Boy 87

by Ele Fountain

The truck is so close now I can feel the vibrations as it whines and revs over the rocks and sand. I will myself to evaporate, to disappear, to become nothing but the dirt around me.

  I hear shouting from the truck, and then the shouting becomes quieter as the vehicle speeds past us. The guards must be scanning the horizon for two running figures, unsure which direction to look in the gathering dusk.

  I lie absolutely still. I feel Bini’s feet at the top of my skull, motionless. Seconds tick past like miniature lifetimes. After maybe half an hour I hear the whine of a diesel truck. Although I haven’t lifted my head or moved other than breathing, I know it must now be dark outside. The truck rumbles past so close that I feel some of the dirt kicked up by the wheels land on my legs.

  When silence returns, it feels deeper than before. No sounds of rustling blankets or coughing. For the first time in one week. Nothing.

  Then I hear Bini move to sit up, dusting the dirt from his clothes. I sit up too. We look in the direction of the camp and see nothing on the horizon. The camp itself is hidden beyond the small bluff, slightly darker than the sky around it.

  Brushing the dirt from our faces, spitting it from our mouths, we look at each other and smile.

  “I thought they were going to run us over,” says Bini.

  “That would have been pretty bad luck,” I say. I feel almost dizzy with success.

  “Give me some bread,” he says, “and I might let you have a sip of water.”

  I chew the bread without sipping water. It sucks all the moisture from my mouth, but eventually I am able to swallow it. The water is so precious I save it for a small sip at the end of my feast of five cubes of bread.

  “We can rest for a few minutes, then it’s time to move,” he says.

  “Do you think we can make it to the border before morning?” I ask.

  “Of course,” he says. “We’ve been doing nothing for a week. It’s time we got some exercise.”

  I smile again. Then suddenly stop. “You know, we’ve learnt names and phone numbers for the other prisoners, but we haven’t learnt numbers for each other.”

  Bini tilts his head to one side. “For once you’ve had a good idea. I’ll give you my mother’s number and the number of my cousin in London. How about you?”

  I teach Bini my mother’s number, Uncle Batha’s and the number of our friend in England. We also recite the villages our relatives live in, although we already knew those.

  “Just in case only one of us gets a chance to use a phone when we get across,” I say.

  He nods.

  We start to walk. My legs are stiff; my stomach rumbles, again fooled into thinking that the bread was the beginning of a proper meal.

  After a few minutes, Bini breaks into a slow jog. We head away from where the sun set, and keep looking up to see if the south-​eastern star is out. The air smells of earth and the only sound is the regular crunch of our shoes in the dirt. We are surrounded by desert, with a dark blue sky fast becoming black overhead.

  After a short while, we get into a running rhythm and my body starts to feel better. Still we are silent except for the regular thump of our feet. Then, without warning, Bini drops to the ground. I do the same.

  “What is it?” I whisper.

  “I think I see the border fence,” he whispers back.

  We must have been running for half an hour at the most.

  “Isn’t it too soon?” I say.

  I’m sure we’ve only come a few kilometres.

  Shuffling forward on our elbows, like lizards, we stare intently, but see nothing. The fence doesn’t seem to get any closer.

  “Bini, there’s no fence. It’s just the horizon.”

  “You’re right,” he replies. “It’s way too soon. I guess I was just hoping.”

  “Do you think we’re still heading in the right direction?”

  Bini tips his head back and looks up to the vast sky above. The brightest star is still to our left, but now it has been joined by a silvery backdrop of smaller ones, so faint they give the impression of a universe that stretches away for ever.

  “I think we are, but we’ll know for sure when the moon rises. We should get as far as we can before it does, though. We’ll be much easier to spot in the moonlight.”

  “Do you think we’ll be able to find some food once we’ve made it past the border?”

  “Sure,” Bini answers. “Don’t you remember Tesfay describing the restaurant serving spaghetti and ice cream, just past one of the watchtowers? Maybe the guys in the watchtowers help with the orders, if they’re not too busy.”

  “Ha ha.”

  The thought is so ridiculous that it seems almost possible. The fact we have nothing but a small bag of stale bread and a squashed bottle of water feels less important than it did a few minutes ago.

  “When we get to England I’m going to eat ice cream every day.”

  “Will you have time to watch Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium with me?”

  “Yes!” I say.

  Something about the vastness of the desert and sky which surrounds us has made us dizzy with excitement, even though we haven’t made it over the border yet. It’s like we’ve reached an unspoken decision to savour every second before the next trial.

  As we stand up, I become aware of a low rumble behind us and I see headlights shining in two moving pools. They are looking for us again, perhaps with more men.

  The headlights are now facing in our direction. They are moving closer.

  “OK,” says Bini. “Either way, we have to run.”

  He doesn’t need to tell me.

  I run with my eyes down. The moon hasn’t yet risen and the ground is uneven and covered in small stones. After a hundred metres or so, I turn to see the headlights pointing straight towards us, accompanied by the low throb of a diesel engine, like whoever is driving the truck is no longer in a hurry.

  Bini is twenty metres in front of me. I look up to see if there is any cover further ahead. I can make out the dark humps of low hills to the left. I fix my eyes on them and focus on my pace. I must not slow down. My breath is rasping and I feel like collapsing to the ground but instead push myself faster. I’m catching Bini. I can hear the truck engine above the sound of my breath and the thud of my feet.

  There is a puff of dust from the ground beside me. Bullets. They are close enough to fire at us. Instinctively I lower my head and try not to stumble. Bini does the same. There are more puffs in the ground either side.

  Bini shudders and yells out, then falls to his knees in front of me, clutching his arm.

  I skid to a halt next to him.

  “What happened?” I gasp, trying to catch my breath.

  “They shot me in the arm,” he pants.

  I can see something dark seeping through his fingers, pressed near the top of his arm. Blood drips in the dust.

  Bini stumbles to his feet and starts to walk. Each step jolts the wound.

  His eyes are tight shut and he gasps, “Go.”

  The truck is almost upon us. Bullets whizz past our feet.

  “Go,” he shouts. “Run.”

  The headlights cast a bright yellow glow around us as the truck bears down.

  I turn to look Bini in the face and see desperation in his eyes. As I break into a run, he tugs the water bottle out with his good arm and throws it after me.

  There is shouting from the truck and the puff of more bullets near my feet. I pick up speed. The truck is no longer following me.

  I hear Bini shouting at the guards.

  Without consciously slowing, I am aware of myself coming to a stop and then turning round to see Bini. He is swinging his good arm at them, punching and yelling. He is giving me a chance to get away.

  I turn to keep running, trying to breathe through the sobs which are building within me, searching for the low hills on the near horizon while tears blur my eyes.

  I hear two shots behind me, then silence.

  I don’t know how long I keep running until
I reach the foot of the low rocky hills. I am aware of the truck circling around in the desert behind me, but unless their headlights shine directly at me they won’t find me now. Bini bought me enough time to put at least five hundred metres between me and the truck. That is enough. I scramble a short way up the hill. There are dips and bumps which offer some protection from the freezing night air. Ten metres up, I stumble into a hollow between two rocks.

  I scan the horizon one last time and see nothing but black desert, the areas of paler sand or rock highlighted by the rising moon. Somewhere out there in the blackness is my friend. I curl into a ball. My mind and body can no longer cope with consciousness. I fall into a dreamless sleep.

  Border

  Something crawls over my foot. I am half-​asleep. I open my eyes and try to look down without lifting my neck. I hear a small creature moving near my leg. If it’s a snake I must keep completely still.

  A small pair of ears pokes above the side of my leg. It’s a mouse. Perhaps it can smell the bread. I slap my hand on the ground and it darts away with a squeak. I am grateful to the mouse. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep, but hopefully no more than an hour or two. The moon is still low.

  Although I no longer feel hungry, I eat two squares of bread and take two sips of water. It feels wrong to eat and drink.

  Slowly, I stand up; the muscles in my legs and arms are stiff and aching.

  I start to walk east. I am a robot, putting one foot in front of the other. The human Shif is hiding somewhere inside. I don’t know if he will ever reappear.

  *

  I walk and walk. The sun becomes a long thin glow on the horizon. I occupy myself by thinking about how long I ran for, and for how long I have walked. If my sums are right, then I must have covered at least thirty kilometres. Tesfay said the border was about ten kilometres from the camp.

  Either I am heading in completely the wrong direction, or his information about the border fence was wrong. Maybe there is a fence somewhere, but it doesn’t reach here. There are no watchtowers either. I must be so far from any towns or cities that the military decided no person could get this far without being caught. I guess it’s easy to underestimate what desperate people are capable of. I have passed silently from one country to another, and my only witnesses were the small creatures which live in the sand and rocks.

  Desert

  I know that I must walk as far as I can before the sun is strong again, but somehow the reserves of energy I drew on before have completely disappeared. My body feels heavy.

  I try to remember what Tesfay told us but find it hard to concentrate. I need something to focus on, to draw my thoughts away from the black hole which threatens to suck me in. He said to head south-​west after the border. There is a refugee camp where I will be able to easily find someone who can arrange a journey north to the coast, and then onto a boat to Europe. There are many smugglers, so I might get a good price. He didn’t know how long it would take me to get there. Maybe two days walking, maybe five. If it’s more than two I am in trouble. Two-​t hirds of my water and half my bread have gone.

  I am already weak after my time in the camp and so little food. I look to the south and see in the far distance what look like huge, round-​topped, reddish mountains looming to the left.

  I am glad that daylight has bleached away the dark, but there is still no sound other than the rhythmic crunch of my feet on the sandy gravel. I am tired in a way I don’t remember ever feeling before. It’s like an extra layer shrouds my body, a layer of something heavy and persistent.

  I reach wearily down for the bread bag tied around my waist and don’t see the sharp stone directly beneath my foot. My ankle twists and I crumple to the ground. Pain shoots from the side of my foot to my lower leg. After a minute, my ankle starts to swell. I can’t put any weight on it but I can limp, although this uses a lot more energy than just walking.

  The sun is so hot that sweat runs down the side of my face and dries before it reaches my neck. A layer of salty sweat coats my body, sticking to my T-​shirt. I have almost finished my water. There is a small thorn bush ahead and I decide to rest there until the sun loses some of its heat. I can feel what little strength I have evaporating.

  Before I sit, I hear a low engine rumble coming from the direction in which I am heading. There is dust on the horizon and a truck speeding towards me.

  I throw myself to the ground, but it’s too late—whoever is driving the truck has seen me. I sit still—there is no point lying in the dirt any more.

  As the truck draws near, I look up again and see that the men in the back aren’t wearing army clothes but long dishdash and bright keffiyeh around their heads. They are not soldiers.

  A tiny spark of hope lights in my chest. Maybe they are from the refugee camp and have come to rescue me and take me there.

  They are waving in a friendly way. They will have water. I wave back and start limping very slowly towards the truck. My ankle is now so swollen that I can hardly bear to touch the ground with my left foot.

  As I start walking, the men stop waving. The truck slows to stop about twenty metres away. The men are talking loudly to each other and every now and again point at me. They are arguing. One of the men throws his arms up in the air and then sits down. The driver revs the engine, and the truck turns around in a big dusty loop and heads back in the direction it came from.

  I sit down again, feeling like I am the last person alive in the world.

  Riddle

  Why did the men seem pleased to see me but then drive away, leaving me alone in the desert? They could see that I am injured and have no bags with me. No food.

  What if I haven’t made it across the border after all? What if I’ve been wandering in the wrong direction and the men in the truck have gone to get a reward from the soldiers for finding me?

  If Bini were with me we could talk about what just happened, reassure each other that we’ll still be OK.

  I decide to eat three squares of bread. That leaves me with four. I tip a few drops of water into my mouth, but there isn’t enough left for me to have a proper mouthful. Then I sit next to the bush. I wonder whether if I sit here long enough my body will start to resemble the spiny dried-​out twigs beside me.

  When the sun is a little lower, I stagger painfully upright and start limping heavily in the direction the truck went. I will walk as far as I can towards the refugee camp. I will keep walking until I collapse.

  Help

  The reddish rounded hills grow slowly closer and taller. They are unlike anything I’ve seen before—almost straight-​sided and smooth, like the mounds of paprika the spice sellers make to attract customers. As I hobble towards the vast base of the mountain, what I see in the distance is not a camp, but a town. There are white buildings with green trees between them. In front of the town are fields of what look like palm trees.

  My ankle throbs, but I suddenly feel energy returning from somewhere. There might be water, food, shelter. But I will need money for water and food. Swirling in the heat of my brain is the memory of my mother sewing money into my shoes.

  After two hours, I reach the first buildings at the edge of town. My head is spinning and I can’t focus. My mouth is so dry that I cannot swallow. The sun beats down, but I don’t feel myself sweating any more. Some small boys and girls run past me, laughing and talking. The sandy desert gathers itself into a wide dusty road leading further into the town. On either side are walled compounds and fruit trees; one of the fruit trees hangs over the street, creating a little shade. I need to look for the notes or coins hidden within my shoes.

  I fall shakily to my hands and knees and start to crawl towards the shady spot. Stones scrape my skin. But I reach the cool sanctuary. The sounds around me become fainter, as if they’re moving away.

  Just as I am about to lose consciousness, I feel a hand on my shoulder. A man is shaking me. He says something in a language I don’t understand and then drops a coin in the dust in front of me. It is
gold around the edge and silver in the middle. As my head spins, it seems to shine with unnatural brightness. At home the coins are silver. They have the words Liberty, Equality and Justice written round the edge. I don’t understand the writing on this coin. So I did cross the border. This town is in a different country. No one will know me here. No one will be looking for me.

  I look at the coin and am grateful but know that I cannot get up to buy anything with it. It’s then that I realize that if I let myself drift away again I will not wake up. I think hazily about the people in the prison, about Bini. I am free and they are not. Somewhere people can help me.

  I hear voices behind me. Two boys are walking into town with a donkey laden with onions.

  I whisper, “Water” and point to my mouth.

  One of them gives me a piece of bread.

  I mimic drinking from a cup and they pass me a goatskin water bottle. I take a sip, then another. I wonder if they realize that they have saved my life. How many times can my life be saved before my luck runs out?

  As the sun sinks lower in the sky, I decide to try and walk down the wide dusty road with my coin in search of a market. As the road curves round, I hear the beeping of horns and buzz of motorbikes. I can also smell food and cattle and petrol. I find the smells almost overwhelming. My senses seem to have become sharper now that I am properly starving. I wonder how I appear to people passing by. Poor and homeless. Like the people my mother would give a few cents to, before the police came to move them on or take them away.

  Round another corner I see the edge of a market. The stalls spill from a central covered square out into the street. There are sheets on the ground, covered with vegetables and baskets of spices, rows of banana bunches and mounds of grain.

  Near me a man crouches on the ground; next to him is a basket full of bottles of water. I give him my coin and take some water. I put my hand out for change and he gives me some. I do not know how to say “hello”, or “thank you” here.