A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul by Shamini Flint

Yusuf, slight, annoying and diffident. She supposed there was always room for an odd-job man.
    She hurried to the smaller of the two bedrooms and knocked on the door.
    Yusuf, short hair standing on end as if he had gone to bed with it damp, emerged, blinking nervously. His round glasses reflected the light streaming in the small window overlooking the street. He tugged at his beard nervously.
    She said gently, ‘Lunch is ready, Yusuf.’ Yusuf followed her into the room.
    â€˜Yusuf, your beard is supposed to be a fist long. You can barely grow it at all and now you are pulling it out at the roots,’ Ramzi remarked cheerfully.
    They all laughed. Yusuf managed a weak smile to show that he did not mind being the butt of their jokes.
    The Prophet’s exhortation to grow a decent-length beard was challenging to Asian Moslems who were not hairy by nature. Of the men, only Ghani had a full beard and he kept it trimmed. Ramzi was clean-shaven. Yusuf and Abu Bakr both had straggly goatees, well short of fist-length except for a few wayward hairs.
    Ghani had been adamant that there was no need to be exacting in adhering to this particular religious stricture. As
he had put it, when Abu Bakr had questioned his younger brother’s decision to shave, ‘The police think that everyone with a long beard is a mad mullah . Let us not give them an excuse to look at us twice in these difficult times after the Bali bombings.’
    It was going to be a fraught meal, thought Nuri. Ramzi, her younger brother, was on edge. He was picking on Yusuf and her repeatedly, using his sly humour to good effect. Yusuf was visibly agitated. He kept taking off his glasses and cleaning them with the edge of his shirt. He would stare at Ramzi while doing this. His unfocused gaze was unnerving.
    Ramzi turned his attention from Yusuf to her. He was complaining loudly about the food, the lamb curry and fried vegetables with steamed rice that Nuri had painstakingly cooked on the small hob in the kitchenette.
    â€˜It is too spicy,’ he said, sticking out a curling red tongue and fanning it with a curried hand.
    Yusuf said stonily, ‘I think it is tasty.’
    â€˜Nonsense,’ said Ramzi. ‘We might as well chew on raw chillies. My sister is unskilled in the art of cooking. I have no idea why we brought her along.’
    Abu Bakr said, ‘Her husband is not complaining. Only he has the right to chastise Nuri.’
    Ramzi giggled. ‘I would not dream of scolding my dear sister. As she knows, I am just doing my duty as a brother by pointing out her shortcomings – as I always do.’
    Nuri glanced at her husband to see if he had noticed this pointed criticism of her. Ghani was still eating, shovelling the rice and lamb into his mouth at regular intervals with his right hand. He chewed slowly and methodically, his mouth opening and closing so that all of them could see the gradual process by which the food was broken down into digestible pulp. His forehead was shiny with perspiration. The food
really was spicy, thought Nuri, but Ghani was too lost in thought to notice. She felt a moment of profound dislike for her spouse, a visceral disgust for the way he sat stolidly at the head of the table, oblivious to the tension in the room. She remained quiet, determined to ignore Ramzi, serving the men more food when their plates became empty.
    Yusuf was staring at her with a half-worried, half-admiring expression on his face. She was tempted to sigh out loud. She had always known that Yusuf, anxious, devout and a complete failure with women, found her attractive. The time spent with her in the small Denpasar apartment had magnified his admiration until it was something very akin to love.
    Nuri smiled ruefully, forgetting her annoyance at Ramzi and her husband for a moment. For the first time in her young life, she realised, she was sensitive to the signs of new love, her senses picking up signals like the antennae on the