The Shadow Of The Crescent Moon (20 page)

My thanks are owed to:

Carl Bromley for midwifing, for being such a friend.

Suhail Sethi for Pashto and our travels around the North.

Sabeen Jatoi for long ago.

Ghinwa Bhutto forever for her love.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto for being the most supportive of all.

Mir Ali Bhutto, my Mir Ali, for being our brother and best friend.

David Godwin for saying one day: ‘You should write …’

Sophie Hackford, Allegra Donn and Ortensia Visconti for their friendship. They have my fidelity, always.

Adrian Gill for encouraging and insisting, hongee.

Amanda Urban and Karolina Sutton for their faith and for taking so many chances.

Mary Mount for her enthusiasm, patience and extraordinary eye.

My dear Higgs for all her help and mms solidarity always when I needed it most.

Baba, for this book. It is yours. As is the title and my heart. In numberless forms, life after life, age after age.

Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2013

Copyright © Fatima Bhutto, 2013

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover images: Girl © arcangel-images.com and Getty Images; Forest © Peter Rutherhagen / Johnér Images / Corbis; Sky © Getty Images / Stone

All rights reserved

The author’s retelling of the story of the Greedy King was inspired by reading
Pashtun Tales: From the Pakistan–Afghan Frontier
by Aisha Ahmad and Roger Boase, Saqi Books, 2008.
Translations of Pashtun poetry were hard to come by and I scoured the Internet for versions and variants. A lot of the translators and enthusiasts came from blogs, message boards and forums and I am grateful to all those who shared their love of the Pashto language and its poetry.
The version of the Nazim Hikmet poem used in the epigraph comes from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyltI3_p4FU

Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

ISBN: 978-0-241-96563-4