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

'I have come to clean your room.' Deqo holds back the sneeze tickling her nose.

Karl Marx doesn't move a muscle; her profiled face is sharp and pale against the blue wall. 'Clean it then.' Her words seem to come out through her large ears or thin nostrils as her lips do not move.

Deqo takes the cloth and sweeps a layer of dust off the windowsill, but it is inhibiting having another person in the room. Karl Marx begins to shift, flinging her legs to the side of the bed and yawning loudly. Deqo glances at the woman's skeletal naked body, her protruding collarbones forming a yoke around her neck, bleeding sores crisscrossing the skin on her meagre thighs. Deqo examines her discreetly and sees a woman who should be in hospital. Karl Marx grabs a corner of the bedclothes and dabs at the blood on her legs; she is unperturbed by her appearance and slowly rises, showing the two triangular bones of her buttocks as she retrieves a diric from the floor.

Deqo feels a lump in her throat and hums softly to distract herself.

'You one of Nasra's?'

'Haa, yes.'

'You selling?'

'Selling what?'

'The thing between your legs.'

Deqo takes a minute to decipher what could be worth selling or even possible to sell between her legs. 'No! I clean and run errands only,' she says hurriedly. She imagines Karl Marx doing what the goats and stray dogs do when they mount each other and is disgusted. That is what makes a whore a whore, she realises, and her eyes widen.

Karl Marx sits down heavily and looks at Deqo with lowered eyes. 'I was your age when I started this.'

Deqo cannot see what anyone would want with Karl Marx; she looks like she has TB, typhoid and every kind of sickness going. In Saba'ad people would have run from her.

'Look at me,' she says.

Deqo stops and looks her squarely in the face.

'How old do you think I am?'

There are already white hairs on her head, her breasts beneath the sheer diric hang down to her navel; she is far into old age in Deqo's estimation.

'Go on, say it.'

'Fifty? Fifty-five?'

Karl Marx laughs, revealing broken khat-stained teeth. 'You little bitch! Take twenty off that and you're close.'

Deqo smiles in return, not believing her words but too polite to challenge them. 'Why are you called Karl Marx?' she asks.

'Because I have shared and shared and shared until there is nothing left to give.' She clutches at her bosom and sighs.

'What about Stalin and China?'

'Stalin is named after Jaalle Stalin of the Russians for her brutality, and China is a favourite of the coolies. Nasra doesn't want a name.' Her attention turns to the store of white medicine boxes on the floor, and while Deqo straightens the bed she crunches tablet after tablet in her mouth.

'What will your name be?'

'My name is Deqo, I don't want it to change,' she says firmly. If Nasra didn't need a new name to live here then nor would she.

'Wash those clothes for me, would you?' Karl Marx points to a pile by the door.

Deqo hesitates, unsure if laundry is one of her duties, then decides to ingratiate herself with Karl Marx; it can't hurt to have another ally against Stalin within the house. She picks up the laundry and leaves.

*   *   *

Deqo drops Karl Marx's clothes into a basin in the courtyard and then scrubs them under the tap with a green soap; the trickle of water is so slow that she leaves the basin and attempts to finish the rooms before returning. After knocking three times on China's door and not receiving a reply, Deqo pads across to Nasra's room, where incense burns in a white clay urn. Nasra has just had a shower and her hair is wrapped in a towel away from her long neck. The skin above her knees and elbows is paler than the rest and mottled with small moles that rush over her chest and thighs; she rubs a milk-white cream on her body with a rough motion, kneading the flesh between her fingers and pulling it away from the bone.

Copyright © 2013 by Nadifa Mohamed