I stayed in a refugee camp for a while with two other men, one Eastern European, the other Asian. The laundry block was on the camp’s perimeter. It was always full of clothes, but you never saw anyone there: as though they were coming in camouflaged, chameleons. And the dryers were always full, too. Often, I’d have to hang my clothes out on a line. One day, I went in to collect my dry clothes, but I couldn’t find them amid the chaos of linen and nylon. “They’re over there.” It was a young man, pointing casually: “There.” I couldn’t believe it. How had he managed to pick them out like that? And then, after standing and puzzling for a while, I started to see that almost all the clothes littering the room were plain black or blue, while my shirts and shorts were white and blue, red and yellow; were striped and spotted. Like bright paint spilled on a gray ground; scarlet daubed on black. And in that moment, as I gazed down at the gaudy display, I was brought back to my dark continent. I remembered how we used to watch the African refugees in their brightly patterned clothes, how we used to laugh and mock and stare. I remembered the silent football team I told you about. I did tell you about that, didn’t I?

In any case, it hadn’t occurred to me that I was on the same stretch of European coastline where I’d gotten drunk with my Moroccan friend some thirty years before. Back to the coast, a foreigner no more. Was it really the same place, though, or did it just look the same? I was sitting by myself this time. It was morning, and I had a can of beer in my hand. I was screwing the other cans into the sand to keep them cold, when I saw something being carried up the beach toward me on the waves. It came to rest at my feet. Something wooden; a primitive toy eaten away by the salt. For the first time in years, my heart was beating hard.

It was a little wooden doll. Where I come from they called them samannous. Girls used to play with them—they were made from the cane that was used to make flutes. The cane was painted red and yellow, then locks of real hair, usually their mother’s, was stuck on its doum-nut head. Inside the hollowed nut, a folded scrap of paper was tucked: a charm to shield the girl from evil, from devils, from strangers.