This trial must go on, the judge said.

The crowd quietened. His voice dropped. My brothers and sisters, he said. I have thought for weeks about whether it would be preferable to conduct this trial in private given the magnitude of the accusation, but I decided against it. We must establish the facts. Just how did this woman manage to take advantage of a poor man under our own eyes? We must learn lessons so this hideous crime will never happen again.

Silence.

The judge proceeded with the hearing. He called on his appointed court stenographer. And on came a thin young man, known around the camp for having a chest as deep as a well in the way he kept other people’s secrets inside him. Yet he was light as a feather as he glided to the front of the gallery and sat on a chair to the right of the judge.

After registering Saba’s full name, the judge, who insisted on pursuing correct court procedure from his Asmara days, asked the midwife if she knew Saba’s age. The midwife, who had delivered Saba, couldn’t remember. She gave some reference points of political events around the time of Saba’s birth.

The judge ordered the appointed court stenographer to record her age as almost twenty.

It was as this point, when the stenographer took out of his bag a flat surface of wooden board used in the church and mosque to write verses from the holy book, that I volunteered to the court my own notebook.

To record facts about Saba, the stenographer leafed through a half-finished film script I had written about her, which I had intended to shoot when we returned to our free country. In my mind, as in my notebook, the real and imagined Saba coexisted side by side.

Saba’s nationality, though, took longer to solve. Her mother was Ethiopian, said the midwife. But from what I can remember, I think her father was Eritrean.

I’ll take your word, said the judge, as if eager to move on.

No, said a man. His eyes bulged as he added: If her father was Eritrean, then she is Eritrean. A child’s identity follows that of the father.

The son of a slain fighter leapt to his feet. My mother didn’t fight until she was martyred, he said, so that someone like you could claim that her identity mattered less.

The discussion raised a sarcastic laugh from a young man at the back of the gallery. He strode to the front waving his UN-provided identification. Look at this, he said. To me, to you, I am Eritrean, but, you see this here, this passport says I have no country. Why is that? Well? Well, why?

It was clear to me that he’d forgotten the point he was trying to make. So I snatched the ID out of his hand and announced to the public the intention I believed I had read in this man’s smooth face. I think, I said to the gallery, this man is trying to remind us that since our country is still engaged in a war of independence, then, to the outside world, Saba’s nationality is debatable.