I will be your stepmother in days.

So you are happy to marry an old man for his money. Here, have a look at this, he said, pulling down his trousers. You will never see its equivalent.

I have seen it, Saba said. Masturbating while you scream my name.

Tedros spat at her.

We are even now, said Saba. Let me go, stepson.

Stop calling me that.

And you stop holding my neck.

Tedros turned her around. Now, I can have your other hole and nobody, not even my father, will know I had you. I heard you girls love doing it before your wedding, anyway. It’s probably as big as your mouth.

It is for your small dick.

I am not small.

Saba laughed.

Tedros pushed Saba aside and stormed out of the latrine. When she hurried outside, Saba saw Tedros approaching the goat, a knife in his hand.

Fuck your wedding, I will kill it now, he said.

He wrestled the goat to the ground. The animal’s cries fell to gurgles as Tedros slit its throat. Blood splattered everywhere. The white cloth in his pocket turned red. He turned the goat on its back and cut off its testicles and said, his voice rising so that his father, inside his hut, would hear every word: Here, feed these to Hagos so he can get some balls on him.

Tedros threw the bloodied white cloth at Saba and said, Wash it and iron it properly. I want it back as good as new for your wedding night.

CINEMA SILENZIOSO

Saba’s eyes rested on the white screen and the coloured plastic chair inside it. Behind the chair, the camp bathed under the bright sky. The smoke of firewood rose between the randomly dotted huts and coiled around the thatched roofs. Hurry up, start the show, boys, urged Jamal. But the show had already begun. Anyone could enter the screen and sit under the moon and the stars to sing, dance, talk, fall silent, tell a story, reminisce, undress, dress, shave, do whatever he, she or they wanted. But no one moved.

A gust of wind blew through the camp. The audience kept their heads up, as if they were watching a storm in a film made somewhere else. Saba squinted as the yellow dust of the square and the red dust of the hills intermingled and rose above the thatched roofs of the huts. She observed the disappearance of the camp in the cinema. For a moment, the camp existed in sound and smell only. The cacophony made it appear that the opera singer, the first of them to die in the camp, had risen from her grave. Her ghost danced through the wind. This camp was singing her presence from beyond the grave.

Silence. Until a man in blue overalls stepped inside the cinema. He danced. His hands stretched here and there, as if he were the wave of the Red Sea, of their country’s sea, bringing its riches to their laps in exile. One might leave a country, said the dancer, but a country never leaves you.