am not a wild animal, there is nothing to see.

She crosses the yard to Karl Marx's room and knocks before entering. It takes a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, but when they do she sees Karl Marx on her back with her palms on her chest. Deqo stands beside the door, unsure if the shape on the bed is breathing or not.

'Come in, I'm not dead. Not yet anyway,' Karl Marx says without opening her eyes.

Copyright © 2013 by Nadifa Mohamed