Maahi felt the plane tilt forward and his stomach went with it. The flight out of Benghazi had filled him with nervous anticipation, but what he had not been prepared for was the motion sickness he’d experienced all the way across the Mediterranean to what they assumed was Turkey or Greece. Around him were five other members of the drumming troupe that had once centred on his father and Uncle Omar. Now his father was dead, and so was Uncle Omar. The ‘Uncle Omar’ on this flight was one of Parzan’s lieutenants—Akeem—a former fruit-and-vegetable wholesaler who now commanded his own militia cell within the al-Kaniyat organisation and took delight in stealing folks’ money and raping the women. The people of Al-Uqaylah had joked that the age of the warlords had allowed ordinary men to have anything they wanted, and yet they were imprisoned by their own low expectations. Steal money and rape women? his mother’s former boss had once said of Akeem. He could have just become a policeman and at least he’d have a decent uniform.
Maahi’s stomach griped with the descent of the aircraft, but there was nothing left in him to vomit.
Two rows in front, Akeem stood and turned to face the musicians. He glowered at the group, his long teeth bared like an animal’s.
‘Remember, you are the Libyan Drumming Troupe from Al-Uqaylah,’ he said, a smile splitting his face. ‘You do what you’re told, and you’ll be back with your loved ones before you know it.’
Akeem looked around the musicians, some of them in their best clothing for their first-ever visit to a foreign country and all of them scared for the welfare of their families. ‘If you disappoint Parzan …’ He let silence tell the rest of the story.
The plane touched down, Maahi’s hands clutching at the armrests. When he opened his eyes and let out his breath, he could see the floodlights of a vast area, populated with aeroplanes and buildings. As they taxied he saw a large structure with a sign he couldn’t read. They were ushered off the plane and into the building, where Akeem produced passports for the troupe—a passport Maahi hadn’t known he possessed—and then they picked up their drums and other instruments from the oversized luggage section and were whisked onto a bus.
When the troupe arrived at the hotel, Maahi was placed in a room by himself and told not to leave. He looked through the fourth-floor window at the bright lights of the huge city and wondered what he would be required to do.
He sat at a small sofa and picked up the magazine on the coffee table. He flipped through pages of photographs of the Bosporus and the huge bridge linking Asia Minor to Europe. He recognised these landmarks from his brief schooling.
He put the magazine down again. He thought of his little brother, Demir, sitting in Parzan’s compound in the desert, waiting to learn his fate. He considered his own predicament. And he pondered the advice of the man he’d picked up at the airfield a week before, the Westernised one. What was the word he insisted Maahi learn?
He returned to the window and looked out on what he now knew was Istanbul.
Asylum, he thought to himself. Faisal had told him to find an embassy and ask for asylum.