DADAAB, Kenya

It was time to go. Ayan Abdi slipped on a long black headscarf, grabbed her refugee ID and set out for the interview that could save her life.

Since she was 2, Ayan had lived in the world’s largest refu­gee camp, a constellation of tents and huts stretching across the red desert near the Somali border. Now, a few miles from her shack built of sticks and cardboard, three examiners with a Canadian university foundation were sitting at a wooden table, deciding which students were worthy of a way out.

Ayan hurried along the sandy road. Past the piles of burning trash surrounded by giant scavenging birds. Past the girls no older than her, at 20, who balanced firewood on their heads, trailed by barefoot children. Past the group of men who stared at her — a small figure in a flowing black robe and bright red shoes — and hissed in Somali, “Where are you going, girl?”

When Ayan finally found a taxi, it was already full. She squeezed in, her whole body tense, dots of sweat on her forehead.

“I’m in a rush,” she told the driver, who didn’t ask why but careened a little faster from pothole to pothole.