Zahra stood up and started plucking out the long grass with her bare hands. Come on. Let’s at least start clearing this site. I might be leaving soon, but you must stay in the camp. You are right, we can’t all be fighters.

Then Zahra extended her arms towards Saba. Rough hands – hands that had scrubbed clothes at the river banks, carried jerrycans from the river, collected firewood in the bush – touched. Zahra helped Saba to her feet.

They both bent down, their shoulders touching the yellow dry grass, their hands at the roots, pulling them out, clearing the field to make it ready for the school.

Saba arrived at the businessman’s hut for a new shift later than usual. She had spent the night with Zahra and her grandmother listening to one of the fighter’s tapes full of songs, tales from the front, and reading some of the pamphlets the mother sent from the front to her daughter. It was as if she had drunk from the fighter’s words of determination. I will never marry, Saba vowed to herself when Eyob stood up to wave at the midwife walking in the distance. I will never marry anyone.

Saba was about to take her chair and bucket full of clothes away from the businessman’s view when she remembered what Zahra’s grandmother had told her the evening before. Be resolute inside yourself and strong but don’t change your behaviour towards that man, the grandmother said to Saba. Don’t give him or anyone else the pleasure of knowing that they changed you.

Eyob tilted his head to the side and called his son.

Tedros yawned. Alcohol saturated the air and Saba held her breath, hoping it would pass. Here, Tedros, sit, his father said. And drink your tea. I need to talk to you.

It’s hard to hear you, Father, if she keeps making noise with that washing of hers.

Tedros gulped down the last drops of his tea and told Saba to show some respect to his father and wash quietly, like a girl. Maybe we should have hired Hagos instead, he said, snorting.

Saba continued with her work.

Listen, Tedros. I know I told you I will find a way back to the city. But I want us to stay here and open the shop we always wanted.

A shop? Saba raised her head. Her anger dissipated.

And you still think these refugees have money to spend, Father? Tedros laughed.

I’m sure many do, said Eyob. These people had jobs back home, just like me.

There’s another reason why you want to stay in the camp, said Tedros. But it doesn’t matter, whatever makes you happy. I’m leaving the day they allow us to leave.

The businessman left for the aid centre, saying he was going to ask for a permit to open a shop.

The aid coordinator agreed to write to the authorities in the city, but weeks passed and nothing happened. When Saba asked the Khwaja, during an English lesson, why the businessman and all those other entrepreneurs evicted from the city didn’t open businesses, like Azyeb and Nasnet had done, the Khwaja remarked that fear of the unknown was what was holding many back. Remember, Saba, they were uprooted from the city by the authorities early one morning as they were readying themselves to go to work, to open their shops, to drive their taxis, to sell groceries in the market. The new life they had invested in ended the moment armed soldiers knocked on their doors at dawn. They are afraid. But I am sure it will pass. First we root our sensibility in the camp, and with each seed sown a bit of that fear is stripped off.