Three sisters aged between seven and 15, who live alone as their mother vanishes for whole swathes of time, and when social services demand a family meeting, the eldest sister, Laura, plans to find a stand-in for their mother.
<p> The story opens in Balochistan, in a small, scarcely ‘wired’ village bordering Iran and Afghanistan. Ahmad is an idealistic teacher in exile, educating the local community; his partner Haseeba, however, has spent time in jail i…