The football match resumed. The barefoot athlete manipulated the ball with his toes and exchanged passes with his co-striker before scooping it above Samhiya, who ignored the game and strutted with swaying hips straight through the ranks of watching children.

When the ball landed on the roof of a hut, the athlete hauled a boy against its wall. The boy shook the thatch until the red sock ball rolled from the yellow roof.

Hagos returned to the blanket with Saba’s black dress. She had ripped the side as she collected firewood in the bush earlier that day with Zahra and Samhiya. Her mother said that Saba had brought her clumsiness with her when they fled their home. The idea that habits flee with people wherever they go terrified Saba. There was no new beginning anywhere, she thought. The same people in a different place. Memories from home shuffled through her head, her room, her bed, her teacher, her best friend, the doum palm tree, books, rain, the Mareb river, a plan to take her to Addis University, dergue soldiers, death, dreams in the field of sorghum, her bed, her naked body at dawn.

Saba turned towards the brightest side of the square. The flame of an oil lamp flickered against Hagos’s face, drawing out the concentration in his eyes as he sewed the rip in the dress.

One thing Saba had left back home was her talkativeness. People used to say she talked for both of them. Not any more. Her silence, though, was temporary. Just like her brother’s. When she was little, she always believed that Hagos would talk one day, and often fixed her eyes on his mouth, waiting to be the first to hear him utter his first word.

There was a scar in the corner of his lower lip. So subtle was this cut that it appeared designed to ease the load of the unsaid words. God is merciful this way, she thought, standing now.

Saba told Hagos that she needed to go to the open field. He put the dress aside and looked up at her, his mouth half open. A long time ago, he used to try to force himself to talk, to force out words. But every time he did, it was as though each word was a large, sharp object carving the back of his throat. His cheeks inflated. His eyes widened and tears welled up in his eyes. Only incomprehensible sounds left his lips. He had stopped trying.

Hagos signalled to Saba to wait. Dusk settled on the thatched roofs. Darkness like thick ink splotched on the walls, and between the alleys, wood-burning stoves glowed red from the black ground.

Hagos took a torch and beckoned her forward.

I’ll be fine going alone, Saba said.

In his company, she was economical with words. Hagos walked forward. His inability to argue made him decisive in her mind.

On catching up, she held his hand. Hagos turned to the right of the hut. Saba assumed he took this route, even though the fastest way to the toilet was straight ahead from the hut and through the east of the camp, to avoid the crowd in the square. Hagos jumped over a shrub and flicked aside an empty sardine can that rolled towards Saba. A scorpion latched onto her sandal. She shook it off her foot. The scorpion darted across the lane.