Ad-Damazin, Sudan
The old woman settled on her blanket spread out on the pavement beneath her tea cart. The night air was cool, but the heat radiating from the banked coals in the brazier in her tea cart kept her old bones warm.
A few yards away, a loaded truck began its long drive up the grade to the top of the Roseires Dam. The gears ground as the driver downshifted and a belch of thick exhaust blew into the night.
The oily smoke didn’t bother the old woman. It was an occupational hazard. If you secured the most profitable spot on the most traveled road in all of Ad-Damazin, you held your ground until you ran out of supplies.
Besides, traffic was thin this time of night and the slight breeze carried the smell away. In the rush of the morning, when cars and trucks and buses wound from the top of the dam down into the city, the air was so thick with exhaust smoke she could barely see across the highway.
Traffic jams were when she made the most money. Lorry drivers, engines idling, would order tea and cakes from their seats. Passengers in luxury cars would roll down their windows, order, and roll the tinted glass up again. People would file off the buses, place an order, and walk a few paces to catch up with the crawling bus.
She heard the crunch of tires and the purr of a well-tuned engine pull into the turnoff where her tea cart was set up. She peered under the cart to see a car door open and a pair of polished boots hit the sidewalk. The old woman struggled to her feet.
“Can I help you?” she said.
The polished boots belonged to a strapping young man dressed in blue jeans and an untucked shirt. He held up four fingers.
“Tea. Four.” His accent told her he was from the south.
She busied herself with the brazier, bringing the water to a boil. The car was a late-model black SUV with tinted windows. She heard a mobile phone ring in the vehicle, and the driver answered it.
“We’re here. The job will take us an hour or so, then we’ll start back.” The driver noticed the old woman watching him and rolled up the open car window.
She lined up four teas on the front of her cart and beckoned to the young man. He carried them to the vehicle and she got a look inside as the windows came down. Four men, all well-fed and muscled.
The polished boots, the way these men carried themselves, the peek of a handgun when the young man stretched to hand the tea to the men in the backseat. She knew these were military men.
“What do you have to eat?” the driver asked.
The old woman uncovered a tray of honey-and-almond desserts, a local delicacy.
“Try one,” the driver said to the young man. He picked one up and bit off half.
“Good,” he said, his mouth full.
The driver beckoned for her to come closer. The old woman carried the tray over to him and collected his empty tea glass. He took two, wolfing them down in just a few bites. The tray was empty when she returned to her cart.
“Pay her, Rocky,” the driver said to the young man. “And get the stuff out of the back.”
The young man pulled a wad of cash from his pocket and peeled off a handful of Sudanese pounds, far more than the cost of the tea and pastries.
“Thank you, auntie,” he said, pressing the money into her hands.
When he smiled, his eyes were cold. The old woman clutched the bills.
He went to the rear of the SUV and raised the lift gate. When he got into the passenger side of the vehicle, he passed out hard hats and safety vests to the rest of the men in the SUV.
The car roared away into the night.
The old woman slept fitfully for the rest of the night.
Traffic started to thicken before dawn. By the time the sun touched the tops of the buildings across the street, the flow of traffic had slowed to a crawl and her tea business was running at full capacity.
One of the competing tea carts set up shop on a corner fifty paces down the hill. At this rate, the old woman would be out of supplies by noon and would be forced to surrender her spot. She smiled and waved to her competition. With the generous tip from the men in the SUV last night, this had been a very profitable week for her.
BOOM!
The sound rolled down into the city of Ad-Damazin, echoing through the buildings.
All around her, everyone held their breath, frozen in space as the detonation rolled over them.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Three more blasts in quick succession.
The old woman craned her neck to see up above the city, where the road ran across the top of the dam. There were four columns of black smoke rising into the pale blue morning sky.
Then the rain started. Bits of concrete, shards of plastic and metal from blasted cars; a hubcap sailed down and bounced off the roof of a car in front of her.
And mixed in with the material were tiny bits of bloody red flesh.
A woman screamed. Pandemonium reigned as drivers tried to reverse their cars and get as far away from the carnage as possible.
The old woman packed up her tea cart and pushed it down the hill.