A year ago, on a May afternoon, a family from Cabo Delgado had come to Felista's house. A man, a woman, three children. They had walked for nine days. They had nothing in their hands and nothing on their heads, because whoever leaves in a hurry leaves without a bundle.

Felista had cleared the corner of the yard sheltered by the lean-to. She had taken a mat from the chest. The mat was made of woven palm leaves, as long as a man lying down. The edge had worn away over the years. Felista had stitched it twice: once with black thread, once with red thread, because the black had run out.

She had unrolled the mat under the lean-to. The woman from Cabo Delgado had let her three children sleep on it. The family had stayed four months. The woman helped Felista pound the cassava in the mortar. The children had learned the way to the well. Then the family had found a settlement further south and had set off again. The mat had gone back into the chest. This was a year ago, in Felista's district, in the province of Nampula.

The news came slowly, over two weeks. At first it was news of Cabo Delgado, and Cabo Delgado was far away. Then the attacks crossed the province border. Then they reached the villages to the north of the district. In the end the news became the neighbours knocking at the door to say a single sentence: we are leaving.

On the radio they said a number. They said a hundred thousand people fleeing in two weeks. The number was large. Felista did not know how you hold a number like that in your hand. She knew how to count her own: three children, an elderly mother, herself. Five.

Her mother did not want to leave. An old woman measures distances in another way: not in kilometres, but in how many times she will have to sit down at the side of the road. Felista said only one thing to her. She reminded her that the family from Cabo Delgado, a year before, had walked nine days with three small children. Her mother did not answer. The next morning she was the first out onto the road.

The neighbours had left first. First the family in the house next door, then the one after that. They had left at dawn, in a line on the dirt road, with their bundles on their heads. Felista had watched them from the threshold.

The houses that emptied stayed standing, with their doors open. An empty house, in a time of flight, is not a house. It is a shelter waiting for someone. Felista had known this for exactly a year.

On the morning of departure, Felista packed the bundle. It is a procedure, and a procedure is done in order. She put in the cassava flour. She put in the blanket. She put in the document, wrapped in a plastic bag so the rain would not get it. She put in the salt. She put in the matches. She put in the big pot, then took it out. The pot weighed more than a child. A woman carrying the pot on her shoulder is not carrying the child on her shoulder. Felista left the pot on the hearth.

She counted again: the flour, the blanket, the document, the salt, the matches. Five things for five people. It was everything her hands could hold all the way south.

Then she went to the chest. She took out the mat.

The mat fitted into the bundle in a moment. It was light. It weighed less than the flour. Felista could have carried it for nine days without feeling its weight on her neck.

Felista did not put it in the bundle.

She went under the lean-to. She swept the floor of beaten earth with the sorghum broom, right into the corner. She swept it the way you sweep a room that is waiting for a guest. Then she unrolled the mat on the clean floor. She laid it out straight. She smoothed the mended edge, the stretch with black thread and the stretch with red thread. The mat stayed there, open, under the lean-to.

Felista knows who is walking the roads of the north now. She knows because a year ago she saw them arrive and she counted them: a man, a woman, three children, nine days, nothing in their hands. Someone will pass by this house left empty. They will stop in the shade of the lean-to. They will find a roof. They will find a mat laid out, ready, and they will understand that someone, before leaving, had thought of those who came after.

Felista put the bundle on her head. She took the youngest child by the hand. Her mother and the other two were already on the road.

On the threshold she stopped. She looked inside one last time. The hearth with the big pot. The lean-to. Under the lean-to, in the swept corner, the open mat.

She did not close the door. A closed door says the house has an owner and that the owner is coming back. Felista left the door ajar, the way you leave it for someone who still has to come in.

Then she took the dirt road south, behind her mother, with the bundle on her head and the child by the hand. Now she was one of the line. She was one of the hundred thousand.