Further up the square, a widow had dressed up for her first outing in the camp. She wore a green dress with sequins sewn to its wide lush hem. She had consigned her mourning dress to the bottom of her jute sack, she said to those around her. A woman mourns, but a woman moves on too. The Khwaja patted the widow’s back. Saba noticed the mark of his dusty hand on the young woman’s green dress.

An eagle circled the camp. The bird threw its shadow on a girl painting her toes as her mother began to set her hair in rollers. The girl’s name passed from one boy’s lips to another. Samhiya. From Asmara. Samhiya popped her chewing gum and, placing her red lips on her palm, she blew kisses to those in front of her. Her cherry-flavoured breath wafted over to Saba.

When she turned away from the city girl, Saba saw the woman whose jerrycan her brother had saved the night before. The woman wandered into the square, wearing a long yellow gown. The adults, including Saba’s mother, were searching for familiar faces in the crowd. But some faces must have changed, Saba thought. Or were, at least for now, masked with sorrow. Her mother had not been the same since the camel took its first step away from their hometown. Saba wondered if she herself had changed too.

Strangers consoled each other, fighting back grief with small talk to shore up strength, and in doing so they established new friendships. The Khwaja, though, joined the children running around, laughing, falling and crying along with them.

As Saba looked at the scenes unfolding in front of her, it occurred to her that life in this place would be about searching for alternatives. Hopes and prayers murmured in the square caused a silent tremor across the camp. Right under her feet.

Saba came out of her hut clutching a handful of seeds from an orange that Tahir had told her to plant. They will grow into a beautiful orange tree, he said.

A gust of wind blew through the camp. Doors flapped. Rope latches snapped. A cloud of dust swirled around Saba. She closed her eyes. Screams echoed through the square, then faded. And when the wind calmed, Saba looked further down the square. The mosque that she had helped build in the sand was erased. She looked at the seeds in her hand. Was there any point in planting them?

A few yards away, a priest in a white turban, a white gabi draped over his white tunic and white pants, stood head bowed as if in prayer. Flies crawled on his shoulders. He raised his horsehair fly swatter and uttered prayers to the congregation standing in a circle around him, some huddled close as children do to a mother.

Saba tried to guess the time by observing the sun’s position in the sky. Light flooded her retinas until the sun’s glare forced her to cast her gaze away from the sun, from time.