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Debbie.
    â€œSure is,” I said. “Well, um, not that I’d actually know, of course.”
    The kids were running along with me again as I walked to Muhammad’s shelter. Most of them had their heads shaved with just one little tuft left in the middle. They all chose different shapes for their tuft so it looked quite funny if you were taller than them. I rounded a corner, and there was Muhammad, standing at the entrance to his shelter.
    The kids melted away. Muhammad was a striking man with a shock of fuzzy black hair which was almost Kenneth Kaundaesque in its verticalness. He wore a djellaba so white as to be absurd.
    â€œRosie,” he said. “You have been very industrious today. Have you decided to increase your productivity?”
    It was a relief to get inside his shelter where it was cool and quiet. Most of the refugees lived in huts, but Muhammad had managed to get hold of the materials and the space to build himself an exceptionally airy and elegant establishment. It was like our cabana,an oblong building with rush-matting walls, designed so that a breeze ran through. In places, harsh white points of light broke through from the outside. I settled down on a low bed, waiting for him to make tea before we could talk. He had a bookshelf leaning against one wall. The Ginsberg and Fink remaindered books were still there.
    It was twenty past eleven but there was no explaining the need for haste to Muhammad. There was no hurrying the arrival of the tea; no question of abandoning ceremony and proceeding in an expedient manner. Especially if I was late for something.
    Muhammad moved in stately fashion, to and fro, fetching tiny cups, two more sticks for the fire. Sugar. More water. A little more tea. Another twig. A spoon. Damn him. He was doing it on purpose now.
    Eventually, finally, with a self-satisfied glint in his eye, he presented me with a tiny cup of tea, obviously too hot to drink, and settled himself down.
    â€œSo.”
    â€œSo.”
    â€œYou are very excited this morning.” Muhammad had a thin, reedy voice and a deep laugh.
    â€œNo, I’m not.”
    â€œYes, you are,” said Muhammad.
    With extreme difficulty, I maintained a lofty silence.
    â€œSo,” said Muhammad eventually. Ha! My point. “So what is the cause of this agitation? Is it the new doctor?”
    He was such a pain. “No, of course it isn’t the new doctor, for God’s sake.”
    He gave his deep laugh, then looked serious. “So then perhaps it is the Teeth of the Wind,” he said dramatically.
    â€œOh, God, Muhammad. Call them locusts, please.”
    â€œYou have no poetry in your soul. It is tragic,” he said.
    â€œCome on, Sylvia Plath, what have you heard?”
    â€œI hear that there are swarms five miles across, blotting out the sun, plunging the earth into blackness,” he said.
    â€œAnd what have you really heard?”
    â€œIt is not good,” he said, serious now. “There is no food in the highlands. The rains have been poor for many years now. The people are living on nothing and only trying to survive until the harvest.”
    â€œBut the harvest will be good this year?”
    â€œYes. For the first time in many years. Unless the locusts come. Then there will be very bad famine and the people will come here.”
    â€œ Is there a locust plague? Are they swarming?”
    â€œThey are not flying, but I have heard that they are hatching in three areas. You know that they begin as grasshoppers and then they march—in a vast, seething, living carpet?”
    I looked at him levelly. “Yes. Muhammad, I know.”
    â€œIf the people had the pesticides then they could spray and destroy them, but they have nothing. Even if they had the chemicals it would not be possible to spray from the air because of the Aboutian fighter jets. Soon the winds will be blowing east–west and will carry the swarms across Kefti and into