Saba’s cousin, who came to bid them farewell, took her aside. You need to be patient and find the right time for your questions. But don’t worry, you are going to the biggest country in Africa. And it is full of educated and intelligent people.

Even the war would not interrupt Saba’s march towards her dream then. Only divert it. Like the Nile, it would face hills, mountains, forests, and find a way to pass through many countries.

The alleyways were a labyrinth in which she could get lost. Saba continued, diving into the dark. She stumbled upon unused thatch scattered alongside woods, twigs, ropes. The builders of the camp must have left in a hurry, she thought. She stepped over the abandoned litter on the ground and turned left into another lane. Doors were shut. The familiar sounds of morning were absent. There were no cockerels to announce the arrival of dawn. There was no scent of roasted coffee beans in the air. Air untouched by berbere mixed with ghee, by aftershave, by perfumes. Saba walked on enveloped by a different kind of morning that lacked the rhythm of dough slapping against mogogo stoves, of spoons clinking against pots as women stirred flour to make ga’at porridge. She didn’t hear car engines sputtering. Bicycles clicking in the hills. The place was empty of women and men rushing to the fields, to the market, of students reading aloud from their textbooks. This was a silent morning.

And where is the school? Saba asked herself, shining her torch higher, lighting up the yellow pointy roofs that stabbed the dark skyline. As if a school could be up there, a castle above the clouds.

It was as she leaned against her hut that the sun dispersed the remnants of the night. Saba noticed a young man wearing a yellow flat cap staring at her, his head tilted to the side, his mouth open. She wondered if he was mistaking her for someone he’d left behind or someone killed in the war. The sun intensified. Heat rose off the ground into the skirt. of her black dress. Her preference for black clothes went back to the time she had suffered burns to her thighs, turning her skin purple. Saba wore black to remind herself of what she loved and had lost forever.

Good morning, said the young man. My name is Jamal.

Saba didn’t respond.

Panting, Jamal swung round to face the square. There is no shop in this camp, he said. There is nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Calm down, said another man, striding past Saba.

Saba pushed herself to her feet and stared at this light-skinned man with narrow shoulders and slick black hair, in a blue cardigan over a blue shirt, blue trousers and shiny black shoes. He had a book, its title written in English, under his arm.

The man bowed his head at Saba and, patting Jamal on the back, he said, Remember, it is the absence of things that makes people creative. Things will change.