I saw you struggling as you tried selling in the square, Saba said, and I thought you might need an assistant.

We don’t want any now, Tedros said. But we will need men to help us unload the boxes that we will import from the city as soon as we open a shop in this camp.

A shop? When are you opening it?

What’s your name? Eyob asked.

Saba pictured herself standing behind the counter of the first shop in the camp. Saving money. Leave for the city to study.

Hello. The son clicked his fingers. Refining his Asmara accent for her ears, he asked again: Whot – is – yoor – naame?

Saba noticed his thin lips, ravaged, she assumed, by biting. Perhaps from nerves, she thought. She was wondering whether to share with him tips on dealing with the first days in a camp. Yooo understaaaaaand meee?

Tedros, basta cosi, the businessman said. Turning to Saba again, he asked: What’s your name?

My name is Saba, she said.

Saba, Eyob said, I need someone to do chores – washing clothes, ironing. Can you do this?

Chirping reached Saba’s ears. The birds sang loud, as if to make up for the lack of cockerels crowing. Nature has ways of rebalancing, of compensating for the absence of things.

She rose from her sleep and was soon dressed and on her way through the square to the east of the camp, on her way to start her first day as a domestic servant. She had after all inherited her mother’s profession. She wanted to turn back inside the hut, wake her mother up and tell her the news that would perhaps mend some of what had broken between them.

In the early-morning light, other girls appeared. Some were going to the forest to fetch firewood. Others to the river to get water. And some to the aid centre to queue. Girls owned the square at this time of the day before dawn. Saba heard their giggles, their laughter, their greetings, the see-you-laters, the be-carefuls-of: the snakes in the forest, the strong current at the river that had claimed the lives of a few girls, and the men at the open toilet.

The sun dissolved the darkness. It was hot already.

When she arrived Tedros was standing next to a heap of dirty laundry by the wall of the main hut where the family of two slept. The second hut had been turned into a kitchen. A third made into storage for their boxes, stuffed with goods.

Tedros was wearing a T-shirt in the colours of the People’s Liberation Front flag. The yellow Marxist star rested on his chest. His heart must beat to justice and equality, Saba thought, recalling Zahra’s revolutionary slogans. She was about to collect the bundle of clothes and head to the river when Tedros stopped her. We have everything you need here, he said.

Saba followed Tedros with her eyes to the kitchen, from where he brought out a large yellow washing bucket, two metal pails, a small open furnace, charcoal, a metal pot, soap tablets, a stool, and a stiff impression pressed against his shorts.