The cold night had stretched on for longer than anyone in the lone cottage could remember. Windows had been bolted up with whatever the family could get their hands on, and every single hole and crack in the makeshift roof was carefully blocked with leftover pots and pans. Those who believed it was better to sleep through the whole affair retired early, hoping rest would ease their minds, but they found little comfort in the straw beds and animal-skin pillows they now had to get accustomed to.
This left Umm Kamila and her granddaughter, Nahla, by themselves in the parlor—the former humming hymns she recollected from a childhood that felt so long ago, the latter fidgeting with a contraption she had found in the last scavenge with the children of the other families stranded in their village.
