The Orchard of Lost Souls (33 page)

‘Just over there, the camp is just over there,’ the gold-toothed man bawls, pointing into the distance.

Filsan stays with Kawsar. Following the other refugees, Deqo walks for half an hour before stopping dead. One side of the horizon to the other is covered in
buuls,
clutched so low to
the ground that they seem to be sand dunes rippling in the desert heat. Saba’ad could be dropped five times into the expanse. It takes her an hour to reach the camp. It is full of men in
suits, women in dusty floral
dirics
and children wailing and scratching at the lice in their hair. Some of the men carry blue UN tarpaulin in their hands, but most of the structures are
cobbled together from cloth and sticks, some expertly built by people who had once been nomads, others barely holding together. The camp is too new to have any water standpipes, clinics or
latrines, and there is still vegetation – aloes, euphorbias, acacias – for people to raid for firewood and construction. A queue forms beside the only official tent, a massive structure
with the UN crest on it, and Deqo joins the line, falling quickly back into the inquisitive, impatient stance she had in Saba’ad.

Eventually she is inside and beckoned forward by an Ethiopian woman with a tattooed cross on her forehead. A white ledger covers the wooden desk and her eyebrows furrow behind her glasses,
‘Name?’ She speaks Somali with a lisp.

‘Deqo.’

‘Age?’

‘Around ten?’

‘Are you alone?’

‘No.’

‘Who did you come with?’

Deqo pauses for a second to explain the situation, but then tells the lie her heart wants to tell. ‘My mother and grandmother.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Outside the camp, they need help, my grandmother can’t walk.’

‘We’ll get someone to assist you.’ She waves Deqo to the side and then a young Somali man with a wide smile and a red t-shirt with English writing on it approaches.

He places a hand gently on her shoulder and leads her out of the tent. He collects a wheelchair and she guides him to where Filsan and Kawsar wait. She is back in her familiar world; the war and
all that time in Hargeisa just a complicated trial to achieve what she has always wanted: a family, however makeshift.

Firstly, I would like to thank my mother, Zahra Farah Kahin, from whose stories this book emanated, and my father, Jama Guure Mohamed, for his unwavering support. Dahabo Mire,
Nadifo Cilmi Qassim, Fadumo Mohamed, Ayan Mahamoud, Jama Muuse Jama, Dr. Adan Abokor, Dr. Aden Ismail, Edna Adan, Fadumo Warsame, Assey Hassan, Ahmed Ibrahim Awale, Siciid Jamac, Hodan Mohamed,
Amran Ali and Ikraam Jama have inspired and encouraged me to carry on with this book even when it was proving too difficult. Thank you to the Authors’ Foundation and to Robert Elliott, Scott
Brown and to all my colleagues, friends and family for their patience. Clare Hey, Courtney Hodell, Ben Mason –
mahadsanid.

These works proved invaluable to this novel:

Somalia – the Untold Story: War through the eyes of Somali women
edited by Judith Gardner and Judy El Bushra

Somalia: A government at war with its own people
by Africa Watch Committee

Environment in Crisis
by Ahmed Ibrahim Awale

Sharks and Soldiers
by Ahmed Omar Askar

The Mourning Tree
by Mohamed Barud Ali

A Note on my Teacher’s Group
by Jama Musse Jama

Daughters of Africa
edited by Margaret Busby

Lyrics from ‘Shimbiryahow’ taken from the song by Hussein Aw Farah.