It was the last time we saw them. Who knows how many times we played football in the years that followed, expecting them to show again? We arranged matches and put on tournaments, winning or losing but never, not one of us, free of the feeling that the true victory was the one we’d never achieved.

The story didn’t end there. Bahr and I were standing in a souq for second-hand appliances and junk when Bahr suddenly picked up where he had left off. This market had once been where they played, he explained. The football field. He said:

Years later, I saw the captain again. It was in that northern country, at some event for refugees from all over the world. He was chatting in the Eritrean booth. Hesitantly, I approached and introduced myself, realizing as I did so that I knew absolutely nothing about him, not even his name. He looked at me with a slight air of bewilderment, returned my greeting, then turned back to resume his conversation. It was the same voice which had apologized that night, long ago. I hung around for a moment or two, unable to think of anything more to say, and when at last he glanced back at me inquiringly, I lowered my head and left. At that point in my life I was living the way he’d always lived: in flight from one place to another. There was always a bag—slightly bigger than this one—standing ready by my door.

Bahr gave his satchel a shake.

It contained my most important possessions. I kept it there so I’d be ready to leave at a moment’s notice, the moment life laid down the law: a raid by immigration, or by another group of immigrants; the landlord come knocking to collect his rent; an invitation from a friend to come and stay somewhere else, which might be no better than another vile room in an even viler neighborhood.

It was a few days after the officer’s shoe pressed me into the dirt of the prison yard that I packed the bag for the first time. They’d taken us back inside to the filth and vermin of the cells. This time, I didn’t hear or see Soha or any other women. We were there for a day or two, maybe more, before they let some of us go, including me. As they escorted us outside, there were tables by the gate with young officers sitting at them, laughing. Some prisoners were making complaints. A few were still in handcuffs. One was tugging the waistband of his pants up as blood ran down from his stomach, but he was talking to the officer as though nothing was the matter.