"It's a Persian story. She was the princess of Kabul." There's a pause and she recites, from memory - it's funny the things she remembers and the things she doesn't.

"About her silvern shoulders two musky black tresses curl,encircling them with their ends as though they were links in a chain.
Her mouth resembles a pomegranate blossom, her lips are cherries and her silver bosom curves out into breasts like pomegranates.
Her eyes are like the narcissus in the garden and her lashes draw their blackness from the raven's wing.
Her eyebrows are modelled on the bows of Teraz powdered with fine bark and elegantly musk tinted.
If you seek a brilliant moon, it is her face; if you long for the perfume of musk, it lingers in her tresses
From top to toe she is Paradise gilded; all radiance, harmony and delectation."

She takes a few steps closer, leaning against a tree and looking up at her. "When the Zal, a legendary Persian warrior, saw her he fell in love with her. She would lower her braided hair like a rope, and he would climb it, and they would sit on the roof talking. By the time he returned to his king he knew he needed to be with her always."