Saba and Zahra filed past mothers who tied their babies on their backs with their embroidered zurias, mothers who rocked in harmony and hummed in unison.

A woman with a cross tattooed on her forehead sat on a man’s shoulders, her arms spread wide open calling for her missing daughter. But everyone is lost, Saba thought, as people strayed into each other’s path, separating one another.

In the middle of all this chaos, there was a long queue. Like a stream running through wild rocks. The English queue, the Khwaja had called it.

When Saba joined the queue with Zahra a hot, dry wind blew in from the river, carrying with it the smell of the open toilet mixed with the wild flowers in the hills. The air made Saba feel hot and nauseated.

The queue came to a halt. Zahra hummed a melody.

What is that song? Saba asked.

My mother used to tape herself singing to me, Zahra said.

It’s a beautiful melody, Saba said, and bowed her head as if heavy with memories of all her battles with her own mother.

That is what mothers do when they are away from you. They sing to you through a tape to make up for their absence.

Can you sing it for me? asked Saba.

Yes, Zahra nodded, smiling and squeezing Saba’s hand:

My Zahra, I miss you,

The few hours I am at the base,

I think about nothing but you,

The time I breastfed you, washed you, made your food, sang for you at bedtime,

But I return to the trenches

Full of determination, and I fire my gun as though you are strapped to my back,

Whispering in my ear

To hurry, to keep going, and reminding me that I am here,

I am here to bring back my country,

Where my daughter will have the same rights as someone else’s son.

Carrying rocks across the fish-stinking square, the imam and his fellow worshippers trudged past Saba and began outlining the boundaries of a new mosque.

Saba was on her way home from the aid centre, the image of Zahra’s fighter mother etched in her mind, when she encountered the Khwaja. He was talking to a group of turbaned men seated on the ground around an opened tin of sardines. Eyes shut, faces grimacing.

I can’t eat this, said one of the men with a piece of fish dangling in front of his scrunched-up nose.

I have never seen your hand shake so much, said his younger companion. Even when you used to slaughter a cow. Swallow it and God will ease it through your throat.

The man swallowed.

His companions were about to clap when the man spat out the fish and his sea-smelling words: I lived in the Sahel all my life and never touched fish. Can someone go and tell the Englishman not to impose his cuisine on us?

Saba laughed.

Actually, the Khwaja said, by eating fish we are showing our ability to adapt, and like a tall building, our new free country will be flexible to withstand nature’s challenges as it rises on our backs.