Saba lay next to Eyob. She emulated her brother and placed an arm on her husband’s chest. This was her time to be loved.

We all entered this camp as humans but only some of us would leave so. Disgust is an acquired taste, she reminded herself.

But this wasn’t disgusting. It astonished Saba how judgemental thoughts still arrived in her mind and how much resisting she still had to do. Eyob was the oasis in which both she and her brother took refuge from their long journey. His heart, the heart that had stopped twice before, beat under his ribcage, rhythmically.

Saba undressed and squeezed herself between the two men.

THE DEPARTURE

At the crack of dawn Saba arrived at Hajj Ali’s compound as the nomad descended from his barn at the top of the hill, where she saw the long slender shadow of her brother rising to his feet. The animals around Hagos scurried, ramming heads and horns against each other and the cage.

Hagos had gone to see Hajj Ali before dawn, when, said the nomad, darkness would shield them from view. But Saba remembered the imam’s words to her on the first day in the camp: God is everywhere. The first flicker of light appeared in the sky. As if, Saba thought, he lit the wick of the universe, longing to be seen now, now that it was over.

And it was at that time of the morning when the camp was just beginning to emerge from darkness, when the streak of a flame split the sky, that Hajj Ali parted the legs of his goat. Let me finish milking and we will leave, he said to Saba.

Saba looked at the picture of the graduate and folded the newspaper which the Khwaja had insisted she take with her as a reminder of her dream, now shelved. For ever, perhaps. When the goat kicked, Hajj Ali placed one of her legs over his shoulder and wrapped his fingers around her teat. Milk splattered into his bowl.

Saba studied his appearance. The face that she once thought reflected nature, as if refined by the constant wind against which he travelled, seemed fuller and lighter. For someone who was supposed to be a traveller, he had become rooted in the camp. He had established a monopoly over the production of meat and dairy. His roosters roamed the field, next to the large chicken cage, inside which Saba could see many eggs. His daughter sold milk by going hut to hut, his wife churned the remainder into butter for making ga’at porridge as well as oiling the hair, and he had set up a makeshift slaughterhouse, selling meat in affordable portions.

Saba’s sun-strained eyes looked over to her left at the animal skins treated with salt. They had multiple uses: they were used as mattresses and seating rugs, as well as praying mats. Saba remembered it was she and the businessman who had persuaded Hajj Ali to stay. But then she noticed the donkey at the bottom of a hill, the donkey that would lead her and Zahra out of the camp.