by Bina Shah
I ease the ambulance out onto the road, following the blind curve, which leads to a steady downhill slope. It takes me only a few minutes to get used to driving the car: it’s easy to direct it down the empty road. A gentle nudge of the navigator steers us to the left or right, and as my fingers press down in the grooves, I begin to enjoy the scenery going past, the dun-colored mountain walls, little ledges dotted with small trees and scrub brush, an occasional gecko dashing across the road. Here and there the ambulance skids clumsily, and I have to hold the wheel tight to negotiate between the accelerator and the brake.
We climb down for about fifteen or twenty minutes. Soon the road levels out, and we’re in desert flatlands once more. The porcelain blue sky meets the horizon in a line as straight as a ruler. The sandstorm is far behind us, and so is Green City. I’ll have to drive for I don’t know how long to reach the border. I have no way of knowing distances, and the ambulance’s navigation system is still a mystery to me.
To pass the time, I imagine conversations with all the women of the Panah: Rupa, Diyah, Su-Yin, Mariya, Aleyna. How would I tell them everything that’s happened to me? They’d be amazed, horrified, curious. They’d tease me about Julien; their hearts would thrill at how we lay together that night in the hospital. They’d cry with me, for me, for the assault on my body and the loss of the pregnancy, no matter how unformed and unknown the clump of cells. They’d hate my attacker, whoever he was, applaud my courage at taking Bouthain’s drug and using death to cheat Reuben Faro.
Maybe they wouldn’t understand how I could trust an unknown man and his untested medicine. I’d tell them that I’d trusted Bouthain because of his regard for Julien. I know Bouthain wouldn’t voluntarily leave either of us until we’re safe. I know he did all of this for his star pupil. You’d have to be blind not to recognize, in Bouthain’s loyalty, the finest of love, the purest of compassion, wrapped up in his grouchy exterior.
As I keep my finger on the accelerator, driving down the never-ending tunnel of sand, I long to hear Bouthain’s raspy voice one more time. His dedication to his job gives shelter to anyone who suffers. What he did for me goes far beyond the extent of any job. I wonder if Bouthain and Mañalac are still alive. They are probably dead by now. Or will be soon. There is no mercy in Green City.
But when it comes to imagining how I’d explain things to Lin, my imagination comes to a stop. A mixture of guilt, shame, and fear rises in me as I picture her listening to my tale. I’ve ruined everything by exposing the Panah to Reuben Faro’s wrath.
I stop thinking for a while and concentrate on the road. I drive for so long that I’m no longer sure whether I’m asleep or awake. “Julien, please wake up,” I say, turning my head a little to the side so that the words can reach him. “Please. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”
My mind drifts back to a moment with Joseph, a half-memory, a flash of something. Instead of darkness, I can see the gray of an early morning, the streets of Green City, the faint light and a soft drizzle lathering the sky through a bedroom window.
All of a sudden I’m back in the bed with the black silk sheets, the black champagne glass on the side table. If I turn my head to the side, I can see the fizzy bubbles breaking on the surface of the liquid. Sabine? Are you awake?
It’s Joseph’s voice. Joseph’s hands. Joseph’s body bearing down on mine. I suddenly remember it all: his weight and pressure, my subdued acquiescence. The fear underneath all the grogginess.
The desert is a sea in front of me; the mountains behind are a wall between past and present that I’ve just traveled through. I could dismiss all of this as fantasies, as nightmares, as vivid imaginings. But insomnia is not what caused those blank spaces in my mind. The soreness in my belly and my thighs I’d felt in the Panah were not just cramps or an upset stomach. I was violated, on the first night Joseph gave me the black champagne, six weeks ago.
Sabine? Are you awake? is what Joseph whispered to me before he began to touch me, while I was unconscious in his bed. He was the father of that unborn, unwanted child, nothing more than an embryo, nothing less than an earthquake in my life.
It’s too much. I let go of the steering wheel, which sounds a violent alarm as we go spinning off the road and bounce onto the soft shoulder. Julien’s pod knocks against the ambulance walls, shifting violently from one side to the other. I bang my head on the door. The ambulance comes to a stop at a disjointed angle, half off and half on the road. The engine is still running erratically, a loud ticking sound filling the cab. I press my fingers to my head and they come away sticky with blood.
As we sit there, I begin to shake. I put my arms onto the steering wheel and lean my head against them. I want to cry, to fill the air with apologies. To my parents. To Lin. To the Panah. To Bouthain and Mañalac. And to Julien. I want my last word to be sorry. I have broken every rule, transgressed every limit. Maybe this is what I deserve. Maybe I should just die right here.
But as my trembling subsides and the sobs dry up, as the sun starts its descent towards the horizon, I ask myself why I should die for Green City. It’s stolen everything from me: my parents, my home, my future. My body, my sanctity, my friends from the Panah. Lin. Why should I give it the last thing I have left: my life?
I slot my fingers into the steering wheel, turn the ambulance back on. Push the accelerator button and carefully, slowly, back up on the road. Now straighten it out. Switch on the lights, it’s starting to get dark. That’s it. That’s good. Now drive, Sabine. There will be time, later, to take account of everything, to reconcile what I know with what I’ve learned. But now, I have to drive for my life.
And we’re off, the engine growling. I’m leaning forward in my seat, pushing the steering wheel as if I can make the ambulance move faster with physical effort. The sun begins to disappear and twilight spreads from the east, the moon a full yellow circle above me. Soon in the distance I can make out the border fence: a crooked horizontal line that glimmers with a low-voltage electric charge. The closer we get, the more defined it becomes, like the bars of a cage. I lower my head and clench my teeth, and press hard on the accelerator. I’ve had enough of cages.
There’s a roar and a bang as we crash into the fence, larger and stronger than I imagined, a steel alloy, designed for resistance. But the ambulance tears a bullet-shaped hole into it and we pierce through it to the other side.
We skid to a halt twenty yards after the fence; the ambulance gears whir and grind, but the wheels won’t obey anymore. I hear rapid footsteps and cries of alarm all around me. I stay in my seat, breathing hard, as they open the doors, both front and back. Gentle hands tug at my shoulder. A man and a woman in the olive green uniforms of the Semitia Border Guards peer at me, in shock and concern. There’s astonished curiosity all over their faces, as if I’ve dropped in from another planet. But no guns. There are no guns pointed at me.
“Are you all right?” says the woman. She’s young, my age. Maybe even younger. Red-haired, hazel-eyed, and sharp-faced, she looks just a bit like Lin. Surprise shines in her eyes, as if she’s practiced for this moment but never really expected it to happen. Am I the first woman from Green City that she’s ever seen?
She squares her jaw, smoothes her features into an expression that’s professional and reassuring. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. You’re safe now.” She’s probably been trained to say it; it’s exactly what I need to hear. I lean to the side, rest my head on the door of the ambulance, and exhale slowly. I didn’t even know I was holding my breath.
And then, from the back, a thin voice, like the first cry of a child entering the world.
“What’s happening? Sabine, where are you?”
“Julien,” I say, “I’m right here.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you:
Simon Kristensen published the short story on which Before She Sleeps’s first chapter is based and invited me to Copenhagen to re
ad it out loud. Warsan Shire heard me there and told me to turn it into a novel; I’ve written this book expressly on her urging. Claire Chambers, who has always been a friend and huge source of encouragement, introduced me to the work of Susan Watkins, who gave generous feedback on an early draft of the book and information about the vast field of dystopian feminist fiction. Sunny Hundal’s India Dishonoured: Behind a Nation’s War on Women helped me gain a deep understanding of the devastating effects of gender selection on Indian society. Monica Byrne’s The Girl in the Road helped me figure out a contemporary-sounding voice for a futuristic tale. Shandana Minhas shared her impressive knowledge of science fiction and cheered me on when I was ready to give up. Wellesley friends Susan Gies Conley, Edris Goolsby, and Anna Balogh kept urging me to persist, reminding me that if I could survive four years at W, then I could write this book. Writer friends Christopher Merrill, Aamer Hussein, Rachel McCormack, and Peter Fogtdal offered support as I sweated through months of writing and rewriting. Rick Slettenhaar was a brother-in-arms and a shoulder to lean on during the terrible time after Sabeen Mahmud’s death. Syma Khalid and Alina Hasanain Shah helped me with the medical and scientific aspects of Julien’s work and research. MacGregor Rucker offered me helpful feedback on crucial scenes in the book. The music of Chilly Gonzales, especially the song “Gentle Threat,” helped me develop the noir atmosphere of Green City.
Special thanks go to my agents Jessica Woollard and Clare Israel for believing in this novel, as well as my publisher Lori Milken for her valuable input. And reserving the best for last: my editor and friend Joseph Olshan, with whom working on this book together has been one of the most difficult and most rewarding experiences of my life.
About the Author
Bina Shah is a regular contributor to the international New York Times and is a frequent guest on the BBC. She has contributed essays to Granta, the Independent, and the Guardian. She holds degrees from Wellesley College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is an alumna of the University of Iowa’s International Writers Workshop. Her novel Slum Child was a bestseller in Italy, and she has been published in English, Spanish, German and Italian. She lives in Karachi.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fi ctitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Bina Shah
Cover design by Greg Mortimer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5516-1
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BINA SHAH
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