Even in my dreams I hear the wailing call to pre-dawn prayers from all the nearby mosques and then the beep-beeping of my alarm clock. Then I realise I’m not dreaming any more. I’m awake. When I open my eyes, I see that it’s 4.30 in the morning. I press the button on the alarm to stop it beeping and wish there was a button I could press to stop all the Allah Akbar-ing. That’s one thing I will be pleased about, with going back to Australia. I won’t have to listen to ‘God is Great’ being blasted from every mosque five times a day.
It does finally stop and all I can hear is the hum of the airconditioner as it kicks in to keep the house at the constant, freezing temperature that my mum insists on. Sometimes it’s so cold inside and so hot outside the windows stream with condensation, just like it’s raining. Of course, it’s not. It only rains a couple of times a year in the city. It’s great when it does, because it’s usually a big storm and the water is all over the road. Me and my mates get on our bikes and ride through it and make the biggest waves. The best storms, though, are in the mountains in the summer time. There was a picture in the paper, of water taller than me coming down a wadi, which is a dried-up creek bed. I wish I’d been there with my surfboard. It would have been awesome.
But there’s not likely to be any rain today. Grey light comes through the arched window of my huge bedroom. When we first came to live here, we couldn’t believe the size of the houses and the rooms, but the Arabs like to build massive houses out of all this poured concrete. The walls are really thick to keep the heat out and the cool of the airconditioning in. And you need the space because you have to spend a lot of time inside. As usual, my room’s a mess, but I don’t care. Chandra will clean it up.
That thought gets me moving. Chandra will be up soon, and I want to make the most of today. I need to be gone before she realises I’m awake. Not that it’s a big deal, really, because no matter what my mum thinks, I do what I like when there’s only Chandra here. But Chandra cries if I don’t do what she tells me. She thinks Mum will tell her off. Really it would be me Mum’d get stuck into; still, it’s easier just to go. That way Chandra’s too scared to tell Mum what I’ve done and I won’t have to see Chandra cry.
I hear Tara thumping her tail, and I feel her long, cold, black nose on my face. Tara’s my dog and she sleeps in my room. She’s just the right height to be able to give me a lick without having to jump up onto the bed. If I wasn’t properly awake before, I am now.
‘Hey, girl,’ I say, as I sit upright. ‘We’re going surfing.’
I pull on an old T-shirt and my favourite shorts – the pair my mum hates because she says they drag around my bum and dag around my knees. She says I look like I’ve grown up in a gutter or something, instead of having all the privileges other boys my age would give their right arm for, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I’ve heard it so many times before. ‘You’re too spoilt,’ she says. Blah, blah, blah. That’s when I turn right off. All I want to do is surf and hang out with my mates. Nearly everyone in our group came here at about the same time when their dads, like mine, got a job with the new airline. We all come from different places – Australia, England, Canada, Kenya, Belgium, Spain and New Zealand, too. When we were young we used to call ourselves the Compound Kids. Now we just call ourselves the Sea Ks, which sort of still stands for Compound Kids but also means Sea Kings. That’s what we are.
My mum reckons it’s been good for my development to go to an International School with lots of kids from other countries. But when I ask why I can’t stay here, she says I’ll end up an expat for the rest of my days if I don’t know where my real home is. But this is home. And Nigel and Jean-Marie and Bud and Nelson and Jose and Jason are my mates.
I don’t even mind that it’s so hot here. And it is hot. Hotter than Hell. I’m not supposed to swear. But how can ‘Hell’ be a proper swearword when it’s supposed to be a place? And seriously, even Hell couldn’t be as hot as it is here in summer.
It’s late August now. But it’s been hot since May and it won’t cool down until October. Most people hate the summer in Abudai because it’s over 40°C every day and it never gets cool outside. You have to live in airconditioning all the time. And I don’t even need to be told to cover myself with sunscreen. You can get burned really quickly.
I smear the sticky cream all over my face and arms and legs and then put another thick blob on my nose to make sure. I cram the bottle into my back pocket and grab my favourite cap. Mum’s always worrying I’ll end up with heatstroke riding my bike down to the beach and back. The sun does beat down a bit, but as long as we get back before about midday it’s not too bad.
Apart from the sunburn, I like the summer because it means we get extra long holidays. If I was allowed to stay here, I would still have three weeks of holidays left and then I’d be going into my first year at Abudai Secondary College. That’s where all my mates are going. I’ve tried to tell Mum and Dad that going back to Australia isn’t fair. I’ll have to do half a year more at school than anyone else because school here started in September last year and finished in June this year. Back in Australia they’ll only be halfway through the year. And I won’t know anybody. And I’ll miss Tara. It’s not fair! I want to stay here.
‘Come on, girl,’ I call softly to Tara, but she just flicks one ear.
‘We’re going surfing,’ I say again. That usually gets her excited, but she still doesn’t move. In the grey light, I can see her outline. Some people say she’s a funny-looking dog, but I think she’s beautiful. I have to admit she doesn’t look like any other dog I know, but that’s because she’s a ‘bitsa’ – with bitsa this and bitsa that in her. She’s got tall skinny legs like a desert dog, a long pointy nose like a wolfhound and a black coat like a labrador. And she’s got the biggest ears. They look like radars. It wouldn’t surprise me if she could pick up messages from aeroplanes flying overhead with those ears. And she’s definitely one smart dog. She knows exactly what’s going on, all the time.
With her ears up and angled out she looks just like these dog mummies we saw in a museum in Eygpt when Mum and Dad and Sarah and I went over there for a holiday. They say the ancient Egyptians used to love their dogs so much that when a dog died everyone shaved off their eyebrows. How cool is that?
Sarah bought a little statue of one of those dogs while we were there because she said it looked just like Tara. It does, too, and Sarah took it back to boarding school with her. She said it meant she could have Tara looking after her there.
Tara is good at guarding. She sits by the gate and watches everyone like that’s her job. I reckon Tara’s great-great-great-hundreds-of-great-grandfather would’ve sat outside some Pharaoh’s temple and kept tomb robbers away.
‘What can you hear, girl?’ I ask. Tara suddenly rushes to the door barking like there’s something out there she wants to chase.
‘Tara!’ I yell over her barking, to try and shut her up. I don’t need her to wake Chandra up. Or half the compound, either.
Then there’s a noise so loud it drowns out my yell. It even drowns out Tara’s barking.
It’s like thunder. But I know it can’t be thunder. There might be storms in the mountains at this time of year, but not here on the coast. Not here.
Then, out of nowhere, comes a whining roar. It’s like a swarm of giant, angry mosquitoes.
I know that sound. I was born at a military airbase. My dad was a pilot in the airforce before we came over here. I recognise that crackling noise.
Military planes, igniting their afterburners.
Waves of them begin to scream overhead. Must be only about thirty metres above the ground by the noise they’re making and the shuddering I can feel. My ears are ringing. I can see Tara opening her mouth, but I can’t hear her barking any more. I know she is, though. She’s not scared of anything: not firecrackers or thunder. She just wants to protect our family.
I can’t work out what’s going on. Why would planes like these be coming over so low at this time of the morning? I figure it must be some sort of military exercise so I run out on to the balcony, which faces the outside of the compound. I want a good view of this show!
They’re coming from the direction of the coast and they’re flying very low – not much higher than our rooftop as they swoop away.
I recognise the shape of them. Phantoms! But nobody has Phantoms nowadays. They’re really old technology. Nobody except the Sultan of Mafi, who’s in charge of a small country to the south of here. But what are they doing having a military exercise in Abudai?
Then, from the direction of the desert, I see a scramble of Abudai Tomcats. Wow!
The Phantoms head straight for the Centra Tower, the tallest building in Abudai. They look as if they’re going to hit about the tenth floor, but they pull up and go over it. And then it’s like bits start falling off the wings. Long, black, egg-shaped bits. I know what they are, but I can’t believe what’s happening.
The top of the Centra explodes. The noise is huge. In movies things like this happen in slow motion. But all I can see is stuff flying upwards and out, like it’s being thrown up by some gigantic hand.
It happens quickly. Too quickly.
Holy Hell! They’re dropping bombs.