We did not come here from our country, said a man, leaning over the frame of his lorry. We have been living in this country for years, but the authorities evicted us from the city early this morning without warning. We didn’t even have time to say goodbyes. They sent the army to our houses at dawn and now we are here.

He wept.

Attention. Attention, a voice came through a megaphone.

Saba looked up at the speaker standing on top of a lorry’s cabin, wearing dark glasses and white jellabiya, with a white imma wound around his head, Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. Attention drivers, said the man. Lorries can’t pass through the lanes to the east of the camp where these refugees need to go to. Drop them here and let them sort out the final metres themselves.

Drivers banged on the sides of their lorries: Come down. Hurry up.

Why the hurry? Saba wondered, recalling the way their driver, Tahir, had helped them.

The new refugees unloaded their belongings. Bed frames. Rolled-up mattresses. Cupboards. Tables. Chairs. Plastic flowers and plants. Sacks of fruit. Part of the city descended on the camp, carried on the backs of women and men whose lives had been interrupted earlier that morning to be dropped here, as though they were things.

An old man with a tape measure around his neck stood next to a foot-operated sewing machine fixed on top of a table, a half-sewn dress still under its needle.

A balding man with a sign – Barber of Taka Mountain – disembarked next. Further down the line, Saba saw a woman stepping out of the cab of the lorry in a silky black dress and red high heels. She stood and watched as a bed, a mattress, a wardrobe, three pieces of luggage and a turquoise beauty case were placed on the heads of men who followed as she swung her way into a dark alleyway leading to the east of the camp.

By the next morning, word had gone around that a father and his son had been allocated three huts between them. Saba joined the crowd that had gathered in protest around the huts. Two were adjacent to each other, and a third, the largest, was a few metres to the right, at the foot of a steep hill where Jamal lived. Here low shrubs with little distance between them were scattered about. Red soil stretched all the way up the hill with overgrown grass to where Jamal stood watching in front of his hut.

A woman next to Saba spat in the direction of the biggest hut. They came with three lorries, she said, rocking the child tied to her back. I saw them unload last night. I can tell from the beds, the furniture and the number of boxes they brought that they are rich.

This explains it then, said the athlete. If you have money you can buy anything. Even three huts for two people.