The Wall

by William Sutcliffe

  For minutes on end the truck sits there with the vibrations of the motor rattling my skeleton, until eventually the gears crunch and the truck sets off. We creep forwards, at the back of a short convoy, towards the checkpoint.

  I keep my head down and hear the driver call something out to the two guys at the barrier, which slips upwards, glides past just above me, then clangs down back into place.

  Beyond The Wall, buildings soon close in, looming above the truck. I feel less exposed now, as we snake through the narrow streets not much faster than you’d ride a bike. Once we’re into the old town centre, all I have to do is get down.

  There are no windows at the rear of the truck. If I hang from the back as we approach a corner, then jump free and run out of sight as the truck turns, no one should see me.

  Shuffling to the back while the truck is moving will mask the sound of my movements, but is risky if the vehicle corners. I have a solid bar to grip at the front of the roof, but there’s little else to hold on to further back, and the metal is slippery. If I pick the wrong moment, I could be thrown off the side.

  The convoy stops and starts at regular intervals. During the next pause, I let go of the bar, swivel on my belly to face the back of the truck, and slither forwards as fast as I can. Before I’ve reached another handhold, the truck lurches into motion, sliding me left and right with every turn, rolling me from edge to edge. I don’t dare kick to keep my balance because the soldiers inside might hear me. All I can do is flatten myself harder against the metal and hope that friction holds me in place. Then the brakes jam on, sending me skidding back to where I started. I freeze, wondering if they’ve heard my body slide around on their roof, and are about to jump out to capture me, but no doors open, so while the truck remains still I crawl again towards the rear doors.

  I move faster this time and get my hand on to a protruding hinge, but when I begin to swing myself down, the truck jolts forwards. For an instant, my brain can’t compute what has happened: why I can no longer sense any metal against my skin; why the sky doesn’t appear to be in the correct position; why my body seems to be still, but in motion. Just as I begin to understand that I’m somersaulting through the air, I feel a sharp blow to my shoulder as I land in the dust. I sit up, groggily watching the truck pull away in front of me, then it stops and the rear lights go white.

  I leap to my feet, ignoring the pain shooting from my shoulder, and run down a side street. I hear the mechanical squeal of the personnel carrier reversing at speed, and realise this street will only shield me from view for a second or two longer. I need to hide, but the road is just a row of shuttered houses. I sprint towards a line of parked cars, take off my backpack and throw myself into the gutter, sliding under a tiny red Fiat, dragging the bag in behind me.

  The truck screeches to a halt and I hear the sound of doors opening, followed by the clomp of several pairs of boots jumping on to tarmac. I lie as still as I can, wedged under the car. My nose is only millimetres from an oily puddle which stinks of old urine, but there’s no space to lift my head any higher. The sweet, acrid stench fizzes in my nostrils like a tiny insect trying to drill towards my brain.

  The voices of the soldiers move closer, encircling the car. One of them is claiming to have seen something, another is mocking him for being blind. I can see black boots ahead of me and on both sides of the Fiat.

  The rasping sound of air pushing itself in and out of my panicked lungs is so loud it seems impossible the soldiers won’t hear me, but the harder I try to control it, the noisier my breathing becomes.

  An ear-splitting crack – a gunshot – rips through the air. Every muscle in my body jerks, jolting my head against the exhaust pipe of the car. A ringing in my ears momentarily blots out all sound, until a high-pitched wail, like a small child in intense pain, pierces through. The soldiers crouch down, taking up combat positions, and no one speaks. Then a burst of laughter fills the street.

  Soon, the soldiers are walking around again, laughing and talking over one another. Another gunshot goes off, bringing the ongoing wailing to an end. The soldiers, now clumped together, strolling casually, walk back towards my hiding place. As they go around and past the car, I pick out a few snatches of conversation, all of which seem to be making fun of one particular soldier for his stupidity and bad eyesight. He has shot a dog.

  The chatter recedes as the soldiers climb into their truck, still mocking the man who fired his gun, saying his difficulty telling dogs from humans explains a lot about his choice of girlfriends.

  That dog, I realise, was shot in my place, and has saved me. Someone must have caught a glimpse of me jumping off the truck, or they wouldn’t have stopped and searched the area. Without that animal explaining away the movement that was seen, they would have carried on searching, and it wouldn’t have taken them long to find me. If I’d been running when I was spotted, I might have been shot.

  The air fills with the noise of the personnel carrier’s engine clattering into motion. I listen as it drives away, not moving a muscle or even withdrawing my nose from the puddle, until the sound of the truck has faded to nothing.

  Pulling my bag after me, I roll out from under the car and dust myself down. I’m filthy. My T-shirt is ripped and bloodstained at the shoulder. A searing ache makes it difficult to lift my right arm. The back of my head stings where I banged it against the underside of the car. I touch the sore spot gingerly, and my fingers come back smeared with oil and blood.

  It’s hard to put my backpack on again, but with a careful slide up my injured limb I just about manage, and stand next to the car wondering what to do next.

  It’s obvious I didn’t think through my mission with enough care. I knew it would be dangerous, but I now feel this was a word I simply didn’t comprehend. As I stand there, breaching the curfew on the wrong side of The Wall, bloodstained, shaken and sore, the fear that is clamped around me contains not a shred of excitement or thrill. A sickening dread squats in my stomach, paralysing me. I don’t want to be there. Soldiers, patrolling this place with guns, really will shoot me without asking who I am first. In this curfew, any moving shadow is a target. It’s madness for me to be here, risking my life to deliver a few boxes of aspirin. I have made a terrible miscalculation, but now there’s no way back. Walking to the checkpoint and trying to turn myself in would be too risky. I no longer believe the soldiers would hold their fire long enough for me to explain who I am, or why I’m there.

  My only option is to press on. I have to find my way to Leila’s house without being seen by any military convoys. Once I get there, I’ll be safe for the night.

  I try to walk out of the side street without turning my head, but after a couple of steps I can’t stop myself glancing backwards. In the middle of the road, a skinny mongrel with a patchy grey coat is lying in a pool of blood. His back is arched and his legs are splayed, as if he’s in the middle of a joyful leap, but his eyes have a misty, alien coldness I’ve never seen before. It’s the look of the dead, a look that freezes and hypnotises me, prolonging my glance into an intense, horrified stare.

  I don’t blink, I don’t swallow, I don’t move. My father, after he was shot, must have had eyes like this. He, too, lay in the street, in a puddle of congealing blood, with strangers looking at him in the way I’m staring at the mongrel. And this dog, of course, could have been me. With a worse place, or a panicked movement at the wrong time, I could have taken that very bullet, and now I’d have those lifeless eyes in my head, staring but not looking.

  I’ve never tried to imagine myself dead before, and even now it feels almost impossible, but less impossible than it did an hour ago.

  It’s a while before I turn away from the dog and walk back towards the main road. At the corner I stop and peep out, looking in both directions for a convoy. The road is clear.

  Keeping close to the walls, rushing from doorway to doorway so I’m never far from a hiding place, I scurry in the direction of the high street. Every few steps I take cover,
pause, and look behind.

  Nobody is on the streets. Moving on foot through the town, it’s clear the crackdown has caused havoc. Chunks of masonry are missing everywhere, with scaffolding poles wedged into gaps left by collapsed walls. One first-floor apartment, still fully furnished, gapes open where a shell has hit. Through the hole I can see a TV, a sofa, pictures still hanging on the wall.

  A blue Peugeot is parked at a skewed angle, the front half squashed flat, the back curiously unharmed. I pass an office whose door is off its hinges, squashed and bent on the ground. Inside, filing cabinet after filing cabinet is open, with papers strewn over the floor like a thick snowfall. Two rows of four desks are still in place, every one supporting a computer with a smashed screen.

  I walk on through the destruction, towards the high street. Here, telegraph poles have toppled, and what look like high-voltage wires are strewn across the ground. I can’t tell if they’re live, but I tread carefully. More cars have been flattened by passing tanks. Shards of glass glisten across the street, twinkling in the moonlight, crunching underfoot. Guessing as to the correct direction, I make for the flying cake bakery, still huddling in the shadows, pausing in shopfronts, looking and listening for soldiers.

  The first convoy to pass is audible long before it comes into view. I take cover in a burned-out shop while it passes. A waft of diesel fumes drifts towards me as the earth-shaking wheels trundle past. I wait, cowering behind the fire-scorched wall of the shop, until the sound and smell have subsided. A peek up the road confirms that the convoy has gone, and I set off again.

  Just as I hear the rumble of the next convoy I spot the flying cake bakery, the distinctive sign still intact, but no longer illuminated. I take a few steps into an alleyway and conceal myself behind some bins as the trucks pass. Crouched in the stinking darkness, my thoughts turn again to the dead dog. On the other side of The Wall, a dog that skinny would have to be a stray, but here I’m not so sure. Did someone, asleep somewhere in this town, own that dog? Did they love it? How long would they spend looking for it, and would they ever find out what happened? Or perhaps, living here, it was easy to guess.

  By the time my mind jolts itself out of this cascade of questions, the air is once again still and quiet. The convoy has passed. I inch out of the alleyway and scan the street in both directions, before heading back up the road, running this time, excited to know where I am, and confident that I have a sense of the spacing between the convoys. I turn off into the next side street, navigating now by a mixture of instinct and half-memory, rushing onwards through a network of narrow, empty streets.

  Just when I’m beginning to think I might have gone the wrong way, I see a motorbike. The black motorbike I hid behind. And right next to it, up three steps, the green door with the round iron knocker. I run towards the house, elated, and knock.

  There’s no answer.

  I bang again, five times. They can’t be out. There’s a curfew.

  I push up the flap of the letterbox and call inside. ‘Let me in! Let me in!’

  Still no reply.

  It had not even crossed my mind this might happen. I sink to my knees and feel a surge of dismay grip me. Could they have run away from the fighting? Might Leila’s father already be dead?

  Then I hear a rustling on the other side of the door, and a high, clear voice I instantly recognise. She makes a brief sound, just three syllables, but I can’t understand them; the same three sounds, twice in a row; then three more, with a hesitant intonation, this time in my language: ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Josh. It’s me. Joshua. Let me in.’

  ‘Joshua? You’ve come?’

  ‘I have the medicine. Let me in.’

  After a burst of hurried chatter, I hear bolts and locks being drawn back. The door creaks open, and as soon as the gap is wide enough I push through and slump to the floor, my body drained of strength. Leila crouches over me, with a crowd of people I don’t recognise close behind, all of them staring at me blearily through sleepy eyes.

  ‘You have the medicine?’ says Leila.

  I’m still too breathless to speak, and simply nod, pushing the backpack off my shoulders and handing the whole thing over to her. She grabs it, looks inside and disappears, calling something to one of her brothers as she goes. He walks after her, then reappears with a chair, takes my arm and hoists me up, staring at my every move as I lower myself on to the seat. I stare back, too tired and overwhelmed to speak or even smile, as Leila’s brothers form themselves into a silent arc in front of me.

  I can hear something that sounds like an argument from the main room of the apartment, then Leila’s father appears, supported on one side by his daughter, on the other by his wife. He looks ten years older than the last time I saw him, with sunken cheeks and dull, waxy skin. His mouth seems to have retreated into his skull.

  The huddle of people around me parts at his approach. His eyes, beaming with furious intensity, lock with mine, and he shrugs away the two women who are gripping his arms. Without their support he looks precarious and frail, as if the slightest nudge would knock him over.

  ‘You came,’ he says, in a thin, breathy voice, his tongue clicking strangely in his mouth as he speaks.

  I nod.

  ‘You brought me the medicine.’

  I nod again. ‘As much as I could get. It’s not a lot, but I did my best.’

  One of his eyes becomes briefly shiny, as if a tear might be trying to form, but he blinks it away. ‘Thank you,’ he says.

  I nod once more, a series of sharp, fast movements that push back a tearful swelling in my throat.

  ‘How?’ he says. ‘The tunnel’s been sealed. There’s a curfew.’

  ‘I hid.’

  ‘You hid? Where?’

  ‘An army truck.’

  ‘You hid in an army truck?’

  ‘On. On the roof. I jumped off after the checkpoint.’

  He stares at me in disbelief, then a hubbub ripples through the room as this information is translated, debated and digested.

  ‘Can I stay here tonight?’ I ask.

  This question seems to burst a bubble of tension, and a roar of laughter fills the room, rolling around from person to person, rising and falling, as the question is repeated in both languages, with Leila’s mother and brothers making expansive gestures offering me all the space, all the food, all the time they have to offer.

  I soon find myself swarmed upon, with my filthy T-shirt pulled off me, my wounds bathed, and clean clothes shoved over my head. An array of food appears on the dining table: a plate of flat, white bread cut into strips, a bowl of olives, a dish of yoghurt, plates of dried herbs and olive oil. Even though it’s the middle of the night, everyone gathers round the table, chatting and picking at the food, as if my visit has turned into a strange, impromptu party.

  When I say I’m tired, the food is whisked away and I’m given a mattress in the corner, next to Leila’s eldest brother. Within minutes, the room transforms from excited bustle to dead silence.

  I’m still not sure how I’ll get out, or even where I’ll go. The shooting of the dog has shaken my confidence. The idea that I can head off, alone, to look after myself, without a family, or even any friends, looks somehow different now, viewed from here.

  I’m still desperate to get away from Amarias, but even this short distance from home, everything already seems more violent, more frightening, more hostile than I anticipated. I thought it would be all right to be alone, since I felt alone in my own house anyway, but I now see there are further degrees of aloneness I hadn’t understood. I’ll be cutting myself off from more than I’d anticipated, heading towards an isolation I now realise will be deeper than anything I can yet imagine.

  Lying on this thin, musty mattress, surrounded by sleeping strangers, my shoulder and head pulsing out dull throbs of pain, I sense that I’ve perhaps used up my reserves of bravery. But could I go back? Could I really just turn round and go home, let myself into the house and tell Mum the letter was
a joke?

  I close my eyes and listen to the snoring and shuffling around me. In the distance, a convoy rumbles and clatters. I’m too tired to make any decisions. For now, I just have to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll figure out what to do, where to go.

  The house is strangely hushed when I wake. I open my eyes to a room full of people, all of them already out of bed, conversing tensely in low voices. The volume rises a little when they realise I’ve woken up, but a note of anxiety in the air doesn’t lift. They are all around the table in the far corner of the room, some sitting, some standing. There aren’t enough chairs for everyone to sit at once, nor is there enough space around the table, but everyone is nibbling at pieces of dry bread, which they dip into a plate of green herbs.

  As I approach the table, one of the brothers stands and insists that I take his chair. I try to refuse, but everyone rounds on me with various noises on the spectrum between affectionate hospitality and offended outrage until I relent and take the free chair. The largest piece of bread is placed in front of me, along with a supply of herbs.

  I start to eat, struggling to feign enjoyment of this meagre, spicy breakfast, but with each mouthful the flavour becomes a little less strange. Just as I’m beginning to think I might almost like it, Leila’s father appears and is given the chair at the head of the table, next to mine. Before he’s allowed to speak to me, Leila’s mother insists that he translate her apologies that, because of the curfew, the bread isn’t fresh. She seems to go on and on, but this is the only translation I’m given.

  When she stops talking and moves away, he says, after a strained pause, ‘We want to know how you’re getting back. The tunnel is gone.’