There are platforms in life, some you spring from and from others you dive.  As an expatriate New Zealander living in the Middle East I lived in a compound named Beverley Hills. Our family villa overlooked tennis courts and two large swimming pools one for training and the other for recreation. There was an abundance of the latter. We had a driver who called himself Ali and maids named Rose and Lani. The heat in summer reached temperatures of 50 degrees. At this time of year my skin shriveled like the scorched dates that lay at my feet. I grew used to living indoors and shutting myself away, in the evening I re-emerged like a chameleon playing the part of a corporate wife to entertain guests with drinks, dinner and more drinks.

In my last summer in Doha, the capital of Qatar a maid and the compound drycleaner were arrested for adultery. The maid was shrieking. My neighbour, an expatriate North American and converted Moslem, assured me that the sounds derived from pleasure. I was not so sure. Perhaps the maid was the victim of rape. My neighbour and I discussed how to differentiate the sounds of sexual pleasure and pain. This was becoming increasingly ridiculous. I pointed out that a maid having a secret tryst would hardly be likely to arouse attention by screaming unless she was being assaulted. But it was too late, the pair had been dragged away in chains. I asked what would happen to them.

"It's Ramadan. He will be deported. She'll be transferred to Saudi and stoned to death."

I remembered the young woman pushing a young Qatari child on a swing. Sending me a brief smile. I imagined a large truck pulling up with a load of rocks. I sensed her terror in the awareness that these would be tipped over her. Her death might be mercifully fast but it could be slow. She might be injured and suffocate slowly. Surely we could save her. My friend wasn't interested. She had married a Saudi and found safety and comfort in this penance for adultery. The maid evidently had a husband in India. I knew she would have children of her own, and that she had left these small beings to go to a country where she could earn money looking after other people's children and pay for her own family's education. I wondered if she had been lonely like me.