Why? asked the man again.

I could hear muffled laughter coming from some in the audience.

I returned to my seat and looked at my cinema screen. Saba’s compound was clear to see. She sat on her bed, a book in her hand. She was wearing her nightgown now. I had to look twice. I know about the peril of my cinema: sometimes when I recalled memories, they became so real, so alive on my screen. And I was full of memories of Saba.

Soon after, the court’s proceedings were hindered once again, this time due to the lack of evidence regarding Saba’s religion. Unconvinced by the varied accounts about her faith, that her father might have been a Muslim and her mother a Christian, the judge left a blank space. Religion unknown, said the judge to the stenographer.

A man stood up and wondered aloud: How is it that Saba has lived among us for all these years and yet we know so little about her?

The judge, who, in the absence of police authority in the camp, also had to act as an investigator, called the main witness.

In the far distance behind him Saba was still reading, and her compound basked in the yellow light of the oil lamps she had lined up against one of the walls.

The midwife sat on the witness chair. She took her oath and mumbled some prayers. The sorrow on her face vanished as she started her testimony.

I have been suspecting something was going on between Saba, may she be cursed, and Hagos since the afternoon, a few months after our arrival at the camp, when I entered their hut and found them lying together on a blanket. May the Lord forgive me for repeating this in front of you, Your Honour, but I discovered then that they had been sharing the same blanket ever since we arrived in the camp. I had to restrain myself from slapping that shameless girl. But no amount of beating was going to change her. I wished her mother had listened to me and had left her back home instead of paying so much money to bring her to this camp. You will never have peace with that girl, I had told her mother. I beg you, dear judge, to give her a severe punishment.

Please continue with your testimony and leave the sentencing to us, the judge said.

The midwife nodded. But she then turned towards us and, standing up, she wagged her finger as she addressed the fathers in the gallery. Be extra vigilant and extra forceful with your daughters. We are in a camp but a father is a girl’s land and a girl would never be exiled from her culture and traditions with her father around.

Please could you sit down and continue, the judge said, shuffling in his chair.

As you wish, our judge, said the midwife. Anyway, I gave their mother my own blanket so her son would sleep away from that girl. I also know now why, when the businessman proposed to Saba, she immediately agreed without any of the trouble I had expected. I will never marry until I finish my studies, she used to tell her mother regularly. But when I brought the marriage proposal to her, she didn’t even shed a single tear. All she asked in return, and in fact insisted on, was that her brother move in with them. It wasn’t as if she was moving to a different village. But the kind-hearted and good-natured businessman agreed.