Over time we’ve come to call them the fisher girls. There were three of them that day, whip-thin and dressed head to toe in black, with jet-black hair scraped off their faces and secured into tails at their necks. Long, those tails, swinging this way and that as the girls walked in measured steps to the river’s edge.

We watched as they unzipped their narrow bags and deftly assembled short, sturdy rods. I thought they must have come to the river to fish, and how unlike the usual fishermen they were. But when it looked as if they might be about to cast, they turned their backs on the water and stood still and silent in a line, facing us. Expressions impassive, rods held steady …