Tsunami

My worst nightmare, after the one about the obese saddo with salt-and-pepper hair, involves a tsunami at the end of time.

I’m on a beach, which is outrageously beautiful and deserted. The sea looks calm. As I stroll along, I’m fretting about whether the damp sand between my toes will create a mess in the hallway.

I can already picture my mother making a song and dance about it and shaking her bottle of bleach at me. ‘What d’you take me for?’ she’ll complain. ‘A skivvy? A slave? Do you want to watch me dying with a mop in my hands?!’

I try to put those thoughts out of my head and I keep on walking. I can see someone in the distance: it’s Big Baba, and he’s waving at me. As I draw nearer, I realise he’s in a wheelchair which has sunk into the sand.

‘Mourad, help me!’ Big Baba implores. ‘Have pity on me! I’m stuck!’

I push with all my strength, but there’s no dislodging the wheelchair. Down on my knees, I dig around the wheels. I can feel the sand wedging itself under my nails. Nothing shifts. It’s as if the contraption is bolted into the ground. Big Baba is begging me to rescue him but, despite all my efforts, the wheelchair won’t budge a millimetre. My chest crumples with anxiety as the sobs rise up inside me. I want to cry. 174

There’s no escaping my emotions, and so I cry a flood of tears salty as seawater.

‘No!!! No!!!’ Big Baba is shouting now. ‘Don’t cry! Don’t do that! Men don’t cry!’

And then I hear a dull rumbling, a terrible noise, the sound of the famished earth opening up its belly, preparing to swallow everything. I turn around and see the towering wave – it’s so high, so rapid.

My father bellows.

He bellows and I cry, the wheels of the wheelchair are stuck in the sand, the wave is coming straight for us.