The wind pushed a door to her right open. Saba saw a man defecating in a pot, a woman caressing his head. His cries for a doctor faded as she sped up behind her brother. Privacy was mixed with the dung and sand when this camp was constructed, Saba thought. She had figured out by now that the huts were built in no order and without proper planning. They were scattered around, with some having more space between them than others. Some of the lanes were so narrow that only two people at most could pass at a time. And doors faced each other. Refugees, Saba thought, were all the same, the same as each other, the same as the shrubs, the same as the hibiscus, the same as shit and piss, the same as the sky and earth.

Some had brought their beds outside to sleep in the open air. Hagos dimmed his torch as they negotiated their way between hands and feet dangling from beds. When Saba tried to avoid a young man sitting at the feet of a woman braiding his hair, she almost stepped on the white shells laid out by a fortune teller. Hagos steadied his sister, but as she moved aside to let the midwife and the judge through, Saba pushed against a door to her left. Through the slit, she noticed a woman bending low to blow on the charcoals of an open furnace. Her skirt lifted and crawled up on her skin.

Saba looked away but noticed Hagos’s eyes lingering on the woman, who had managed to ignite the charcoals, the fire of the furnace rising and flickering between her dark thighs.

Saba could not stop thinking about what had just happened as they arrived at the open toilet. Hagos’s manhood hadn’t been extinguished because he was disabled, like her cousin and her friends back home had assumed. Saba turned to Hagos and embraced him, letting go of his warm body when it occurred to her she might be interrupting a beautiful moment in his head.

They arrived at the last rows of huts yet to be occupied. New refugees are on the way, the English aid coordinator explained to Saba when she had asked if she could move with her family into this quarter. The open field, which the refugees shared as a toilet, didn’t disturb her any longer, it was the crowd in the square, the noise, the endless talking, the screams, it was living life under the nose of everyone else that she couldn’t get used to. Hagos raised his torch. The long grass parted and three girls emerged out of the darkness. The girls mumbled their greetings as they strode past brother and sister.

Hagos bent to the ground and looked around, picking up smooth stones for Saba to wipe herself with after she had finished. Saba walked into the field. Grass caressed her arms. An insect bit her. Mosquito? Or a fat beetle depositing shit in her skin? She was about to sit when she heard loud, repeated coughs. Saba advanced forward until she found a quiet spot. She searched for other dangers. The afternoon before, a woman had encountered a viper and men armed with sticks came to clear the area. But there were still many snakes about.