‘Somehow we’ve got to get out of here,’ I say to Walid. But I know we can’t escape this time. ‘They’ve told me we have to stay here until someone arrives to claim us. It’s like we’re lost property or something.’
But it’ll be days before Mum and Dad get here. When they found out where I was through the embassy, they rang me. Even though I really wanted to speak to them, I was a bit scared because I thought they’d tell me off. They did. But, luckily, they didn’t have a lot of time to talk because I was on a hospital phone.
‘We’ll try to get on a plane as soon as the airport reopens for civilian flights,’ Mum told me after she calmed down. ‘But at the moment no one but essential personnel and, of course, journalists, are allowed back. Now, you stay put until we get there. No more brilliant ideas, please.’
‘We’re as much in prison in this hospital as we were in the village,’ I say to Walid. ‘They’ve even locked the door to make sure we don’t run away. Can you believe it? How could we get this close, and yet still be as far away as we were when we were in the mountains. I could kick something.’
And I do, because if I try to keep it all in, the top of my head is going to blow off with frustration.
Walid holds out another ice cream to me. He hasn’t stopped eating them since I woke up. I suppose that’s all there is to do. And it is good ice cream – thick and creamy. Maybe it will even help to cool me down. My skin is still sore from the blisters.
Then the door of our room opens and in walks …
A princess! Never have I seen such a jameelatun – such a beauty. She has hair like the shining sun and eyes more blue than the sky.
It’s my sister. I can hardly believe it. ‘Sarah?’ I ask, because, although I know it’s her, she looks different. No kidding, she’s trowelled the make-up onto her face and she’s wearing a fancy suit. It makes her look so old – at least twenty-two or something.
‘What are you doing here?’
She waves some papers at me.
‘I’m here to get you out, and take you home,’ she says. ‘I’ve signed everything and they’re letting you and your friend here go into my care.’
‘But where’s Mum and Dad?’ I ask.
‘I guess they’re probably on their way back here by now,’ says Sarah airily.
I shake my head because I still can’t quite grasp what’s going on.
‘How did you get here?’
‘On an aeroplane, of course,’ says my smart-alec sister.
‘Yeah, alright,’ I say, guessing that she’s either used the return ticket Mum makes us keep or even bought one with the credit card Mum lets her have for emergencies. ‘But you know what I mean. How come you’re here? Mum said they’re not letting anyone back into the country yet.’
‘When I heard that you’d done your usual dumb thing of running away, I figured you might need some help so I skipped school myself. I knew the Australian authorities would never let me go if I said I was trying to get here so I dressed up a bit, put lots of make-up on and bought a ticket to Singapore. It was easy from there. They don’t care where you go as long as you have a ticket, which I did thanks to Mum, and I was able to get on board one of the first flights back here, not long after the airport was reopened. I didn’t think I’d find you safe in hospital.’
‘But how did you get priority?’ I ask. ‘There must have been heaps of people trying to come back in.’
‘Well, they did think I was a journalist.’ She flashes an impressive-looking press badge at me.
‘Hey! That’s the badge Dad made for you on the computer; for that Compound News Network project of yours.’
‘Well, as you can see, I’m a reporter for CNN, or at least that’s what the people at the embassy who signed my papers believe.’
I shake my head. Only my big sister would have the brains to think up a plan like that and then the nerve to pull it off. She’s pretty cool.
‘Do Mum and Dad know you’re here?’ I ask, but I figure I know the answer.
‘I guess they do by now,’ says Sarah. ‘And I guess they’re on their way home as we speak so we could both be in a bit of trouble …’
This is the old Sarah. I grin because it’s fantastic to see her again.
‘By the way, I have to admit it wasn’t my idea to offer those characters who had your mobile a reward for bringing you home. It was Barby’s cunning plan. That must be where I get my brilliance from, though.’
I look blankly at her. ‘A reward?’
‘Didn’t Mum tell you? Barby rang your mobile and she got this crazy old guy who spoke a bit of English. He said he might know where to find you, so she got in touch with a local television network and they put up a reward for your rescue.’
So that was it. That was why Baggy Pants and Old Orange Beard took me home. They’d been hoping to make some money out of me.
‘How much of a reward was being offered?’ I’m so curious.
‘Ten thousand dollars,’ Sarah tells me. ‘Mum’s even been on television appealing for help.’
‘Wow! I’m impressed. Before Mum left she was so mad at me I would have thought she’d have paid that much to get rid of me.’
‘I guess she changed her mind,’ says Sarah and, for a second, there’s a slightly gooey look on her face like she’s about to cry, but that quickly changes. ‘God knows why. And anyway, what happened to the old guy? Did he bring you here? How did he find you?’
‘It’s a bit of a long story,’ I say. ‘Can we just get out of here and go home and see if Tara’s okay?’
‘I’ve got a taxi waiting outside. Now you’d better introduce me to your friend here, seeing as I’m rescuing him as well.’
Walid is staring at Sarah like he’s never seen a Western girl before.
‘His name is Walid,’ I say. ‘But he doesn’t speak English. He only speaks Arabic.’
‘As-salaam alaykum,’ she says to Walid, which even I understand because it means ‘peace be upon you’ and it’s the way to say hello in Arabic.
‘Alaykum as-salaam. Old Goat told me all foreign girls are ugly and bad, but you have the beauty of a princess.’
Sarah giggles like she’s a kid, then she starts to jabber away to Walid who jabbers back. I didn’t know she could speak Arabic so well. She really is amazing.
‘That’s terrible,’ she says, and then she turns to me with that fierce look on her face she gets when she’s on the warpath about something. ‘Did you know he was sold to traders when he was seven years old; his family couldn’t afford to keep him. He’s been living in a camp just outside the city. He’s been a camel jockey!’
‘Um … no,’ I have to admit.
‘My God, what sort of life has he had to live?’ I know she doesn’t expect an answer this time. And she doesn’t give me a chance anyway, but it explains a few things – like why Walid could ride a camel like an expert.
‘And,’ she goes on, ‘those dreadful men he was sold to tied him up and left him in the mountains as a punishment because they said he was bad. At least he’s got a mother here somewhere working as a maid. Maybe Mum and Dad will be able to track her down through the Bangladeshi Embassy.’
I can hardly believe it. In about three minutes, Sarah has found out more about Walid than I knew after being with him for about a week.
‘Right,’ says Sarah. ‘First things first, though. We need to get home and make sure Tara is okay.’
The streets of Abudai are still fairly deserted, which isn’t much different from every other summer when lots of people get out of here anyway, but today the only people to be seen are soldiers. And there are still the marks of the war everyone’s now calling the Three Day War – not very imaginative. The Centra Tower is not shining like it usually does. It’s black, and the windows around the top ten or so storeys are broken. But it’s still standing. Other buildings have got bullet holes in them, and the taxi has to swerve around big craters in the road where bombs have landed.
‘How come you didn’t run away when the war was on?’ Sarah asks our taxi driver after she finds out he comes from Baluchistan where he has a wife and ten children at home and his latest newborn is a boy.
‘Where to go?’ the taxi driver shrugs. ‘My sponsor is keeping my passport and he is running fast away. Anyway, what matter is it to me who is winning or losing one war? Always taxis is being needed and in times such as this the fares are being greater so it is being good business.’
True to his word, he charges us three times too much for the ride from the hospital to our compound. Sarah doesn’t even argue.
I hardly wait for the taxi to pull up before I jump out and run towards the big, heavy wooden gates.
‘Wait for us,’ Sarah calls out as she and Walid follow, but I’ve already waited too long to find out if Tara is okay.
I drag back one of the gates. Why isn’t Tara barking? She must have heard the taxi. Usually she’d be going crazy by now.
I go cold all over.
‘Tara! Tara!’ I yell, as I race through the gates. Then I see our door is open. That’s weird. Briefly I wonder if the soldiers are checking it out for Unfriendlies again. I don’t care, I have to find Tara. I have to find out if she’s dead or alive.
As I get to the step, I hear a whimper and the clickety clack of her nails on the tiles inside the house.
Tara skids out through the door and squeals when she sees us. She’s limping a fair bit and is fairly skinny, but she’s okay.
‘Hey, girl,’ I say, as I rub her ears and lean down to hug her, breathing in her warm, buttery-toast smell. ‘We’re home now.’
‘Not for long. You’re both going to be on the first plane out of here and there’ll be no arguments.’ It’s Dad. He’s still in his uniform, which is a bit crumpled, and it doesn’t look as if he’s shaved for about three days. The door was open so he must have just arrived. I can see he’s trying to look cross, but it doesn’t work.
‘Dad!’ I yell and rush over to him. He grabs me and Sarah and gives us both a big hug that almost smothers me, but I don’t care.
It’s Tara who reminds me that Walid has just been standing there, on his own, watching us. She goes over and sniffs at him in a friendly way. I can see by the way he’s standing so still and by the look in his eyes that he’s scared, but, typical Walid, he’s not going to let anyone know.
‘She likes you,’ I say to him. ‘And she’s not going to hurt someone who’s saved her life.’
‘What’s this about saving your life?’ asks Dad. ‘And who is that?’
‘It’s a long story,’ I tell him, as I go over and save Walid from Tara. ‘But if it weren’t for Walid …’ I gulp. With everyone being all emotional, I find it hard to hold back the tears when I think about the last seven days and how close Baggy Pants came to shooting Tara. If it weren’t for Walid …