The realization of where she was now shook her out of her reverie. Saba buried her face in her hands, feeling the density of the mud walls around her. She sat on her knees. The earthy smell of shrubs under her window rose and mixed with the dung-smothered morning air. She raised her fingers to her face and inhaled the scent of her thighs.

Saba staggered out of the hut. Streaks of orange light appeared on the horizon, as curved as the humps of a camel. Footsteps shuffled across the sandy ground. A figure emerged from a narrow passage into the square. The man stopped in the middle of the square, placing the oil lamp he was carrying on the ground next to him and creating a circle of radiance around his feet. He announced the call to the first prayer of the day.

No one answered. The man waited, arms folded. Dust covered his sandals. Without his turban, his gabi, his rug, without a minaret, a dome, four walls, a direction of prayer, the imam’s authority, Saba thought, was left in the lean and tall silhouette of his shadow printed on the bare ground of the camp.

He called for the prayer again and again. His voice grew hoarse. No response. He soon fell silent. He dug his foot in the sand and dragged it along, beginning to outline a place of worship. He stopped and looked back. The faint outline behind him grew dimmer as he marched onwards with his oil lamp. He returned to the starting point and began all over again. A hardened fighter refusing to give up a battle despite losing his armoury. That thought came to Saba as she walked towards him, and followed his outline, digging her foot harder and deeper behind him, marking human presence in this wilderness.

The imam lifted his lamp. Her face glowed in response to his smile. He coughed. He regained his voice.

This should be big enough, he said after a while. But we can expand it if needed. After all, it is a line in the sand.

Where is the direction of prayer? Saba asked.

The imam raised the hand with the oil lamp high against the sky. Rays of light poured from his high arm. God is everywhere, he said.

The mosque in the sand was completed. Saba skipped back to her hut as if she had participated in the construction of a real mosque that would last beyond her life on earth. The thought, though, made her shiver. What if life in the camp ended up being only as firm as that line in the sand?

The imam prayed alone. His jellabiya fluttered in the breeze, the white fabric pressed against the darkness. Saba picked up her torch and set out to search for a school in the camp. When her mother had decided to flee with her children, Saba had asked if there was a school on the other side of the border. Saba’s mother threw a shoe at her daughter. Our neighbours have been killed, she said. We are leaving home, and all you think about is school.