The Crisis (6 page)

An old Bantu offers her a ride on his donkey. She's afraid but his kind face makes her trust him. He asks where she's going, and she says the name of her village. His face changes. “That was a sanctuary for the rebels,” he says.

We weren't rebels, she wants to say, but doesn't. Still, the old man lets her ride nearly all night before he lifts her down.

For the next two days she walks. She holds out a hand to passing people. Someone throws something from a passing truck. She almost ignores it, then realizes it's a half-eaten banana. She wolfs it down, then staggers off the road, sick to her stomach.

 

SHE'S walking along a road that seems to be high above all the lands around it. Then she's not there, that's all, it's as if she's fallen asleep.

When she wakes she's still walking, but now she's with a group of women. They're trudging through a village. All its doors are closed. Not even a cock crows as they plod through. It's so much like a dream she can't believe she's awake. Dust bakes in the noon sun. Something sparkles and she bends. Cartridge casings lie scattered like chickens' corn along the street. There are stains in the dust too. But no people.

The well's capped with a wooden lid. When the refugees drag it off a black cloud rises, buzzing like a rainstorm. So many flies the light fades like a rain cloud's passing.

She can't see what's down there, only the shocked faces of the women around it. She clings to one and says she's thirsty, why aren't they drawing water. The woman pushes her away. She says, “There are too many bodies.”

 

AS the days pass she feels less hungry but more ill. Her legs ache as if someone's twisting knotted ropes under her skin. Every few minutes she has to move off the road and squat and lift her skirt. Filth covers the ground. Dirtiness drizzles out of her and she feels dizzy. She feels feverish, then chilled, as if ice encases her even in the sun. She's had fevers before. But at home there was a bed to lie in, and her mother would bring
goat's milk and treats. She lies on the ground and moans for her mother, her family, for the smell of the mangoes.

Eventually she realizes this isn't the way to the village. Mountains rise on the horizon, peaks she's never seen before. She trades the
xirsi
amulet to drink from a well guarded by men who murmur that the refugees are unclean, they can't be trusted, they work for the government. She wants to say this isn't true. The government burned our village. But she dares not. The well's surrounded by feces and sick people lying on the ground. Farther away is a pile of things covered with black rags she's afraid to look at.

She no longer knows where she's going. But still she trudges on, singing about the turtle and the ostrich. She wraps her bleeding feet with cloths she finds along the road. She sings all the songs she knows, until her lips bleed. She stares back at two girls who push a cart with bicycle tires.

Her bowels clench in familiar pain and she has to leave the road again.

 

SHE'S trudging on numb feet when a truck snorts along the road. The refugees part without looking up. The trucks won't stop. Even if they did, bad things happen with the soldiers, with the truckers.

A very strange-looking person leans out of the cab. Her face is white as the clouds. Her eyes are blue as the birds on a bowl Zeynaab used to eat from. Her hair's like the silk of the maize. Zeynaab stops dead, staring. She's never seen a human being like this before. If it
is
a human being.

To multiply her astonishment, the woman speaks words she understands. “Little girl, where's your mother?”

“She's dead.”

“Your father?”

“I don't know.”

“Have you no family?”

She doesn't cry, only stares.

The woman doesn't need to invite her into the truck. She just holds out something in a bright wrapper.

 

THERE are three other children in the back, all boys. For a moment her heart leaps; but none is Nabil or Ghedi. The mountains go in and out of sight, then grow ahead as the truck twists and turns upward. One mountain stays. She tugs on the woman's arm when she needs to go into the brush. When the woman realizes she's sick she gives her a bottle of strange drink. It's salty but sugary too. Zeynaab drinks it all and when she's done the woman gives her another from a box on the floorboards.
Then she unwraps the filthy rags from Zeynaab's feet and throws them out the window.

The truck climbs, and the cab, where she rides with the woman and the driver, smells bad. When it overtakes refugees the woman tells the driver to slow. She leans forward, searching as they press through the throngs. Now and then she tells the driver to stop. When Zeynaab realizes what she's doing a chill shakes her.

She's looking for children who are alone. Like the witches in the stories her aunties told her. Is she in a story now? Where are they going? She tries to muster courage to ask, but can't. The truck lurches as it climbs. Enormous rocks loom over the laboring vehicle, throwing cool shadows. Birds she's never seen before dart past. She needs to stop again, but puts it off so long it's almost too late. The woman smells sweet. It comes to Zeynaab that she herself is the source of the bad smell.

At last the truck heaves to a stop, panting like a tired elephant. She's never seen an elephant, only a picture in a book Auntie showed her. Her auntie went to school, when there were schools, in the Italian times. The driver lets down the gate in the back. He calls the boys to come down. He gives each of them a bottle of water. He shows them how to twist the caps off and they drink, eyes searching the sky as they tilt the bottles up.

The woman takes a pair of shoes from a box. They're red as the guava flowers after the rains come. They're plastic, and they
sparkle
. They're so beautiful she can't take her eyes off them as the woman bends and slips them over her torn, nailless, blackened toes. Then comes around to the side and, before she's quite ready, holds up her arms for Zeynaab to jump down.

Her attention's still on the wonderful shoes, so she doesn't notice, at first. The woman tugs at her hand, and she turns. And gasps.

The mountain rears above them, a cliff that goes up to where the sun lives. It's half in shadow, and rocks and stones jut from it. Only after walking for some time, new shoes slippery on the sun-heated scree, does she make out the path.

They climb for hours, until her thighs ache and her head spins again. The boys trail after them, chattering at first, then silent. The woman halts to rest, but not often enough. They sweat out the water and there's no more. Birds soar, balancing on the wind.

High above and far away, a thread dangles from heaven. It flutters and sways, like spider silk in the wind. Only as they approach does she gradually make out a resting place at the top of the trail, at the foot of a cliff that flies up and up so far she can't tip her head back enough to see the top. When they reach it, wheezing, dizzy, there's an ancient pavement set with
bits of colored stone, a picture of a man in a brown robe with a circle around his head, holding up two fingers.

In the center, where the colors are worn, sits a large woven basket. The woman urges her toward it. Zeynaab resists, weeping in terror. The woman tries to persuade her, but all she hears are broken words, like jagged shards of pottery that gouge at her ears.

The woman puts her hands on her. Her voice grows soft. Is this the voice of a witch? Is this the voice of a mother? She struggles, begging the driver to help her. He turns away, his profile hawklike. She shudders, the world spins, the mountain's about to fall on her.

 

WHEN she comes to again she's curled in the basket. When she peers up, loose strips of blue cloth interlace above her. A rope curves upward until it vanishes. The basket revolves, creaking and swaying in a way that grips her heart.

She knows where she is now: in the bowl with the birds and bunnies on it she used to eat from when she was small. There are the birds, down below her. They're free, released from the hard forever of porcelain.

She stares at the cliff passing a few arm's-lengths away. Strange plants with gray spines grow on it, clinging in the crevices, and around them bright butterflies weave like the colored yarn on a carpet loom.

Then the basket revolves, and she sees only bright blue of empty sky, and below it, so far away she can hardly imagine it, stretch so very many miles of foothill and desert over which they must have driven in the truck. She shivers in the witch's basket gazing out at the whole world, so wide and small now she can't see her village, can't see the road, can't see her old life, which, she finally understands, whatever happens now, is forever gone.

T
HE air force captain had stopped fighting the night before, after Teddy fucked her for a couple of hours. Zoned out, like they did when you got them quieted down. Turning over when he told her to, doing what she had to, but without a word. When the alarm sounded he lay with an arm over his eyes, listening to the unquiet peep. Then rolled over.

She shifted under his weight, half acquiescent, until she came awake. Then she fought again, trying to kick, scratch, but too late.

When he pulled out, feeling supernaturally alive, the world was still dark outside the curtains of the room in the gated village the Saudis kept the Americans confined to except when they were actually under orders. He shaved and brushed his teeth with quick strokes, then dropped to the slick tile and did one hundred slow push-ups and a hundred sit-ups.

When he went back in, sucking deep breaths, she was sitting up, holding the sheet to her chest and lighting a PX Salem with shaking fingers. Her dark hair was snarled, mascara streaked, face swollen. She was Air Force, some logistics type who got things in and out through Saudi customs. He'd gone down to the pool, swam a few laps, then got out and walked the perimeter, picking the best body out of the baking flesh on display. The Look, a caramel latte at the PX Starbucks, and back to his room.

“Don't smoke here,” he told her.

“Fuck you.”

“Again?”

“That wasn't fun, you asshole. People don't do things like that to each other where I come from. And why do you keep it so hot in here?”

“Air-conditioning weakens you. And you'd be surprised what people do to each other.” He stepped into fresh skivvies, pulled a set of BDUs out of the closet, and laced his boots sitting beside her. She smoked angrily, scattering ash over the sheets. He stuffed the funky shorts and T-shirt
from last night into his duffel. Then slid the nightstand drawer open, shoved the retention-clipped Beretta into his belt, and pulled his blouse over it. It was fairly safe here for Americans, but staying alive anywhere in the Mideast meant never going off Condition Yellow. He tried to remember her name, but not very hard. “Gotta go, babe.”

Her eyes were wide. The pistol, probably. “Wait a minute. What was your name again? You said you were a consultant. You're enlisted?”

He kept his left side turned away so she couldn't see his name tape, even though she'd picked up on his rating insignia. “Like I told you. Mickey Dooley.”

“You used another name last night. What the hell are you, anyway?”

He did a quick scan of the room—the rest of his team gear was still out at the op site, but it never hurt to check, make sure he left nothing with his name on it—and winked. “Know something? When you're sore? Ice works.”

“You bastard.”

He made sure the lock clicked on his way out.

 

THEODORE Harlett Oberg was six foot even and not as heavily muscled as one might expect, but he could run twenty miles on any given day, swim five miles in the open ocean, bench his weight fifteen times, and do twenty-five pull-ups carrying a weapon and basic load. He wore his dirty blond hair in a ponytail but, unlike some of the guys on the team, shaved whenever the mission permitted. His eyes were light blue and never seemed to blink, but the first thing most people noticed about him were the scars radiating out from his nose. They'd said they could fix the scars, at least make them less noticeable, but he'd told them not to bother.

He was driving the white Caravan the platoon had rented on the OPTAR card in Kuwait, for when they wanted to go places without looking military. The sun wasn't up yet, but the base was bustling. People got up early here and worked until the temperatures hit 110. The air was already blow dryer hot, and he was sweating. He stopped to pick up his guys, a big Hawaiian named Jeff Kaulukukui, and a shorter man, Mickey “Trunk Skunk” Dooley.

The Humvees were warming up when they arrived, desert-tan slant-backs with external water and fuel cans. The lead one was a gun truck with a .50 up for the roof gunner. An older man in three-color BDUs and a boonie hat tilted to shade his eyes was loading long gray equipment cases into the second vehicle. When Oberg came up he turned. Their hands locked and strained against each other.

“Obie, how you? Get to Perry this year?”

“Not this year. How you doing, Master Chief?”

Master Chief “Doctor Dick” Skilley had been Oberg's senior instructor at the nine-week SEAL sniper school at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, two years before. Skilley had barely survived the train-wreck SEAL insertion in Grenada and done countersniper work in Desert Storm and Bosnia. He'd become a legend after taking out fifteen snipers in Mogadishu with the bolt-action M24. He ran an on-the-road countersniper postgraduate course these days, hopscotching around to do refreshers. So when the platoon had gotten assigned to Centcom, headquartered in Qatar but most of the time either on float in the Gulf or back in the desert taking their turn in the barrel, Teddy had put in for him to come out and do some on-the-spot training.

At the moment the Det was gearing up to relieve the Special Forces in Operation Maple Gold, a barrier operation to keep the unrest in southwestern Iraq from spilling over into Saudi Arabia. There was a listening post out there too no one talked about, but Teddy figured it had something to do with ballistic missile detection and reading Syrian radars.