The Crisis (8 page)

The case disappeared into Teddy's cargo pocket as he stood. They looked around again, at the blazing sun overhead, the still-climbing column of black smoke far away. Then turned, and began the trek downhill to the waiting convoy.

T
HE little boy turns but his sister's not there. Her hand was in his a second ago. Now the air's filled with the black shapes of women but they're not her. Motors snarl from all around. He coughs, digging dust out of his eyes.

“Zeynaab. Zeynaab!”

But nobody answers; in all the screaming he can't even hear himself. A truck roars past so close the hot wind nearly knocks him down. Stones from the tires sting his cheek. Then shots snap. Somebody's shooting! He knows now to fall to the ground, like the people around him. He covers his head and squinches his eyes shut, like on cool nights when he pulls the blanket over his head.

The wind's rising. It scoops dust out of the wheel ruts and blows it along the ground. Dust covers the sky and rasps his squinted eyes. “Zeynaab!” he cries into the ground. “Ghedi!”

When the shooting stops and the motors go away his dread's so deep he can barely jump up. He runs in clumsy circles, so as not to get too far from where he saw them last. He slams into an overturned cart, the wind rotating one wheel with a plaintive squeaking. An old man lies beside it. He's cradling a child, looking away from Nabil. There's a full skin lying next to him. It must have tumbled out of the cart when it went over.

Nabil stops. He blinks away dust, eyeing the skin.

A moment later he's running, wrenching at the cork. The water runs down his face as much as down his throat, but he gulps and gulps. He moans as he drinks. Behind him a faint cry rises, lost in the wind.

 

ALL that day he walks in circles. The wind blows, then dies, blows and then dies. Something's burning, an oily stink that reminds him of when he threw a rubber toy into the fire. Now and then refugees trek past. He climbs a hill to look for his sister and brother. The sun burns down. But he sees nothing but a far-off glint in the sky.
Airplane
, his brother told him once. He doesn't know what that is.

Late that afternoon he climbs another hill. This time he sees his sister, far away, headed away from him. A child-sized figure in black. He runs after her, all the way down the hill and then up and then down again. It's a long way, and he's staggering through flashes of light when he reaches her. But when she turns it's not her, it's someone else. She draws a small knife and slashes the air. “Go away!”

“Where's your family?”

“I don't have one! Where's yours?”

He crouches, afraid to say the words. Finally he whispers, so no one but the girl will hear. “They shot my
huyo.
My father, I don't know. My sister and brother, they were here yesterday.”

“What's wrong with your foot?” she says suspiciously, keeping the knife out between them and twisting it as if she's boring into something. The blazing sun grinds sparks off it like a wheel when the village toolman sharpens an ax. Nabil stares at it. He wants a knife.

“What?”

“What's wrong with your foot? How old are you? What's your name?”

He tells her he has the limp-foot disease and doesn't know how old he is. “My sister's lost. She and Ghedi got lost when the trucks came.”

“Trucks? What trucks?”

“You didn't see the trucks? They came, somebody was shooting—”

“I heard shooting. But it was from over the hill. What village are you from?”

He tells her, but she's never heard of it. She looks hard at him, then tucks the knife away. “Got any food?”

“No. Do you?”

“Bread. You can have a little.”

They sit in the shade of a dune and gnaw at the hunk. It's old and hard but Nabil doesn't care. He wishes he'd saved some of the water in the skin.

The shadows lengthen. The searing breeze dies as the desert cool
deepens. The sky turns rosy, then hazy brown streaked with golden flames. The two children find a rock that overhangs a scooped-out hollow of dirt. They examine it for scorpions or snakes, then crawl in. Nabil hesitates, then huddles close to the girl, smelling her smells, feeling her warmth. She twitches, and the blade scrapes as it emerges from wherever she sheathes it. But it doesn't prick. Instead she lies still.

Slowly, his arms creep around her.

And he sleeps.

 

THE next day they set out along a high trail. It winds through huge rocks and goes up and down so steeply sometimes they have to scramble on hands and knees. The girl says it's a goat path, but it leads to the sea, where someone said there's food. Nabil doesn't feel good about leaving where he lost his sister and brother, but there's no food and no water and this girl's the only person around who seems to know what she's doing. Only a few other refugees walk the high path. They speak differently than the children are used to, but enough are willing to share water that they can keep going, although hunger gnaws at his belly like an animal.

But the rocks concentrate the sun and there's no wind among them at all. He moves most of the time not knowing what he's doing, and falls often. His knees and hands are covered with scabs that bleed when the next fall tears them off again.

At last they come out onto a plain. So many other refugees are milling around he can't believe it. They cover it like ants, some going in the same direction as he and the girl, others headed crosswise in long lines, and when they meet there's shouting and sometimes fighting with machetes and even guns. He plods after her, thumb in his mouth, stumbling over rocks and dragging his weak foot in the sand.

The air vibrates. Black snakes writhe along the horizon. The girl yanks at his arm. We have to go faster, she says. We shouldn't be out here. She carries the knife all the time now, in a fist so she can stab with it. She's like a black tarantula, Nabil thinks. He dogs her like a shadow of her black dress, panting. He asks where there's water. Up ahead, she snaps. You better hurry up so there's some left when we get there.

There's a pulsing beat in the air, as if the hills are fluttering on a clothesline. As if the whole earth's fluttering in the air.

What's that? he says.

An air-thing. Run.

Are we going to the city?

Just shut up and run, she says. You'd be dead right now if it wasn't for me. Stop crying, you little Bantu worm.

This is so true, except he's not a Bantu, he shuts up and tries to run a few paces, but falls down. He starts to cry, then stops himself. Ghedi wouldn't cry.

He's getting up when the noise comes in the air. The girl whirls, looking into the sun. He sees her from the back, standing in front of him, arms out, head lifted. The sun all around her, so all he can see is shape and light.

All around them the people scream.

When the loud noises stop and the sand and rocks stop flying and the smoke blows away he sits up and looks down at himself. His head's ringing, his whole body's shaking. As he looks down the shaking grows.

From head to toe he's covered in blood and meaty pieces like crushed tomatoes. Whatever struck the girl turned her into this paste that covers him and the ground around him. There's just a crater where she stood, and one shoe.

He cries for a while, but the sobs ebb. Crying doesn't help. Nothing changes when he cries. When he walks, though, things change. Anyway, he doesn't want to be here anymore. The ridge is too skyey. What if the air-thing comes back? He sobs again and tries to brush the meat off with his hands. The blood's sticky. He's so hungry. He sees the knife a few paces away. It's lying on the sand. A small dirty hand's still holding it. Still holding it tight.

He's so hungry. He puts his thumb in his mouth. Then he's licking his hands, before he even knows he's doing it.

Then very slowly everything goes liquid, swirling, like hot bubbling sorghum porridge in a pot, swirling round and round.

 

THEN he's inside something blue, a weird blue with letters on it. Letters, but different from the ones in Auntie's book. The blue moves in waves. He's intensely hot. He's lying on something soft.

Then he's not lying, but sitting with a group of other boys. He puts a hand to his head. Something used to be there that isn't anymore.

Someone speaks in a language he doesn't understand. A black man with a shiny can in his hand. He turns Nabil's head back and forth, looking into his eyes. He says something that sounds like a question. Nabil can't answer. There's nothing in his head to answer with.

The man dips a brush into the can. With one quick motion he paints something sticky on Nabil's head. His hands rise, but the man slaps them down. He says something angry. Then reaches behind him, and shoves a plastic bowl into his hands.

Nabil sits up. He sniffs the yellow mush. The man says things fast, as if he's got to do this over and over. Nabil tastes it. Then he eats it.

He's in a tent. The blue billowing above him is plastic, so thin the sun shines right through it. Boys fill the length of the tent. They lie with spindly legs and arms and knobby elbows and knees. Their eyes are gigantic. On their skulls are painted large Os in pink paint. It looks funny to Nabil, but for some reason he can't remember, he can't seem to laugh.

The man smiles. He leans so close Nabil smells his breath. His fingers move over his legs, then touch him where they shouldn't. Nabil doesn't move. At last the man grunts and leaves.

After a while he tries to get up. His legs don't work, though, and he falls down again. The other boys stare at him unblinking. They don't look like his people.

Where are we? he asks, but they don't move or answer. Flies buzz through the tent. They crawl on one of the boys who doesn't move or brush them away. After a time Nabil realizes that boy's dead.

He rolls over and starts crawling toward the light at the end of the tent. He pushes feet aside. He smells shit and a sweet smell. Some boys kick at him. Others lie shuddering, eyes rolled up in their heads.

He pushes the flap aside and looks out.

The blue tents stretch as far as he can see. A gaunt woman crouches before a fire. An old man staggers under a tin water can. A naked child runs from one tent to another.

Beyond the farthest tent are fine thin somehow spiky threads that lead across the ground. He squinches his eyes to see better in the glare. Far away someone's singing. Someone else is weeping. Something goes
put, put, put,
like the water pumps in their village. He suddenly remembers all the things that weren't in his head a moment ago. They feel jagged, and he wishes they weren't there. His head felt better empty.

He sees what the threads are now, and feels something cold fall down inside his throat, bouncing from side to side as it goes down, like a rock tossed into a well.

The thin black spiky threads, running left and right as far as he can see, are wire.

T
HE sun was like the drying lights in a body shop, so bright Dan's lips were burning. His eyeballs felt like bearings being annealed with a torch. The scorching air smelled like the inside of an old toaster. Fat black flies kept landing on his face, no matter how often he brushed them off. Sweat kept running down his neck, and the fine gritty powder so familiar from his previous time in the Mideast rubbed like steel wool against his skin, slacks, his very teeth, as the taxi's wheels jolted over potholes. Dust that smelled like dried vomit rose from the seat and carpet and blew out the window, replaced with no-sweeter-smelling dust from outside.

The Mideast Shuttle flew every other Tuesday. They'd been lucky to get the last seats. After which it had been twenty-six straight hours either fidgeting aboard the 767 or eating plastic-packaged buns and drinking reconstituted coffee from vending machines during layovers in the rubber-matted boxes of passenger lounges. Norfolk to Lajes, the Azores; Sigonella, Sicily; Suda Bay, Crete; Bahrain; and at last and finally, Djibouti International. He'd brought along the read-ins, studies, and position papers Dr. Fauss had sent to TAG, and he and Henrickson and Lieutenant Commander Kimberley McCall had translated them into something resembling a transformation plan for the squadron that would serve as a concept test bed. They'd landed and caught this taxi into town. Their driver had said not one word, just chewed something endlessly, his red-rimmed, spacey eyes hanging in the rearview mirror like a shot from a horror movie.

The pier area, at last, the upperworks of ships ahead. They pitched forward in a painful screech of steel on bare steel. The driver turned slowly. They stared into
Night of the Living Dead
eyes, and he spoke. “Now you give five tousand Djibouti franc.”

Twice what they'd agreed on. Dan handed him the original amount in
the damp worn bills he'd changed at the airport, added a generous tip, and got out, ignoring the outraged shouts as McCall and Henrickson bailed too. He hoisted his AWOL and the black nylon sling of his notebook computer, torn between wishing he'd brought more and not wanting to carry what he had.

As soon as he stepped away from the taxi the beggars were on them. One scooted after them along the ground, wooden clogs rattling on his hands. His legs ended at the knees. Another hobbled upright, but with milky vacant eyes and ankles like willow sticks. “Sir. Sir,” they muttered, plucking at their clothing. “God
damn
,” Henrickson muttered. Dan fumbled in his pockets, handing out dollar bills he'd reserved for tips and baksheesh, one bill to each supplicating palm.

“Five tousand,” shouted the driver behind them. “Five tousand!
Ooji, adoon!
”

Dan guessed those were not complimentary adjectives. The halt and the lame desisted only at the head of the pier, where a guard with a slung rifle shouted them away. He led his little party past USS
Mount Whitney
, a gray steel cliffside whose sponsons overhung the pier, whose antennas cast gnomon shadows. He'd report aboard, checking in with the task force commander; but not just yet.