Midday at the UNHCR tent of the displacement site, Djugu territory. Outside the heat is thirty-eight degrees. Inside it is thirty-three. The difference is the tent.

Trésor stands next to the small wooden table. He keeps the register of victims open at page 47. The Bic pen is blue. The handwriting is narrow. The first three lines are already full. Name, surname, sex, approximate age, identifying marks, declarant. Three families have already identified. Three mothers have already left the tent. One left crying. Two left dry.

The tent is of blue UNHCR canvas. The light inside is another blue. On the tarpaulin the bodies are being laid out. The elder of the camp is called Adamou. He is sixty-eight. He survived the attack because he had gone to graze the camp's three goats two hundred metres away. He can name his neighbours. He helps Trésor with the identification. Trésor writes in French. Adamou speaks in Lendu, in Swahili, in French at moments. It works because each of the two knows the other's language for a fifth of the words, and a fifth of the words is enough to say a name.

Trésor is twenty-six. He is from Bunia. He worked two years with MONUSCO as a Swahili-French interpreter. Now he does this work for UNHCR. He is good. He can write fast. He can speak to a relative who is crying. He can stay composed.

Body number four. Young woman, twenty-eight. Adamou says the name. Trésor writes. Adamou points to the cousin who is outside the tent. Body number five. Adult man, forty. Adamou says the name. Trésor writes. Body number six. A girl. Seven years old. Adamou is silent for two seconds. Then he says the name. Trésor writes. The girl had a braid. Trésor writes “braid” under identifying marks. Body number seven. The girl's mother. Trésor writes. Body number eight. A man of forty-two who worked at the water depot. Adamou says the name. Trésor writes.

Body number nine. A woman of thirty. She had a seven-month-old baby in her arms when she was hit. The baby is body number ten. Adamou says the names together. Trésor writes together. Lines nine and ten in the register stay close like the woman and the baby on the tarpaulin.

Adamou approaches body number eleven. Male. About fifty. The face covered with the red earth of Djugu, the colour of the hillside around there. The shirt is yellow. Two buttons are missing, the third and the fifth from the top. Adamou looks at the shirt. Looks at the missing buttons. He says to Trésor: “This one I don't know. He is new to the camp. He wasn't here before last week.”

Trésor looks at the shirt. The shirt is his father Joël's. The two missing buttons are the two buttons his mother Joëlle sewed on with blue thread on the evening of Pentecost, by the light of the gas lamp. Trésor had gone to Bunia the following Saturday. He had stopped by the house on the Saturday. He had seen his father wearing the shirt with the new blue thread. Joël worked as a driver for a small transport company. His route passed by the site, with the medicines. He was due back in Bunia this afternoon.

The yellow shirt is his father's shirt because the missing buttons are his mother's buttons, and his mother's buttons were sewn on at Pentecost, and Pentecost is before the attack, and the attack on the site happened two days ago, and in two days sewn buttons can fall if the body has been dragged, and the body has been dragged because the attack caught him on the service road and not in the camp.

Trésor says nothing. He holds the pen over the name box of the eleventh line. Adamou waits. Behind Adamou three relatives wait for their dead. Trésor thinks of his mother Joëlle, who at ten tonight will make dinner for two, because his father was due back this afternoon. Trésor thinks that if he writes “Bahizi Joël” in the box now, his mother will know tonight. She will know by telephone from Bunia, from his voice. The telephone will say all of it.

Trésor sets the pen down on the table. Picks it up again. Holds it over the box. Does not write. In the corner, in the margin, small, he writes: “ID awaiting confirmation by relative, 13.06.2026”. He puts an asterisk beside the empty box. In the box he writes “unknown, m, ca. 50”. He signs the end of the line with his initials. T B.

Adamou looks at Trésor. Adamou is sixty-eight. He has seen the red earths of Djugu since he was a child. He has buried people. He understands. He does not say. He puts his hand on Trésor's shoulder. Takes it away. Goes back to the relatives who are waiting.

Body number eleven is the last. After the page of the dead the register has the page of the wounded. They are about fifteen. The sun of Djugu climbs. The tent grows hotter. Those who can speak name themselves. The others Adamou names. Trésor writes them all.

At 14:40 Trésor climbs into the UNHCR off-roader. He is headed for Bunia. The trip is one hour. His mother expects him at seven in the evening. He has four hours. He looks at himself in the rear-view mirror. They are the eyes of someone who tomorrow morning will be an orphan.

The off-roader sets off. The road is dirt. The dust rises behind the wheels. On page 47 of the UNHCR register, at the eleventh line, the name box reads “unknown, m, ca. 50”. In the margin there is an asterisk. The asterisk is a promise. The asterisk is also a subtraction. A subtraction of one night. Tomorrow Trésor will return to the tent at nine. He will cross out the word “unknown”. He will write underneath, in block letters, “Bahizi Joël”. Tonight, no.