I Know What I Saw

Acknowledgements

To Mama without whose prayers and support nothing good that came my way would ever have reached me. Thank you for everything you gave me without counting any of it. Thank you for life. And for love. And for more than I will ever know. I love you.

To Dad who wanted me to read – always – to make up for the reading that wouldn’t come to him. Thank you for the stories. And for that smile. And for being proud whether I deserved it or not. We will come to you one day not too far away.

To Sadia, my wife. My life. And the third best lawyer in the World. Thank you for all that faith that you somehow still have in me. Thank you for the daily blessings bring into my life. I love you. One day I will repay you with twenty-two point two million somethings. What those somethings are though is not yet clear. I’m beginning to think it might not be pounds. I really hope by now you’re getting some sleep though I’m not hugely optimistic. Thank you for your belief and your ideas and that believable optimism that you infect everything with. I couldn’t do any of this without you. I wouldn’t want to.

To my brothers and sisters, Kash, Omer, Khurrum and Aiysha. I miss you all. To me each of you is a compass point that helps me find my place in the world. Thank you.

Now to ones who make this thing happen … the Book GIANTS.

To the matchless Camilla, my agent. If my first draft had been a portrait then Camilla was the one who said, gently, ‘you know I feel that we should stick to having just the two eyes. And maybe lose the third arm. And add a nose. Definitely add a nose. And a neck.’ Thank you for making the book recognisable. And of course, for all the championing you do and do so well. I couldn’t have asked for a better guide and friend to navigate that water filled with all those sharks!

To all those others at Darley Anderson who combine their energies on my behalf. Thank you. And especially to Sheila for all her efforts in launching my screenwriting career! Thank you also to Mary and Kristina and Georgia. You are all brilliant and lovely and enormously talented people.

To Sara Helen, my amazing and talented editor. Thank you for taking away rough edges and for the polish and for understanding the book in ways that even I didn’t. I’ve always said that there’s no point in having an editor unless they’re cleverer and more imaginative than you are. And although it’s a low bar in my case, you’ve flown over it. Thank you for taking me on and welcoming me so warmly to the Raven and Bloomsbury families. Thank you to all the brilliant minds there who do such sterling and difficult but masterful work. There are countless sales and publicity and marketing heroes who work behind the scenes and have done so much to bring this book into being and I am indebted to you all. To Greg Heinimann who designed such an evocative and striking cover, thank you. And to Lin Vasey for her work on the copy edit and to Catherine Best for her work on the proof edit who just prove that every single book is a collaboration of many. Thank you for your efforts. I am grateful too to Ben Douglas-Jones QC who not only did me the privilege of allowing me to fictionalise him for a moment but who also kindly (together with Chris Parker) allowed me permission to reproduce and reprint (and change for the worse) an extract from the marvellous Fils de la Terre © Ben Douglas-Jones and Chris Parker. Thank you for your encouragement and giving me faith in the story.

I reserve a huge store of gratitude to Alex Tribick. In many ways there would be no books at all without Alex’s support. He knows why this is true and I want to say a deeply heart-felt thank you to him. Alex, bonnet de douche, my friend. It’s such a privilege to work with you. Sadia adds her thanks but also her commiserations to Sue (I’m not sure why).

Next the Chillies. The Red Hot Chilli Writers host a delicious podcast if you’re ever in the mood for one, but they are also my writing support group. By turns they are patients and therapists. I can’t count the number of times that their wit and humour, their support and solidarity have rescued me from the pits of writing despair. So. Reluctantly.

Thank you in totally random (picked out of a hat order) Amit AA Dhand, Ayisha Malik, Nadeem Khan, Abir Mukherjee, and absolutely least of all Vaseem Khan. Each of them are talented and brilliant writers and have given me something to aim for. Thank you, people. I should add a second thank you to Ayisha who edited an early version of the book and in the process taught me how to write betterer. Thank you.Thank you to all the readers and the reviewers and the bloggers. The ones who tweet and the ones who silently read and breathe life into dusty pages. I fully and readily acknowledge what a huge privilege it is to be able to write at all and be published but also that it is the readers who bring the books into existence as stories. Thank you.

Finally, to Zoha and Shifa. I am so proud of you both. If I have written this book just for the pleasure of being able to say that, then it was worth it. I love you both to somewhere past heaven and back.

Also – you guys are very annoying A LOT of the time. Let’s not forget that.