Four of us were having a holiday in Southern India. We were Jake and Caroline, Rosco and me, Helen. It was only our second day and we were in an excited and upbeat mood. At about nine in the evening, we left the bar to walk along the hotel garden to the terrace overlooking the inky sea. It was dark but for the lights of ships on the other side of the harbour. A faint hum from their generators drifted through the jasmine scented air across the water.

At breakfast we had exclaimed at the vessels that sailed in and out, huge container ships, nippy tugboats and colourful fishing boats in a seemingly endless procession past the hotel.

‘What a position,’ Jake kept repeating. You could tell he was interested in the tonnage, the cargo, the huge docks and cranes just across the water.

‘We are on the Cinnamon Coast,’ I said. ‘Do you suppose that these enormous ships are loading up with spices and fruit or is there some industry round here?’

Everyone had carried on tucking into the platefuls of watermelon and papaya and pineapple. Even Rosco who usually had an opinion about everything, was quiet, fiddling with the camera.

‘We can ask the driver later,’ said Caroline.

By the evening we all felt more confident in our newly acquired knowledge of the city, relaxing in the warmth, full of impressions from the sightseeing we had done. The old Portuguese churches, the Chinese fishing nets, and the ancient Jewish quarter had been fascinating and we felt we were coming to grips with the cultural melange that was Kochi.

Happily enjoying the freedom of lightweight summer clothes after months of piling on the layers we strolled comfortably down some broad steps to the terrace where tables were gleaming white and silver under the candles and the soft globes of light that were hanging from the trees. The waiters hovered; a few guests were already dining. I was looking across to the table we had booked, vaguely noticing a couple getting up from their chairs  on the far side. The woman, in a black burka, took a few steps and suddenly collapsed onto the ground. The man leaned over her as she lay like a blackbird shot out of the sky. 

I rushed forward and knelt beside her. She was stirring slightly. 

‘Get a chair,’I called to a waiter. I bent over the girl.

 ‘Do you speak English?’

Her head swayed upwards. ‘Yes,’ she answered quietly.’ Her face was that of a of an eighteen or nineteen year old, a perfect oval with large eyes blank with illness or misery. I looked at the husband, an authoritarian looking older man, in a long white robe, still standing with an incomprehensible look on his face. I spoke to him, hoping he could understand English.

‘Let’s get her into the chair.’

Together we lifted her. She was so light she seemed to float up.

‘Lean forward, get your head down on your knees,’  I told her. Her upper body drifted downwards in its black filmy material. I held her hand, a tiny brown work of art, limp in my gentle grip.

 ‘How are you feeling? You seem very hot. Could you bring a glass of water, please?’ I looked up at the waiters standing uselessly a yard or two away. One moved at once and lifted a jug on a nearby table, water and ice cubes crashing into a glass he passed to me..

‘Have a sip of water,’ I offered gently. She lifted her head and I saw her face. She looked heartbreakingly young beside the husband in his fifties, still standing with his impassive face beside us.

‘She is very warm,’  I said to him, ‘Perhaps she has a fever. She needs to cool down.’

She did not look at him at all but gripped my hand saying, ‘Thank you,’  in a quiet accented voice while her eyes seemed vacant with pain or resignation. ‘I have not eaten for two days,’ she apologised.

‘That’s silly,’ I said, ‘You must eat and drink.’

Suddenly her hand slipped out of mine as she was pulled quickly to her feet by her husband, ignoring me while turning away with her, grasping her arm with a tightly. He said something in Arabic to her with an unkind look and they stepped away towards the hotel doorway, her slight figure dwarfed by the man in his long robe and turban.

I went across to join the friends who had just sat down. 

‘Is she okay? What happened? Did she just faint?’

‘Poor girl. She was really hot. Probably has a high temperature or maybe she’s pregnant, I don’t know. So beautiful though and the husband must be thirty years older. He didn’t look very sympathetic.’

A Indian waiter appeared beside us. He thanked me for helping and said, ‘They are Arabs. We cannot help her when she fall as we cannot touch an Arab lady.’

We all looked amazed for a moment and then said, ‘Of course.’

He explained that she had not eaten anything during dinner. As the conversation moved on to our orders, I was wondering what more I could have done, there in the middle of the dining area, with the severe looking husband standing over us. Probably I had read too much into that pleading glance, the pressure of those delicate fingers for a few seconds. Of course she would not be all smiles if she was feeling sick or feverish. I sighed. Perhaps she was happy as Larry and on her honeymoon. Perhaps he was actually considered quite a catch. Or more likely she was the third wife, I mused cynically. 

For the rest of the evening I skated on the surface, a lighthearted woman on holiday, loving the Indian dishes we were eating, wiping up every last morsel with naan bread, laughing and joining in the talk, while underneath there was another person too, quietly reflective, pondering about an Arab girl in an arranged marriage. I could not brush off the sense of her unhappiness and the cold knowledge of how impossible it was for her to do anything about it at all, making only a silent protest with just a look and a touch on a stranger’s hand.

She comes into my mind occasionally. I fervently hope I read it all wrong, too firmly set in my Western attitudes, too quick to judge. I try to picture her now, sitting under the shade of an apricot tree in a walled garden with her laughter flying out of the shadow and up into the sun.