Ayamin hugged me when I’d stumbled back to our raggedy, bloody group. Her head fitted into my shoulder and I can’t remember exactly what she said but it was something about my anger, and how she loved it and how she loved me.

I hugged her tighter even though my chest hurt like hell, and then the two of us limped over to Grandpa who was being righted on his wheelchair by his two sons.

Mahdi looked up. He had the same anger in his eyes that I felt in my stomach. It was the anger of the powerless. We dropped our eyes as Mahdi’s wife wiped the blood from Grandpa’s face.

The kids were quiet.

Two of them held their mothers’ hands, while the youngest stared in the direction the train had left.

‘I don’t like the conductors,’ he sobbed.

We might have stayed there for hours, but a piercing whistle from another train came from the opposite direction. I looked at Ayamin, then I looked at Grandma. It seemed we all had the same idea.

We climbed the fence into a field of raggedy grass and large weeds and began to walk north, the way we’d been heading. The next field over was filled with pumpkins.

Wheezing. I stooped and picked one. Grandma was watching me. She picked one. Mahdi and Jamal picked a pumpkin each and Grandpa swore and swore and swore until Mahdi picked a small pumpkin for him to hold on his lap.

‘Those pieces of shit,’ he yelled as he bounced over the stems.