I clamber out of the wreckage. I’m shaking like mad and choking on the orange dust in the air. I still can’t believe how quickly the car rolled. It’s landed back on its tyres, but the windscreen is shattered and the top is pushed in. Right now, I’m glad I’m a shorty. If I’d been much taller, I would have been crushed for sure.
Then I see Walid. He’s all crumpled up on the back seat. He didn’t have his seatbelt on and he must have been thrown around when we rolled. I drag him out. He looks even skinnier and smaller than usual. His head seems too big for his body and his eyes are closed.
‘Are you okay, man?’ He doesn’t move. ‘Oh God, don’t let him be dead!’ I pray, and shake him. He moans.
‘Thank God, thank God.’ He’s alive, but he still doesn’t look good.
I know it’s not from the bite of the camel spider. They’re not poisonous, but they have big fangs and if they’re frightened they do bite. I can see the marks where it’s punctured his skin. But where is it now? Suddenly there’s a movement to my left and it scuttles out from underneath Walid and heads off across the rocks.
‘That’s for giving me such a fright and for making me crash and … and for hurting Walid.’ I stamp on it. Hard. It helps stop me shaking.
I turn back to Walid. I’ve got to do something. He’s got a big bump on his head and he’s still out to it. I find a sock in the car and use some of our precious water to mop his face. There’s no point trying to clean it.
The next thing is to get the hell out of here. If those men catch us now, we’ll be history.
My skin prickles when I remember what Dad said about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We’ve just wrecked their car. What does that count for?
I can’t believe how cool-headed I’m being, despite the situation. Not panicking at all anymore. They say it happens sometimes when you’re in a real emergency – like after an accident – somehow the stress helps you think more clearly.
As much as I don’t want to move Walid again, I know I’ve got to take the chance and hope that he hasn’t broken any bones and isn’t bleeding inside. I squat down and haul him up on my back. Luckily, with all the surfing I do, I’m pretty strong, and he’s unbelievably light. But I can’t carry the backpack at the same time. Anyway, everything in it is scattered all over the place.
‘I’ll just have to get you into a hiding place first and then come back for anything important.’
I look around. The only place to hide out now is in one of the Bedu camps. But once they find the wrecked car they’ll be sure to search them. We’ve got no choice, though. At least there are lots of camps, and if we head for the one furthest away that should be the last place they’ll look.
I start to trudge back down the wadi, with Walid bumping on my back. A little voice in the back of my head is yelling at me, calling me an idiot. ‘Think where you’d be if you hadn’t been so dumb!’ But I’m not listening because, if I do, then all the panic inside will rise up and blow the top of my head off.
As I see the sun slowly lowering itself into the haze, I can hardly believe it’s only been about fifteen minutes since we were looking at it before. I wish it was dark already. Then there’d be less chance of them seeing us. They might even miss the car in the dark because it ended up on the other side of a sand dune.
Then Walid wakes up. He mutters like he’s not properly with it. At least he’s still alive.
‘La! Ana asif. Ana asif, Shirin.’
‘It’s okay. I know you’re sorry, but it wasn’t your fault. It was mine.’ He probably can’t hear me, but I feel so bad that he’s been hurt because of me being stupid.
By the time I reach the furthest Bedu camp, Walid is still muttering and whimpering and he feels like he weighs about ten tonne. My back and legs are aching, but I try not to hurt him when I put him down onto a pile of cut grass inside a small shed made of rusty tin and dried palm fronds. There’s an old carpet on the ground that’s so dirty it’s impossible to pick out the pattern.
‘There is too much jolting. This camel is too slow. I am never winning on this camel, no matter how much I am beating and beating with my camel stick. Aiee! The camel stumbles. It is not a camel. It is I that is being beaten.
Allah! One hundred curses on that Breath of Dog and Old Goat, for once again they are beating with their sticks. I am feeling the pain all over my body and this blackness is spreading …
Walid moans a bit as I spread a sack over him. If they do come in here and it’s dark, and they only glance in, then they mightn’t notice him. Of course, that’s if he doesn’t move. I wish I didn’t have to go. But as much as I’d like to just lie down in the hay and get my breath back, I know I’ve got to get those supplies. We need water and food. My belly is grumbling. Chum is starting to sound delicious.
‘I won’t be long.’
‘Allah, where am I? I am having nightmares of being in Hell.’
I smell camel dung and dried grass and I hear camels munching and moaning and stamping their feet. But as my eyes are opening, I do not see Badir and Mustapha who always sleep together on the ground near to me.
Too much my head is hurting. Am I falling from a camel in a big race? Or has Breath of Dog given me one tremendous beating? Then I am remembering Shirin. Her screaming and her blood. And the shootings and Breath of Dog and Old Goat taking me to this Hell on Earth where there is only hotness and darkness … and Ad-am.
Slowly, as the confusion is going from my head, I remember all things. I look around, but I do not see my friend.
I call and call, but he is not here. He has gone. Like Babu and Mama. Like Shirin. Always everyone is leaving. Inside my belly is an emptiness, and I feel the tears coming into my eyes.
‘Allah, may You curse this stinking soul of Ad-am who said he was my friend but who is nothing but an Infidel and an Unbeliever. And may You curse me too as one big fool for thinking he is not treacherous like all foreigners. Maybe while I was sleeping he has robbed me.
Quickly, I look for my dirhams. He has not taken them. Why not? I do not understand. And why do I not feel happiness any more, even as I look at all these dirhams?
‘Hey, man, are you okay?’
Along with my gear and a few other essentials, I found a torch in the car and I shine it around the shed looking for Walid. He’s sitting up in the corner.
He’s got all his grubby dirham notes in his hands, but he’s not looking at them in the same way he did before.
In fact, he’s not really looking at them at all. He’s just staring at nothing. And he’s crying.
I didn’t think he could cry.
‘Ad-am! Walhumdillaah!’
‘Hey. It’s cool, Walid. It’s cool.’
Walid leaps up when he sees me. He’s still crying, but he’s grinning madly, too, and then he gives me a big hi-five. I’m relieved. He’s not badly hurt after all. Probably has a few bruises, but it’s hard to tell under all that dirt. He must have a terrible headache, though, and I’d say his neck would hurt from that bite.
‘I found some more water in the car,’ I say quickly, as I show him four bottles of spring water that had been under the seat. ‘And look,’ I say, ripping the lid off a tin of Chum. ‘I’ve brought us something to eat.’
He looks at me in horror.
‘I’m not that fussed on eating it, either,’ I say, ‘but I’m starving.’ The smell of the meat, which is meant to be chicken, almost puts me off. But the worst thing is that it makes me think of Tara. Here I am, about to eat her food, and she probably hasn’t had anything to eat for days. I can picture her sitting there, by the gate of our compound, not moving, waiting for us to come home. She won’t leave that spot unless –
‘Kalb mu zain,’ Walid says, looking totally disgusted.
I start to feel angry. There he is again. Going on about dogs. Poor Tara’s starving, and he’s not only turning his nose up at her food, but he’s saying dogs are bad.
‘Kalb zain! Dogs good!’ I almost scream at him. ‘My Tara is the best dog in the whole world.’ The Arabic words pop into my head. ‘Tara kalbi zain. The zainest. Zainer than most people I know.’
‘You are an Infidel to eat dogs – yaakul kalb. I am never eating the meat of dogs.’
‘Yaakul!’ He said ‘yaakul kalb!’ That means ‘eat dog’! ‘Do you think I would eat my dog?’ I stare at him in horror.
He points to the picture of the dog on the tin, and I realise what he must have been thinking. And, as we stare at each other, I also realise we’re having an argument and we don’t even speak the same language.
‘No, la kalb.’ I shake my head. I don’t know how to explain that it’s meat for a dog and not meat of a dog and, by now, I’m too hungry to care.
‘If you want some you’re welcome to help yourself. But we’re going to have to use our fingers.’
I dig in. As I bring a lump of the meat up to my mouth, I suddenly smell it and nearly gag, but I force myself to shove it in and swallow it as fast as I can without letting it sit in my mouth too long. It’s salty and sort of wobbles down my throat like jelly.
‘It’s not bad, really,’ I say to Walid, as I offer him the can, then lick my fingers.
Ad-am is saying it is not dog, and I am very hungry.
He hesitates for a milli-second, then takes some, too.
As we share the meat, I try not to think about the words on the tin that say ‘not for human consumption’. We finish off with an After-Dinner Mint, to get rid of the taste. Walid really loves them. I show him how to take the paper off and how to suck it so you get the most out of it. I even teach him how to say ‘chocolate’.
Then, while we’re talking, I try to explain to him about Tara and how I’m going back to rescue her. I think he gets it.
‘And to think we might have been home by now and I’d be able to let her into the house.’ I have to try not to think about ‘if onlys’.
I am understanding now that Ad-am has a dog he calls Tara. The way he looks when he says her name is like how I felt for Shirin. I tell Ad-am all about my Shirin. Even though I know he will not understand.
Walid talks about a sweet camel, but he talks too fast and I can’t catch any of the other words.
What are we going to do now? I do have to think about that. After what we’ve been through today, I’d love to just lie down and sleep, but I’m nervous – scared that we will be caught by those men who are after our blood. It won’t be long until they’re on our tails again.
Then, as if because I was expecting it, I see a pinprick of light through a crack in the palm-frond wall.
‘There’s a car coming up the wadi! It’s heading this way.’ Of course, we don’t know who it is, but suddenly the walls of our hiding place seem way too flimsy.
‘We’ll get caught for sure. What’ll we do now?’