The haze that Abraham had taken for some welcome cloud burned away and heat began to build and press in the metal shell of the bus. A relief, no, to be back in London soon, with its low skies and the leaves turning and the mornings growing cool? Where nothing could be changed and nothing could be done? There was peace in that. He had mistaken himself for a man with passions, when they were only fears that he would never outrun. They were his lot, and to think he could finally be rid of them through what, some heroic rescue, that was vanity, a sin, a fond rejection of the role God had given him to play. You couldn’t buck that, any more than Sofia could avoid her destiny.
She had her line, he had his, and they had diverged, that was all. No one could will them together again.
The bus powered along through a rough cutting in the rising hills. Abraham let his eyes slip on the chalky rock and his mind empty of thought; the decision was made, and the tiredness that had been building over days began to catch up with him. But she was there as he closed his eyes. Newborn, scalp thick with fine, wayward hair, asleep on his chest or straddling Ester’s arm like a cat in a tree, the distinct weight of her. Dancing, with her hands in his hands and her feet on his. That erect, bobbing walk, on the brink of becoming a skip. The seriousness in her eyes as she drew.
Strange, that as she had grown the physical memory of her should remain somehow the same. Her skin, her warmth a constant.
About fifty miles outside Gaziantep, Abraham told the driver he wanted to get off, stepped down into the heat, and crossed the road to wait for the bus coming the other way. Vural was wrong. This wasn’t a test of his limits. It was a choice between two deaths: of one cut, or a thousand; with honour and love, or an eternal shame.
And all this; all of it was on him. He was her father.
For an hour he sat cross-legged on the verge, a handkerchief on his head in place of a hat, visions of sand and mirages and death from thirst playing across the sun-beaten yellow scrub that only ended at the sky. Unchecked miles of plain, and somewhere in them this fabled evil city that held his daughter, like a dark castle that only appeared to those who had the faith to seek it.
Vural’s plan was insane. You could never leave ISIS – you could as easily tear up a contract with the devil. No. He would do it his way. Find someone to take him to Raqqa, God knows how; pose as a merchant, as Vural had, and live there in some quiet hole; keep talking to Sofia through Irene until an opportunity presented itself. He was insignificant. The city held hundreds of thousands and wouldn’t notice him. He would keep his head down and wait. If he had to, he would wait for a year.
The bus came and took him east again. No one was waiting for him in the city; no police, no Vural. He passed through as invisibly as a single tiny fish crossing a great burning sea. In this vast land he was alone, making his way as she had, south to the border.