A woman is too complex for a man, said Jamal. That’s why we reduce her to simple matters.

No, said Azyeb. It shows how much violence there is against women, if even love has to be equated with drawing blood from a woman.

Azyeb fanned her open furnace. The charcoal embers glowed. Saba squinted.

Haleeb haleeb haleeb.

The voice of Hajj Ali’s daughter, selling milk, rang out.

Tedros called the girl carrying a pot of milk on her head over to him.

Are you going to drink milk and beer? asked the athlete.

A man’s wounded heart needs a cocktail of extreme variety to survive a moment like this, said the praise poet.

THE DANCE

Saba entered the camp from the forest carrying firewood one afternoon, and paused outside Jamal’s hut. The entertainer was behind a large white screen planting a wild yellow hibiscus tree. The twigs of wood that Saba had tied to her back with a scarf squeaked as she sped away. When she arrived at the bottom of the hill, she stood on her toes and peeked over the thorn fence of Eyob’s compound. Men were painting blue the mud wall of the new hut the businessman had built for Hagos. Her brother’s hut was to be filled with furniture Eyob had bought from Nasnet. Hagos’s new bed would be the bed of the sex worker. The bed with the thick mattress that Nasnet brought with her when she was evicted from the city because the comfort of being on top of that material compensated for the duress of being under the weight of a man. Nasnet got a cheap angareb – a wooden framed bedstead – as a gift from one of the aid workers instead.

Once home, Saba dropped her load by the mogogo stove and went inside the hut. She leaned against the door frame and buried her head in her hands, her lips resting on her bruised palms.

Saba heard a bleating. She looked through the window. Tedros stood holding a goat on a leash. The white cloth – the imminent test of her purity that he carried with him around the camp – popped out of his shirt pocket.

I bought this from Hajj Ali, he said, caressing the black and white animal. It’s for your wedding.

I no longer eat meat, Saba said.

You will soon be the meat for my father, he said, sniggering.

Saba gathered her saliva and spat into his face. The goat pawed the ground, kicking up clouds of dust. You will pay for this, Tedros said, wiping the side of his face with the white cloth.

He pulled the goat behind him as he left. When Saba sat inside the bucket for a bath, some of the water splashed out onto the floor. As she squeezed inside that tiny place, her body felt as suffocated as her soul, and her dreams felt trapped in this camp. Saba shuffled in the bucket, the water underneath tickling her skin. Out of the thatched roof, a moth descended. It rested on her chest, its wings spread on her breast. When Saba stepped out of the bucket, the moth soared away through the window. As she loosened the towel around her hips, she noticed papers scattered on Hagos’s blanket, papers on which she had written and taught him what she in turn had learnt from the Khwaja.