Saba entered the camp from the forest carrying firewood one afternoon, and paused outside Jamal’s hut. The entertainer was behind a large white screen planting a wild yellow hibiscus tree. The twigs of wood that Saba had tied to her back with a scarf squeaked as she sped away. When she arrived at the bottom of the hill, she stood on her toes and peeked over the thorn fence of Eyob’s compound. Men were painting blue the mud wall of the new hut the businessman had built for Hagos. Her brother’s hut was to be filled with furniture Eyob had bought from Nasnet. Hagos’s new bed would be the bed of the sex worker. The bed with the thick mattress that Nasnet brought with her when she was evicted from the city because the comfort of being on top of that material compensated for the duress of being under the weight of a man. Nasnet got a cheap angareb – a wooden framed bedstead – as a gift from one of the aid workers instead.
Once home, Saba dropped her load by the mogogo stove and went inside the hut. She leaned against the door frame and buried her head in her hands, her lips resting on her bruised palms.
Saba heard a bleating. She looked through the window. Tedros stood holding a goat on a leash. The white cloth – the imminent test of her purity that he carried with him around the camp – popped out of his shirt pocket.
I bought this from Hajj Ali, he said, caressing the black and white animal. It’s for your wedding.
I no longer eat meat, Saba said.
You will soon be the meat for my father, he said, sniggering.
Saba gathered her saliva and spat into his face. The goat pawed the ground, kicking up clouds of dust. You will pay for this, Tedros said, wiping the side of his face with the white cloth.
He pulled the goat behind him as he left. When Saba sat inside the bucket for a bath, some of the water splashed out onto the floor. As she squeezed inside that tiny place, her body felt as suffocated as her soul, and her dreams felt trapped in this camp. Saba shuffled in the bucket, the water underneath tickling her skin. Out of the thatched roof, a moth descended. It rested on her chest, its wings spread on her breast. When Saba stepped out of the bucket, the moth soared away through the window. As she loosened the towel around her hips, she noticed papers scattered on Hagos’s blanket, papers on which she had written and taught him what she in turn had learnt from the Khwaja.
Saba sat on her stool outside the hut in the moon-bathed square. She had seen the scene in front of her many times before. Every day was a repetition of the previous one in this camp. Still, she observed what was unfolding in front of her, intrigued as though it were her first encounter. Saba couldn’t imagine doing otherwise. Couldn’t let boredom set in. So she smiled as she watched children racing each other, the athlete playing football with a sock ball, taking the opportunity to ogle Samhiya, painting her nails by the sideline, with every pause in the game. And when a dance began around the singer in a slow, endless circle, it seemed to Saba that their country’s dance was conceived in response to their history, marred by repetition of the same bloodied story over and over again.
Come and join us, people urged each other.
Let’s dance. Let’s dance.
Saba took a stroll and found herself outside Jamal’s hut. The entertainer was sitting with the two old men, the Asmarinos in colourful cardigans and Zahra’s grandmother. The cinema-screen sheet, with a big square cut out in the middle, quivered behind them in the breeze. On the screen, the bees buzzed on the yellow flowers of the hibiscus tree, beginning the process of reproduction.
The grandmother called Saba over. Come and join us, she said. We are talking about love.
Among other things, said the white-haired man in a blue cardigan, laughing.
Anyway, she is too young to join our conversation, said the bald, clean-shaven man wearing a pink jumper.
She is the same age as Jamal, said the grandmother. But it seems to you a woman has to be double the age of a man before she matches his wisdom.
Exactly, said the man in the blue cardigan.
The man in pink nodded and, turning towards Saba, he said, Signorina, I am too old to stand up unaided. Please come and help me.
How come this grandmother here would need no help and she is older than you? said the man in the blue cardigan.
It is not the years that weigh one down, said the man in pink, but the numbers of lovers in one’s heart.
The grandmother laughed. The weight of the one true love I had would outweigh all your encounters.
After she helped him to stand up, the old man bowed his head at Saba and kissed her hand. Signorina, forgive this foolish old man for assumptions unnecessarily made under the duress of bad company.
All this effort to say a simple thing, said the man in the blue cardigan.
Indeed, said the man in pink. I am a man of my time, and in our time, we treated women like goddesses.
Just treat us like human beings, said the grandmother, and that would solve the world’s problems.
Saba sat down next to the grandmother, who took her hand. Anyway, let me go back to what I was saying, she said. The power of love erases all differences. It humanizes us and brings our energies, spiritual and physical, to one combined force. When we make love, we are meant to be one.
The two old men shook their heads. Sciocchezza!
Turning to Saba and Jamal, the grandmother asked, And how about you? What do you think about love and its fruits that ripen in the bodies of lovers?
And now she is asking these two? said the man in pink. They don’t even know how babies are made.
The two men chuckled.
Saba and Jamal exchanged glances before looking away from each other.
Ignore these old men, said the grandmother to Saba and Jamal. But for fairness, just as the old impart their wisdom, the youth must share the lyrics of their fantastical imaginations with the old.
What are we going to do with these? asked the man in blue. At our age, what one needs is more sleep, not excess alertness.
The man in pink lit a cigarette that he passed to the grandmother. Do the honour of passing the flame of love to the next generation then, Mebrat, he said.
The grandmother took a long drag, to satisfy her young heart, she said, before passing the cigarette to Jamal.
Jamal, tell me, said the grandmother. And don’t be shy, I have heard it all. As a farmer, I have sown the seeds of desire in my skin at the same time as I planted my land with pumpkin seeds.
Saba turned to Jamal when she noticed him staring at her. He looked away quickly. He hooked a foot around the stool, put his hand inside his pocket and took it out again.
I can’t say now, Jamal said, his voice shaking.
I hope I will be alive when you are ready to talk, said the grandmother, chuckling.
Jamal scrambled to his feet and went around to stand behind the white sheet.
Let me tell you this story, said the grandmother. On my wedding night, when we retreated to our bedroom, my husband dimmed the light and stood naked in front of me. He expected to jump on me. I said to him, I want a lover. So I made him lick my toes that night. And my fingers the next evening. And the third night he spent discovering the length and width of my back. Like this I made him make love to every bit of me. There is no virginity, I told him. No one is a virgin only once. With every new lover, we turn virgin again. Because it is not a hole you make love to but a body, a mind and a heart. And I did the same. I remember when I parted his buttocks, how he protested, God bless his soul. You don’t fuck me. We fuck each other, I said to him. To be honest, he dropped his guard with one gentle stroke. Men are like that, they have no idea of the treasures on their bodies. If they did, they would not go around forcing women with violence.
The grandmother and the men left soon after, but Saba stayed behind. She tilted her head and observed Jamal, who stood behind the makeshift screen sheet. It was like watching a film in the way he appeared to her through the square hole on the white sheet. It was strange to her that it was she who fed his desires. She could see it in the softness of his skin, the lean shape of his body.
Saba felt the urge to enter the screen and reach Jamal, fulfil his fantasy because it was hers too. And as she stood up and put one leg through the screen – the cinema yet to open its doors to the public – her body shook as if she was back on top of the camel during her journey to the camp. Come, said Jamal, extending his hand towards Saba. Come. Saba. Sabbina. Come.
I still recall that summer evening inside Cinema Silenzioso when a naked Saba crouched on my face. My eyes travelled across the long back of this woman I had loved since the first night in the camp. Above her arched neck, the stars glimmered around the moon. The call to the last prayer of the day was being announced via the plastic megaphone.
Saba rearranged herself, spreading her map of love over me.
This is our time, she said. This is my time.
I wanted to speak but I was breathless.
Saba caressed my face as I inhaled the scent of her, the scent of her history, the battles she had won and lost, her rage, her frustrated dreams, the violence on her thighs, the rivers of desire inside her womb.
She let go.
She filled my mouth from her rivers, so warm that as it slid inside me through my throat, I felt riches invading me, gushing towards my soul, the White Nile and its water running between my ribs.
The strings of the singer’s krar played a mournful song nearby. The forest whistled. That impious breeze of the summer wafted against my cheeks. Like a famished soul, I tried to grasp the warm air, my hands fluttering at my sides. Saba pushed down with her weight, screwing the lock of my existence to her being even more. North and south finally reunited, Saba erasing the boundaries that have separated us for so long.