It was a ration day. Queuing offered a purpose of some sort for Saba. In the absence of an aim to work towards, the aid centre became a focal point. Like going to the forest for wood, to the river for water.

Saba joined the queue with those whose coupons specified Saturday. To her right, a few men sat in a circle playing cards. They would be playing all day long. Samhiya and her mother waved at Saba. They were chatting as they walked to the river. The sun glistened on the metal buckets they balanced on their heads. The heat seeped into her skin and Saba sweltered in her black dress. The English aid coordinator rolled up his sleeves and unbuttoned his shirt. He seemed to take energy from the same sun that sucked her dry.

Saba queued instead of her brother. If he could talk, she was sure, he would have done it. If silence was a language, she would not have forced herself to be his voice. She talked to people even when she didn’t feel like it. She queued for hours to ask the aid centre questions about better food, better clothes, for her, her mother and Hagos. She bore the scorching sun as she waited for food, and like the trips to the river to fetch water or wash clothes, or to the bush to collect firewood, it marked its presence on her body.

By contrast, Hagos’s skin was smooth. Even after one of his journeys into the wild, nature would not leave a trace on his body. There were no marks of thorns on his legs, no cactus milk on his arms. He glided through the bush as he did among people, unnoticed, unmarked.

Saba had given all her femininity to her brother. She remembered the midwife’s words about Hagos. But Saba didn’t have enough femininity to give, just as Hagos didn’t have enough masculinity to give her. They were born like that. But what struck Saba the more she thought about the statement that the midwife made, and that others had made about her and Hagos, was how they saw household chores as what defined being a woman. It was more than chores. Hagos allowed the woman in him to direct his life, the way he felt, the way he moved through life. Saba saw it in his freedom, his boldness to be himself, his ability to be gentle and strong. He made his presence felt not by shouting himself to the front, but by holding himself together despite all his wounds, to shine even in the dark.

Saba’s thoughts were interrupted when the man behind her in the queue pushed, his weight pinning her against the man in front. Squeezed, Saba couldn’t move. When she felt a state of passivity between the two men, she squirmed herself out of the queue and wandered off without direction. When she arrived in the south of the camp, she realized she was on the road that connected the camp with the rest of this country, the road used by the workers that led to somewhere, a village, a town, another country, a river or a cliff or the sea. A road, nevertheless, Saba mumbled to herself. A road that led to freedom.