Numb

I wake to the quiet chatter of market traders returning to uncover their stalls or lay out their wares in the street. My arms and knees are sore from pressing onto the metal beams as I slept.

I am cold. I lie as still as I can, listening to people going about their lives beneath me. From time to time I turn to speak to Bini, only to remember that he’s not here. Like a shadow, I think I see him on a rafter next to me, or on the sacks beneath, but it’s my mind playing tricks on me. Showing me what I expect to see. What I want to see. A flash of Bini’s face steals into my thoughts without warning. He is shouting at me to go. Did he really mean go, or did he want me to wait with him while the truck drove toward us? Hot tears creep into the corners of my eyes. I blink them away. If I start crying now, I may never stop.

I doze off, waking to the sound of the call to prayer. I lie still and listen.

Perhaps half an hour later, I realize how hungry I am. The last of the bread has gone, but I have a little water. Outside the covered market area, a man is lifting two sacks of red onions from a cart onto a blanket on the ground. A large colorful umbrella provides shade for a woman sitting next to the sacks. She begins to peel off the dirty outer layers of the onions, discarding them in a pile.

Slowly, I ease myself from the rafters onto the topmost sack and slide carefully down to the ground. I hobble toward the woman and point to the onions. At first she thinks I want to buy some, then she looks at me more closely and understands. She points to a spot on the ground next to her, and I get to work, peeling onions. It’s methodical work, which gives my mind a rest. Once I have finished, she gives me a small coin. I buy two more rolls and head back toward the grain sacks and the rafters. People are too busy buying and selling to pay me any attention.

For what is left of the day, I lie there, neither asleep nor awake but drifting somewhere in between. The hum of the market is comforting. It fills any spaces in my head where thoughts of Bini could creep in.

As darkness begins to fall and the traders pack up, the stillness frightens me, but my body is so exhausted that sleep comes anyway. Rats run across my legs and along the aisles between the stalls below. Dogs bark and then are silent.

I wake properly when I hear the call to prayer. It makes me feel connected to the rest of the town. Everyone else will be waking now, too. I think about the men back in the container, waking to the discs of light on the ceiling. For a second I picture Bini in there with them, waking without me, but alive. But in my heart I know that Bini is not in the container, just like he is not here. I cannot let myself think about his body punctured by bullets. I try to remember sitting next to him in class—smiling Bini, alive Bini—but the image seeps away like smoke.

The market begins to fill once more. I watch the women shop; looking and testing, asking and then shaking their heads, ready to walk away until the trader offers a better price. I watch the traders arranging their goods; piling and shaping, weighing and measuring, shouting and laughing at one another. In the middle of the morning the market is buzzing with people. I cannot see the onion seller today.

I crawl backward along my rafter and slide painfully down the sacks to the ground, then hobble slowly over to the man selling pots and pans and kitchenware all made from shiny metal. His new delivery is covered in dust and his stall is busy. I offer to wipe down the new items and make them shine again. He nods and throws me a cloth. The coin he gives me will buy more water and bread. After that I will choose my moment to climb painfully back up to the roof sanctuary.

The next few days pass with little variation. My ankle is less sore, but I am getting slowly weaker, and I don’t care as much as I should. I’m sure the traders know that I am sleeping in the rafters, but no one seems to mind. I realize that the Bini-shaped black hole is starting to win. Although I cannot bear the thought of traveling without him, I know that he won’t be coming to join me. I also know that he wouldn’t want me to live in the rafters with the rats. Nor would Mom. That’s not why she saved every spare coin to help me leave the country. And if I don’t take the information about the men in the container with me to England, then who will?

With no one to talk to I find it hard to make decisions. I also find it hard to truly feel anything is important. I know that I must not die in this town, that people are depending on me. But everyone I care about is so far away. I barely have the energy to climb up and down from the roof. I need a smile, a hug, a kind word that I can understand.

I lie for a while as these thoughts circle around and around in my head. What would Bini do? He would make a plan. I must make contact with a smuggler, someone who can take me north across the Sahara, toward a boat. There is one problem to which I have no solution: I cannot speak the language here, and there is no one that I know or trust. Searching for an answer to this problem will stop the darkness from creeping up on me again tonight.