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Sabra Zoo
TELEGRAM
is edition published in 2010 by Telegram, LondonISBN: 978-1-84659-077-1Copyright © Mischa Hiller, 2010
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I sat in the front passenger seat of the yellow
Mercedes, clinging
to the leather strap. Samir was driving too fast through the potholed
streets of Sabra refugee camp, like he was still driving
bigwigsaround. I clung to the strap with both hands, slithering across the
worn leather seat as we went round a corner, my stomach punishing
me for the amount I’d drunk the night before. I looked out of the
window to
ght the nausea, trying to concentrate on the passing
scenery. I was never sure when the transition from city to camp
happened, whether there was some recognised boundary. I supposethe buildings became smaller, less well built, their breeze-block walls
unplastered.
ere was no tarmac on the road and there was a lot
more corrugated iron.
is wasn’t a refugee camp in the sense of
tents and blankets issued to displaced people, it was more a sprawling
shanty town built up over the years on the outskirts of the city.
Many of the people in the camp were born there, attended a
-run
school there, worked and got married there. O
the main road thebuildings became single storey and the streets grew narrower untilthey were just a network of alleys with small one- and two-room
houses. Children jumped out of the path of the Mercedes as it came
to a sliding stop in front of the Red Crescent Hospital, easily the
tallest building around. I waited for the dust and my stomach to
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