Unknown Artist Vanitas Still Life painting

blackout curtains over all the windows instead. That night, for the last time, Saladin Chamchawala played his old role of doorman, dressed up in an English dinner-jacket, and when the guests came -- the same old guests, dusted with the grey powders of age but otherwise the same -- they bestowed upon him the same old pats and kisses, the nostalgic benedictions of his youth. "Look how grown," they were saying. "Just a darling, what to say." They were all trying to hide their fear of the war, _danger of air-raids_, the radio said, and when they ruffled Saladin's hair their hands were a little too shaky, or alternatively a little too rough.
Late that evening the sirens sang and the guests ran for cover, hiding under beds, in cupboards, anywhere. Nasreen Chamchawala found herself alone by a food-laden table, and attempted to reassure the company by standing there in her newsprint sari, munching a piece of fish as if nothing were the matter. So it was that when she started choking on the fishbone of her death there was nobody to help her, they were all crouching in corners with their eyes shut;