There was a hole in the centre of the roof through which the smoke escaped.

Against one wall was an old mattress covered by scattered sacking and blankets, and he thought it was where the parents of the children would sleep. The children’s beds were at the wall facing the closed door, more sacking and blankets but no mattress; there were four children pressed close to each other for warmth and each of them, in turn, hacked deep coughs from their chests and throats. The light in the room, by which the women worked, was from a single stinking oil lamp that threw cavorting shadows of the women’s heads and shoulders against the upper walls and into the ceiling where the smoke gathered before finding the release of the hole.

There were no hand-woven tapestries on the walls, nor any photographs, but on the wall in front of him, hanging from a hook where it was at an easy height to be snatched down, was an assault rifle with a magazine fitted.

Behind him, against the door, the men watched in silence and waited for the women’s work to be done.

Gnarled fingers with broken nails and dirt-grimed wrinkles fought with needles to gather in pieces of the garment. It had once been a suit of overalls that a mechanic would have worn; it was drab olive green. Two women were busy sewing the heavy canvas strip that had been cut from an old tarpaulin to the front. Another pulled for possession of the knees and elbows, to sew smaller canvas squares onto them. Another stitched a veil of soft, sand-coloured netting to the front of the hood, which had already been fastened to the collar. Three more women clawed at the back, shoulders, body, legs and arms, wherever he pointed, and sewed to them short-looped straps of hessian fabric. The garment was wrenched from hand to hand, over the smouldering fire of wet wood, past and around the hurricane oil lamp. Each time a strap was in place and the cotton snapped, the eyes would look to him and he would point again to a place where the surface was not broken, the hessian strap would be torn for the necessary length and the needles would dive and flash in the light.