A cheerful boy, perhaps too pretty for his own good, was hanging around Ahmed's encampment for the Feast of the Lamb. This is one of the great Muslim festivals. It celebrates Abraham's willingness to kill his son Isaac as God apparently requires, and God's mercy in providing an alternative sacrifice.
Ahmed had been burned out of an old farmhouse a little closer to the town limits, and now lives in an improvised series of wood and plastic shelters with about 50 other young men. He had decorated his hut with two pictures of Santa Claus. "La fiesta de los cristianos," he explains, inexplicably proud of some connection to the European world.
While the older men are seasoning the meat of the lamb they have just slaughtered, four policemen arrive. They have noticed the boy. He is a minor, with no papers and no family in Spain. They are legally obliged to take him to a welfare centre. There he will get much better lodgings, and a better chance of eventual Spanish citizenship than Ahmed and his friends. But he feels that he is being torn away from his own people, on one of the biggest holidays of the year. He cries bitterly, clutching a pair of old runners and a pair of trousers, all he has in the world. The police are courteous, infinitely patient, but insistent.
Ahmed claims the boy is over 16, but hardly pretends to believe it himself. The police ask if anyone would come with the boy to the centre, to act as his "big brother". The men look at their feet and shuffle aside. The boy stands there, between the police and his own countrymen, utterly alone. Without saying goodbye, he gets into the police van. A humane law demands a sacrifice, and there is no alternative.