Omar and I used to play volleyball together, before everything fell apart. Unlike many of my friends, I managed to stay close to him after we were displaced. On the first sunny day for a while, a group of us fixed an old net on the beach and collected money to buy a ball. None of us was in great shape. Our bodies weren’t what they had been, and our steps were no longer light. Still, we moved, jumped and laughed. And the sound of the ball cutting through the air, the feel of the sand shifting under our feet, took us back for a moment to the old days. Young men from nearby camps came to watch: some smiling, others silent. One approached more slowly than the others across the uneven sand, taking one step, then another. He was using crutches. When he got close enough I recognised him. It was Muhammad. Before the war, Muhammad had been the most energetic of us. He wasn’t tall, but he never saw that as an obstacle. He was always the first to arrive at the volleyball court and the last to leave.…