“Asks important questions about the lack of agency for refugees, and the sustainability of aid work. A challenging and necessary book.” Rose Cleary

OUTSIDE, IN THE CITY, life begins early, between four and five in the morning. That’s usually when she goes to sleep, and she doesn’t stir until well into late morning, more like around noon. She’s getting on now, in her eighth decade. She shouldn’t really be here anymore – her type isn’t meant to survive for more than a few years. But recently she’s been kept busy, she’s in demand. Her folds have become deeper and darker, more dangerous. Though also softer. Whoever comes, she takes them in, puts her huge arms around them and pulls them close, towards her belly. And there they then lie, like babies, like lovers – men and women and children, old and young and newborns. Some fall asleep straight away, surrendering to her oozing, sweet-sour stink. Others suck her nipples, play with her breasts, explore her folds with their tongues, their fingers, their penises. She lets them. It’s their right. Eventually they all fall asleep. And that’s what she’s waiting for. Then she draws them even closer, right inside her, and curls up around them, and buries her nose in their hair, and rocks them gently, ever so gently, from side to side, humming quietly, no particular tune, a mix of Umm Kulthum and Fairuz and Amr Diab and Fares Karam and the call to prayer. Her children, she gathers them up, she loves them all and she protects them. She strokes heads and absorbs fears and nightmares, screams and tears. She lets them rage against themselves and against the world, and if they harm themselves and others, what does it matter? She loves and forgives and lullabies them into a beautiful sleep. Forgetting and escape, these are what she offers.

Shatila is her name. One of the oldest refugee camps on earth. In Arabic the word means ‘justice’ and ‘insight’. She runs the best whorehouse in town…”

She likes to imagine herself as a big fat mother, one of those ancient fertility goddess figurines, usually crouching, with a belly that has many folds and with massive heavy tits hanging down, eternally filled with nourishing sweet milk for all her thousands and thousands of babies. Her hips sway when she walks, and her folds swing, and her thighs rub against each other and her laugh covers the earth.

She’s a shapeshifter. What she imagines, she is. Yet at a blink of an eye her true nature appears. All wires and vessels and tubes and tendons and sinews and cancerous growths and brittle bones turning increasingly crooked by the day are there for everyone to see. Her skin, deprived of the sun for decades, has become so thin and transparent that it might as well not exist. She pees and shits in the narrow alleyways, self-respect a word without meaning. And with the thunderstorms in winter her watery embrace becomes deadly, while the lightning that charges through her veins electrocutes whoever dares touch her.

Shatila is her name. One of the oldest refugee camps on earth. In Arabic the word means ‘justice’ and ‘insight’. She runs the best whorehouse in town. You can get women, and girls and boys, and body parts and weapons and drugs. If you pay, you get. And no one bothers you. In her house, she alone is the law. She will protect you from the forces outside and rock you to sleep. But the house rules are tough. You might be raped or robbed or kidnapped. Tough luck. Do not complain. That is the deal. Just come and crawl into her arms and she will sing you to sleep.

The older she grows, the more alluring she becomes. Travellers arrive from afar looking for a thrill, a kick, wanting to touch her for just a moment, to lay their eyes on her. Others study her, write theses about her. Sometimes they stay for a week, sometimes for a month, but rarely longer. Danger and ugliness and evil reside within her. If you don’t have to stay, you leave.

from Shams (Salt Publishing, £12.99)

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Meike Ziervogel was raised in northern Germany and moved to London in 1986 to study Arabic language and literature. A former journalist, her critically acclaimed novels include Magda, Clara’s Daughter and Flotsam. In 2008 she set up the award-winning publishing house Peirene Press. She has been working in Beirut since 2018, and in 2020 she co-founded the Alsama Project, an educational charity based in Shatila Refugee Camp, providing secondary education in refugee camps in the Middle East. Shams, out now from Salt Publishing, was directly inspired by her experience working with women and girls living as refugees.
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Author portrait by Roelof Bakker