This is dedicated to my cousin Shadi, whom I used to share a bed with during our school summer holidays by the Caspian and whom I used to have massive fights with over leaving the light on until the early hours of the morning (as she read Daeejan Napelone and the Chain of Love for the hundredth time) which attracted all the mosquitoes of that area to our bed.

‘Psssd’ I heard ‘are you awake?’
I was but I didn’t answer. Even as an eight year old I liked my sleep and waking up so early in the morning that was still dark outside, during my summer holidays, was not my idea of fun.
‘Hey’ Shadi whispered again, ‘Are you awake?’ and that was followed by her giggling to herself.’
‘What?’ I said irritably; I was not a morning person.
‘Are you awake?’
‘Well I am now, what is it?’
‘I don’t know, I woke up a few minutes ago and then I thought if you’re up as well, we can go on the beach and watch the sunrise.’
I looked out of the window. There was a little bit of pink in the sky but it was still very dark. ‘Are you insane?’ I said turning my back to her. ‘It’s still dark.’
Before closing my eyes I looked at the nail on the wall where I had hung my red, Hatch the Honey Bee bag. My bag was not there.
Shadi was still pleading with me to go out on the beach with her, ‘Come on, it’ll be fun.’
‘Ok where is it?’ I suddenly asked her sitting in my half of the bed and putting my most serious face on.
‘Where is what?'
‘You know what I’m talking about. What have you done with it?’
‘With what?’
‘My Hatch the Honeybee bag. Where is it?’
‘I don’t know’ she said, sitting up in the bed and looking around, ‘I haven’t taken it.’ I looked under the bed where we both kept our suitcases. There was nothing there. I was getting really annoyed with her now and so climbing back to the bed, I pulled the covers over my head saying, ‘Very funny. But you’d better not have put my stuff in the cupboard; I don’t want the mice munching through my clothes.’
‘What?’ She exclaimed jumping off the bed. ‘I haven’t taken your stuff.’ she said, looking around the small living room. I sat up in the bed again to see what was going on when I heard her cry out, ‘Oh no’ and point to the coffee table where her cassette player used to be ‘We’ve been burgled.’
Suddenly I got a real fright as I thought what if he is still around. I jumped and grabbed hold of the stick that we used for the fireplace in the winter. ‘What are you doing?’ Shadi asked.‘What if he is still around?’ I whispered.
Armed with our stick, we tiptoed around the living room, looking in all the dark corners until we came to one of the windows that was wide open. On further inspection we noticed two batteries on the floor on the other side of the window. Shadi recognised them as the batteries that were inside her cassette player.
We were upset about losing our stuff but we were also very excited. Our grandparents (Mamanjoon and Babajoon) whose place we were staying at, had been burgled many times but it had never happened while we had been there.
We ran towards the one bedroom of the house where our grandparents slept , passing my other cousin on our way who was fast asleep in his favourite pose: laying on his front with his head tilted to one side, his mouth half open, holding onto his private parts, very tightly with both hands (as if somehow he had known that we were going to be burgled that night).
When we got inside the bedroom (still traumatized from that time when I accidentally woke babajoon up and gave him such a fright that he had to go and pop Nitro-glycerine pills) I stood back and let Shadi deal with the whole waking up process.

‘We’ve been burgled again.’ we blurted out in unison (maybe a bit too eagerly) as Mamanjoon took out her earplugs and Babajoon turned his bedside lamp on.
So turning in their beds and looking a bit miffed (as you would be if you were woken up with that kind of news) and also a bit uninterested (on account of them getting robbed left and right) they mumbled something like, ‘What do you want us to do about it?’ and turning off the light, they said ‘Just go back to bed, we’ll deal with it in the morning.’
As we turned to go, Babajoon suddenly jumped up and turning on the light again, looked under their bed. All that was followed by a, ‘Oh, damn'
‘What is it?’ Mamanjoon asked.
‘My briefcase’ Said Babajoon while pulling up his trousers and putting on his glasses.
The morning breeze was nice and cool. Shadi and I held hands and as our feet got soaked from the morning dew, we skipped faster to try and keep up with Babajoon who charged down the narrow pathway that went to the beach. The raspberry bushes on either side of the path were littered with our belongings. Shirts, shorts, swimming trunks, towels, trousers, sandals, socks, notebooks with secret pirate maps drawn in them and even Babajoon’s briefcase had been discarded by the thief in his haste to find more valuable items.
But Babajoon still wasn’t looking happy. Which meant whatever he had jumped out of the bed for, must have been inside the empty briefcase that we had found.
Suddenly he bent down and picked up a piece of damp paper and then his face lightened up a bit. Then he turned around to us and said, ‘If you see any papers lying around, pick them up.’ So happy to be able to help, we ran around picking up pieces of damp paper from the ground.
After a while, Mamanjoon came to the window and Babajoon waved the papers at her with a smile and a look of relief.
By the time we got to the beach, the sun was coming up. Babajoon sat on the rocks looking through his papers while Shadi and I ran as far as we could towards the sea when the waves went back, and then ran out again as fast as we could, when they came back to get us wet.