Saba pulled back from Zahra’s embrace and said, I am about to cook something delicious that Hagos taught me. Come eat with me.

I will cook, said Zahra. You are the bride after all.

As Zahra stirred a pot of shoro with meat on the stove, Saba held her hand. And the two friends fell silent. It was this silence that allowed love to foster in this place, root itself in people’s hearts as though chests were fertile soil.

The breeze wafted over the compound. The charcoal under the pot glowed. Bubbles popped up in the pot on the fire. The shoro sauce began to splatter. It’s ready, said Zahra, let us eat.

Steam rose from the plate as she spread the stew over the injera.

But Saba saw a scorpion climbing up the mud wall of Hagos’s hut. One moment, she said to Zahra.

She walked over to the blue hut, took off her slipper and smacked the scorpion as it was about to enter the window. Hagos and Eyob were out. Nasnet’s bed was still inhabited though. Saba believed that every act of secret love rumbled long after the act itself was over, like ghosts making their presence felt in the shadows.

She joined Zahra again, pulling her stool closer to the plate. Tearing a piece of injera, she added extra chilli and dipped it in the sauce.

Be careful, you will soon be pregnant, Zahra said.

Saba chuckled. Do you really think I will?

That’s what happens after one marries, said Zahra. And in a camp, it is the only thing to happen fast.

Nothing in this compound is what it seems, Saba said. We do our love differently here.

Zahra nodded and Saba felt she had understood.

After tea, Saba and Zahra brought the bed out into the cool compound. They lay on their backs, side by side, facing the illuminated sky, cool air drifting past their touching cheekbones. Both sighed, exhaled. Saba felt Zahra’s ribcage expanding against hers.

You are the last person I thought would marry. I know what you are going to say: I did it for Hagos. But the days we girls do things for our families are over. I try to learn selfishness from my mother. Without it, she wouldn’t have left me when I was still young to go to fight.

Saba turned her head to look at Zahra. When she stared at her friend, she noticed something for the first time. The miracle of this place was that she could continue to discover new and special things about the same person. Like everything else, observing beauty in people and in what was around you was rationed too.

Saba touched the birthmark on Zahra’s left eyelid. Zahra’s face had stayed the same since they planted orange seeds on their first day in the camp. Her soldier mother would still recognize her whenever the time came for their reunion. Even in the afterlife.

As if she could read Saba’s thoughts, Zahra sighed and said, Anyway, I feel my mother is dead and our country is still occupied and I am in a camp. I don’t want my life to be a tragedy after all she has sacrificed.