She stood aside, letting an anxious man pass who was bidding another farewell. Then she said: “How do you mean?”

“It is as if I have no inside,” you said to Karin. “I can feel my rib-cage with my fingers, or knock my knuckles against it, and it drums emptily, as if there is nothing inside, nothing whatsoever; it feels as though I have no heart which beats, no lungs which breathe and no head which can think lucidly.”

She was a dear! She said: “Nonsense.”

Nuruddin Farah, Maps, loc. 279781