Sophia woke up with a blistering headache. It was pitch-black all around her. “I am blind,” she thought. Then she lifted her hand to her head and felt a bandage wrapped tightly around her head and eyes. No matter how hard she tried, she could not open her eyes. Her head throbbed. This is it then – payback for running away from her country. “They don’t have time for foreigners here; they want to kill me.” Every move she made caused excruciating pain. But at least she was alive. Although perhaps it would have been better to be dead, the pain was so bad. She remembered nothing, just that they were hoeing the edges of the sunflower field and that she was singing with the rest of the weeding gang. Old Mozambican freedom songs, a mixture of Portuguese and Shangaan. The sun was nice and warm on her cheeks. For the first time since she had left her home, she felt content.
A nurse came in and gave her painkillers. Then she undid the bandages around her head, washed and disinfected the wound above her right eye and changed the antibiotic drip in her arm.
