She could not remember the exact moment she forgot her name, or what time it was, what she was doing, what she was thinking. But she was sure she was running, or thinking of running. In her head, she had covered a thousand miles, even though she had never known the world beyond Balambala, the small, permanent village two hundred miles northwest of Garissa, Kenya, where she had lived all her sixteen years. She was sure too she was crying, wet-crying—with tears, that is—or dry-crying, without.

In the duksi, the sand was blackened by the ink that seeped in, the ink with which we wrote on our loox. ‘If you memorize before the ink is dry, you’ll never forget it,’ the ma’alim would say. He spoke with an intimidating and exotic accent. He was rumoured to be from Jigjiga, Ethiopia a town most of us children had not heard of before. His tongue was as sharp as his whip.

Yusuf had a permanent pucker on his forehead, which only disappeared when he was joking mood. This made Abdi weary of the prefect. And it made…