The boys are walking along a dirty corridor from the toilets.

Jami: God that’s filthy, it’s almost as bad as the camps.

Daniel: The camps? You mean the refugee camps?

Jami: Of course, what other kind of camp?

Daniel: What was it like there? Was it really so filthy or what?

Jami: Depends. We were all like sardines in one room. It wasn’t pretty, but mum cleaned it up and tried to make something nice of it. She’d brought some material and little things from home, which was really nice. But the corridors and the toilets and bathrooms were communal and they were a complete hellhole.

Daniel: You mean nobody cleaned them or what?

Jami: Well, a bit, but with so many people together it’s not enough. And there was this terrible stench everywhere. There was one communal kitchen in the corridor, and if you wanted to cook something other than dumplings you had to go there, but that was disgusting as well.

Daniel: You don’t like dumplings?

Jami: We tried them in all sorts of ways, but never took to them. They cooked dumplings all the damn time at the canteen, dumplings with everything, but we didn’t have any money to cook our own stuff so we ate them. And mum sometimes brought the dumplings back to the dormitory and tried make something decent out of them. They were a bit better, but not much.

Pavla: You should have been grateful that someone was cooking for you at least. Sounds like a great holiday to me.

Jami: Holiday. You taking the p***, or what?

Olga: I’ve also heard that it’s horrible in those camps.

Pavla: That’s not what I mean, but why should homeless people be waited on hand and foot, you know what I mean?

Olga: You can’t draw that kind of comparison. All right, the camp exists, but they don’t have to cook dumplings all the time, especially when nobody likes them. I mean, there is other food in this world.