How? said Jamal. Have you looked at this place? Maybe you need to wear your glasses.

The man removed his glasses from his head and put them on. What a glorious sun, he said. I feel it is going to be a wonderful day.

This is Africa, Jamal said. The sun is always bright and so it was on the day the war came to us. Weather has nothing to do with how great one’s day is going to turn out.

The man chuckled, his shoulders shaking. The book under his arm nearly slipped out, but he caught it before it hit the ground.

Do you have a pen and paper, Khwaja? said Jamal. I need to write my film script.

Need is no longer a word appropriate for this place, the man said, without objecting to Jamal using the nickname for a Westerner for him. Yes, I have a pen, but I’d rather keep it. After all, you are right, there is no shop in this camp.

I think I saw you in Cinema Impero when I worked there, said Jamal.

Perhaps, the Khwaja said, laughing. I am glad to meet a fellow Asmarino in a refugee camp. The world is small, they say.

The Khwaja slipped his hands into his pockets and smiled at Saba. Buongiorno, shokorina, he said. Che bella giornata.

And he sauntered off, greeting those on his way in various languages, even those brought by the colonizers. Saba wondered whether his peace with himself was because the conflicts in his mixed blood were in the past. But for Eritrean-Ethiopian Saba, half from an occupied country and the other half from the occupying, the conflict was ongoing. Half of her was at war with the other half. That’s why she was in a camp.

Saba left Jamal and followed the Khwaja through the camp. His blue outfit reminded her of what her father had worn the morning he carried her to school to take Hagos’s place, when Hagos was pulled from school by their parents after a visiting doctor diagnosed him as mute. That day, Saba saw Hagos hiding behind a tree outside the school. She waved at him. Hagos ran away crying.

Saba trailed the Khwaja as he made his way through the crowd, swerving around people, saying sorry, scusami, pardon me, a’thazouli, asmhoelee. He stopped in front of a group of men huddled over a torn newspaper, words hanging low to the ground. A man cut the paper into pieces as if it was a loaf of bread and divided it among his companions. The men scattered off in different directions with broken sentences, as if nothing needed to make sense.

Music bellowed out. A singer tuned her krar. The high-pitched beat drew people. From now on, the singer said in her honeyed voice, she would only sing about the war to make sure no one forgot why they were here. Her nephew, though, whispered to Saba and those nearest to him that he was carrying memories of all her love songs as well as of the beats of his double-headed drum. He promised to heat the blood of the dispossessed with one side of the koboro and soothe the hearts of lovers with the other.