‘Walhumdillah!’
We all twist around when we hear a blood-curdling scream. Leaping down off the rocks is Walid. He’s got the knife in one hand. The blade is out and it winks in the sunlight as he holds it in front of him like a dagger.
‘Am I pleased to see you!’ I yell at him, and he flashes me a monkey grin and yells something.
‘Foolish one! Why did you not run fast away when I am yelling firstly? You are going to get us killed.’
‘Go, Walid!’
Old Orange Beard lets go of my arm and shrieks something at Baggy Pants.
Baggy Pants growls and lunges at Walid. I see my chance and put my foot out. Baggy Pants trips and sprawls along the ground, landing heavily with a thud that raises dust.
‘Ithnayn walidun Battaa!’
Old Orange Beard screeches something about two boys. I guess he’s not happy with either of us.
Baggy Pants lumbers to his feet again, shouting.
‘Yusalla! When I am getting my gun, I will be shooting! Allah walidun yamoot!’ I hear Breath of Dog yelling, cursing.
‘May you rot in Hell forever,’ I say to him, as I run.
Walid ducks under Old Orange Beard’s long camel stick and slashes and jabs at the tyres of the Toyota. There’s a hiss of leaking air.
Old Orange Beard hobbles after Walid screeching at him and trying to beat him with the stick.
But Walid’s too quick, twisting and turning this way and that, like he’s done this before.
‘Come on, Walid!’ I scream. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
Walid ignores me and jumps up into the back of the truck where my backpack is.
He grabs the bag as Baggy Pants lunges at him, and chucks the bag at me over his head.
Walid makes a slashing movement and a fine, red line appears down Baggy Pants’s arm.
‘Aiee!’
The big man curses loudly, grabs hold of his wounded arm and dances in a circle.
‘Come on, Walid! Let’s get out of here.’ Then I realise, as I look around, we’re trapped. We can’t go down the valley because it’s so narrow at this point and the truck is parked across our only way out. Baggy Pants is at one end of the truck and Orange Beard is at the other.
If Walid had run straight away when I yelled the first time, we might have escaped. It’s too late now. But I have to admit it was smart of him to go for the backpack. We’ll have my mobile now and some food.
‘Come on!’ I’m really screaming now and, finally, Walid follows me. The only way to go is up the rocks. We scramble up like goats. But it’s then we realise we can only get about halfway. The rest is a straight-up cliff. We’d have to be Spiderman to get up any further.
I’m sort of surprised neither of the men come after us. Sure, Old Orange Beard wouldn’t be able to make it, and Baggy Pants has a cut arm, but the wound didn’t look that serious.
We’re both panting like crazy.
‘We must hide, for soon Breath of Dog will bring his gun.’
Walid tugs at my arm and I squat down beside him behind a big rock. My head is thumping, and sweat’s pouring into my eyes. We’re stuck up here on a ledge, behind a rock. It’ll be hours until sunset. At least there’s some shade, and I’ve still got my water bottle.
‘That was so cool,’ I say, as we catch our breath. Just then, there’s a cracking sound and a high whistle. A rock nearby splits.
‘Holy Hell! They’re shooting at us. This is not cool!’ I’m tempted to peer out from behind the rock, but I know that would be crazy with that madman down there with a gun.
I must be mad myself. I’m in the most dangerous situation I’ve ever been in, in my whole life, but I feel sort of good. It’s got to be all the adrenalin pumping. Why else do I always want to laugh when things are at their most dangerous and frightening?
‘We’re sitting ducks up here,’ I say to Walid and grin. He looks worried.
I am thinking I am a big fool. Much more foolish than Ad-am, for now Breath of Dog will kill us for sure. But I was feeling so angry, and I had this good knife, and when I think about the faces of Breath of Dog and Old Goat, when they are seeing the tyres go down, I too am laughing with Ad-am.
Walid still looks ridiculous with my jocks on his head, but I have to say he’s got a lot of guts. I wouldn’t have taken those two guys on with only a pocket knife. Especially knowing they had a gun.
But there are a lot of questions tumbling around my head. I mean, why are they shooting at us? Why do they hate Walid so much? Who are they? Did they really tie him up and leave him to die? He’s just a kid. He can’t have done anything that wrong. And how did a kid get involved with evil-looking sorts like them in the first place? Was it after his father died? Is one of these men his uncle? I wish I could talk to Walid properly and find out a few answers. From somewhere in the back of my head, I remember the word for ‘uncle’.
‘Aam?’ I ask. Not that it means much because kids here call anyone older than them ‘uncle’ or ‘auntie’. They don’t have to be related.
‘La! La! – No! No!’ If only Ad-am could understand that this is not a funny business. Soon, we may both be dead.
Just then, I hear a familiar tune from below. It’s going ‘dom diddle domdom domdom’. It sounds like the tune on my mobile, but it can’t be. I’ve got my bag, and the battery on my mobile is dead. Fancy those guys having the same tune on their phone.
‘I bet they’ve called for backup,’ I say to Walid. With a gun and a mobile no wonder they didn’t bother chasing us up the slope. ‘They must think they can get us any time they like. We can’t move without them taking pot shots at us, and now there’ll be more of them to surround us.’
I peer out from behind the rock, carefully, to see what’s going on. I can see Old Orange Beard talking on the phone. He’s waving one arm around like whoever it is can see him.
There’s another crack, and I hear the ping of a bullet ricocheting off another rock a little distance away. Baggy Pants is not a very good shot or maybe his rifle is old. But I keep my nose in behind the rock all the same.
‘Mafi Inglizi. Mafi Inglizi.’
We can hear Old Orange Beard yelling. Somebody’s got the wrong number, I guess.
Then, over his yelling, I hear the sound of another car.
‘This is it. It must be their friends arriving.’ As I peer out, I see an old dusty Datsun Sunny with tinted windows and big wheels driving at full speed up the valley towards us. It’s burbling and roaring like it’s got no exhaust. Probably got ripped off ages ago. It’s amazing what the locals drive around here, in places where you’d think you could only use a four-wheel drive.
The car pulls up behind the old Toyota truck, which has settled down onto its deflated tyres like a hen on a nest. The Sunny’s engine is still chugging, all four doors open. There’s a blast from the car radio. It sounds like magpies screeching at screaming cats. Well, that’s what most Arabic music sounds like to me.
Six guys who look about eighteen years old spring out. All of them are wearing small, round, embroidered caps, so I figure they must be from one of the little villages in the mountains. Maybe they haven’t heard about the invasion in Abudai yet. Maybe they won’t for another hundred years, either. They’re pretty isolated. If we get caught now we could just disappear into these mountains and nobody would ever know what happened to us.
We watch. Baggy Pants and Orange Beard shake hands with the men, and they all talk at once. I can hear them jabbering in Arabic and see them nodding as Orange Beard points to the tyres and then up to the rocks where we’re hiding.
‘This is going to be one big fight. It is best if you take this knife. I will use a sharp rock. We can kill maybe some men before they kill us.’
Walid holds out my knife as he picks up a rock in the other hand and grimaces fiercely. He says something about the men, but I don’t know what. He can’t really think we can take on this lot, can he? That’s just plain crazy.
‘We can’t go up and we can’t get down without being caught. Against eight guys there isn’t much chance of getting away.’
Just then, I notice one of the men glance at the sun, which is now about half way to the horizon. All of them, including Baggy Pants and Orange Beard go and wash their hands and face in the pool of water, which is already starting to dry up in the heat.
For a minute, I wonder what they’re up to, but when they pull some mats out of the car, I realise it’s prayer time. I remember Mrs Haifa, our Arabic teacher at school, said that the five prayers a day started because people didn’t have clocks in the old days. The call to prayer told them what time it was and what everyone had to do.
There’s Fajr, just before sunrise, telling everyone to wake up, then Zohr at midday telling people to finish their morning work. Then there’s Asr saying get back to work until Mahgreb at sunset. The last prayer of the day is Ishr. After that everyone’s meant to go to bed.
Mum said Christians used to have the same thing in medieval times. They used bells, though, to tell everyone to pray. But when I told Jason that he laughed. He said his dad reckons that kind of thing belongs back in the Dark Ages. His dad says they need to catch up with the rest of the world. ‘For Christ’s sake, it’s the twenty-first century,’ he said.
I’m very thankful for the tradition now though, especially since I’m pretty confident about that business about not stopping prayers once you’ve started. Not for anything. Not even if someone’s getting away …