But why was the midwife checking Saba’s virginity now, when she had been married to the businessman for months? I asked myself.

When the midwife rolled up her sleeve and approached Saba’s opened legs with her two fingers, I was about to storm inside my cinema screen and run towards Saba’s compound. The guard of the court halted my attempt to leave. Sit down. Sit down.

As I was pushed back on my chair, my eyes caught a glimpse of Saba sitting on her bed, head in her hands. Then, the gate of my compound was flung open. The midwife entered and ululated. Saba didn’t abuse her brother. Saba is innocent, she said. Saba is a virgin.

Silence.

Those unbearable moments deafening in their stillness returned. It was only when a double-amputee ex-freedom fighter fired his Kalashnikov in the air that a collective scream of happiness erupted and shook the ground of my compound. Men pumped fists. Women ululated. And more people poured in through the gate of my cinema to join the impromptu festivities to celebrate Saba’s rectitude and the camp’s, which remained an island of purity in the middle of this bush. How our society kept its sanity even in this wilderness, said the judge, is a testament to our collective awareness. We police each other because we love others as much as ourselves.

The camp’s singer mounted the judge’s table. This camp has taken away many of us, taken a lot from us, but not our humanity, she sang. Saba hasn’t stripped us of our humanity like war has stripped it from our homeland. We have nothing, except our honour. Thank you, shukor Saba. Thank you, pure Saba.

The singer held her krar close to her heart. I had never heard her sing in such a way. Now and then, her voice was drowned by the ululations, the claps of hands, the shouts of joy, the gasps of happiness.

The high notes of the krar brought more people to their feet, and as they went around the screen in a circle, in and out of Cinema Silenzioso, I recalled what Saba had said once, that our dance was conceived in response to our history, marred as it was by repetition of the same bloody story over and over again.

Saba was the woman who had dared to live by her own rules, who they would now bring back in line through a trial.

But no one had asked how it was possible that Saba was still a virgin after many months of marriage. Why hadn’t she and her husband consummated their vows? Or, perhaps, everyone had known the answer, but had kept quiet in the hope that what was not uttered out loud lost its power to destabilize.

THE ARRIVAL

Tahir? Tahir, is this the camp?

The driver didn’t answer. He squinted as he leaned forward. His chin rested on the steering wheel. The lorry veered and as he swerved to avoid a pothole, branches of an acacia tree scraped over the vehicle’s side.