Saba and Hagos navigated the crowded square. Voices mingled into raucous, incomprehensible noise. Their walk was interrupted by a man searching for aspirin, by a young girl who whispered in Saba’s ear, asking for cotton wool for her first menstruation, and by the athlete who was looking for men to donate their socks to make a large sock ball. Hagos doesn’t wear socks, Saba said on her brother’s behalf. Adding, Go to hell, when the athlete replied that he pitied a man when a woman became his voice.

When they arrived at the other side of the square, they encountered the midwife reviving a man who had fainted by holding a slice of onion under his nose. Hagos turned Saba’s head away from the green-eyed woman. But looking away didn’t amount to forgetting, Saba thought. Not when her thighs still bore marks of the midwife’s cruelty.

Passing a hill with a solitary hut to the east, Saba and Hagos arrived outside the camp. They climbed one of the surrounding hills. Saba inhaled the scent of wild jasmine and hibiscus trees scattered about them.

Saba couldn’t see the river but knew its muddy water flowed behind the broad hill to the right. More hills poked out of the earth and clipped the horizon with their patches of red and grey rocks. The valley was strewn with pebbles and stones. The long grass of the open toilet in front of them swayed in the wind, the breeze carrying the foul odour.

Saba surveyed the camp nested in the folds of the valley behind the open field. The sparsity of their new home sharpened under the morning sun. There is nothing in this place, Saba said, echoing Jamal’s words. Nothing. Nothing. Yet, as she bemoaned the absence of school, calmness ran through her. For once, she would be able to live without fighting with her mother and the midwife, without the permanent guilt towards Hagos. In fact, she thought, she could teach him all she knew, if he allowed her to, and they would spend the rest of their lives with this limited shared knowledge. Neither of them better than the other. Saba placed her head on Hagos’s shoulder and closed her eyes to the light.

The chirping of crickets drifted in through the window. Saba sat up on her blanket and crawled over to the other side. She shook Hagos’s shoulder.

Hagos? Hagos, can you hear me?

Silence.

Hagos, I can’t sleep. My stomach hurts.

Silence.

Does it feel like it has been weeks already to you too?

Silence.

But maybe it has. Do you know how long we’ve been here?

Silence.

Saba stretched alongside Hagos. His breath warmed her face. Beads of sweat covered her forehead.

Silence.

Leaving her brother to sleep, Saba shuffled out of the hut. Dawn reddening the thatched roofs with a rosy hue. Birds chirping. The faint cries of babies. The call to prayer. Footsteps. Flip-flops. Bare feet dragging through sand. Men. Yawning. Greeting each other. Salaam. Sabah al-kheir. Dhan hadeerkum. O Jesus our Saviour. A priest. Clay incense burner in his hand. Charcoal burning into the pores of dawn. Incense rising. Saba walked through the haze of incense smoke, head down, arms folded.