The Arabesk Trilogy Omnibus (124 page)

Both bunks in the next cabin had been used. The cover on the bottom one hung neatly, the cover to the top bunk was still crumpled. A Bible in English, translated by someone called St. James. Hani didn’t want to be prejudiced, but…

Actually that could be good.

On a bedside locker, open and facedown, lay a Discovery Channel guide to Ifriqiya, its spine cracked in half a dozen places. A handful of foreign change filled a saucer.

“E pluribus unum…”
From one, many. Or was it, from many, one? Hani’s Latin was too rusty for her to be certain which it was if either. So she put down the coin and picked up a flowery dressing gown draped over a peg on the door.

“Nylon,” she told Murad.

The garment was surprisingly short, albeit still long enough to drag on the carpet when Hani tried it on without sandals. It was the gown’s width that impressed her. She and Murad could have hidden inside the thing three times over.

“This’ll do,” Hani said with the certainty of someone who distrusted thin people even if she was one. Years of living with Aunt Nafisa had seen to that. “We hide here.”

“Hide?”

“Okay, then,” said Hani, settling herself on the floor. “We wait.”

Around dusk, Hani heard the tourists finally clamber aboard and felt the coach settle on its dampers. Or maybe it was springs? Mechanical things weren’t really her area. Computers now… But hard as it was to believe, the
e pluribus unum
couple making this trip were doing so without a single computer, PDA or screen. Unless they’d taken the lot with them and Hani found that hard to believe.

“We’re moving,” said Murad, his expression worried.

“That’s what we want to happen,” Hani told him. She indicated a spot next to her on the carpet and Murad looked doubtful. He was still slightly afraid of her, Hani realized. And of everything else. Beneath that buttoned-down manner her cousin was as raw to the world as she was, maybe more so, because she knew how to adapt while Murad was still learning.

Meanwhile he just looked bemused.

“Uncle Ashraf will be fine,” Hani promised, realizing as soon as she spoke that this was not what worried the boy. She might worry about her uncle but Murad had his own problems, ones unknown to her.

“Do you think getting older makes you weaker?” Murad demanded suddenly.

Hani thought about it. “I thought it made you stronger.”

“That’s what they tell you,” said Murad, “but is it true? I feel like I know less every day. Everything always used to be clear but now…”

“What was clear?” Hani asked.

“Knowing what to do…”

“And were you allowed to do it?”

They sat together until Murad was so desperate for a pee that he could sit still no longer. Hani didn’t tell him she also needed the loo. Some things were still private for girls.

“Use the basin,” Hani said…“Now rinse it out,” she suggested afterwards.

Murad and Hani then had a brief discussion about whether or not to bolt their door from inside. Hani won and the bolt was left open. Darkness arrived long before someone finally slid a key into the lock.

“We have to get them in here,” Hani said.

“What? We’re not going to…”

“No,” said Hani. “I’ve already told you, I just need them to myself for a few minutes. We…” she amended. “We need them.”

“Why?”

“Because we do,” Hani announced firmly and together they crawled into a narrow space previously occupied by a suitcase.

“Who moved that?” The voice was Midwestern American and female, puzzled rather than angry. Hani didn’t care who the voice belonged to, she liked them already. “Carl, Carl…” The admonition was addressed to thin air. It had to be, because only one pair of legs could be seen in the room.

White plastic sandals shuffled over to the wall, the case rose from the floor and then it was being tipped on its side and pushed towards Murad.

He grunted.

That was what they’d agreed on, a simple grunt. Now came the dangerous bit when the cabin’s owner might shout or rush out into the coach and demand help. They’d decided how to handle this too.

Hani whimpered.

“Who’s there?”

The case pulled back, tipped upright.

“Come out,” the woman demanded. “Come out right now.”

Murad crawled from under the bunk and scrambled to his feet. His eyes were lowered and his shoulders slumped. Inside his head he was trying to remember how Hani had suggested he should shuffle his shoes.

“Oh great. A thief.” The woman sounded exasperated. “I suppose you’ve already pocketed all our stuff.” Her glance took in the whole cabin, all five paces of it and found nothing missing. “Maybe not,” she admitted, “but then what are you doing here? And what happened to your face?” She took Murad’s chin in her fingers and turned his head to the light, tutting as she did so. “Someone hit you?”

When the boy stayed silent, Micki Vanhoffer sighed. She was a large, home-loving woman very far from Ohio. Doing what her husband thought she should be doing, taking a break from comfortable cruises around the Caribbean. A month in North Africa was his idea. Well, and her eldest son’s, Carl Junior. An anniversary present supposedly. So here she was on a glorified bus in the middle of a heat wave, in March for heaven’s sakes.

“I’d better tell the driver,” Micki said mostly to herself, reaching for the door handle. “And then we can call your parents.”

“He doesn’t have any,” said Hani, rolling out from under the bunk in a tumble of arms and legs. After scrambling upright, she took Murad’s hand and gripped hard when he tried to pull away. “We’re orphans,” she added quickly. “From an orphanage. A cruel place.”

Huge black eyes looked up at Micki Vanhoffer from beneath a rather dirty scarf. Eyes that swam so deep with tears they appeared larger than was humanly possible. Below those eyes jutted a nose too prominent to fit any Western idea of beauty and under this a mouth that positively quivered with anguish.

“You speak English…” Micki meant it as a statement rather than a question, but her words were inflected, rising towards the end so Hani found herself answering.

“Yes,” Hani said. “I learnt it from tourists. When I was working in a café with my mother.”

Micki looked puzzled. “I thought you said you lived in an orphanage?”

“This was before my mother died,” Hani said firmly. “When I was little.”

“When you were…” The large woman looked at the small girl and sighed. “Things like this never happen on cruises,” she said. “I’ll get Carl Senior down from the bubble. You wait here.”

“You say he’s your brother…”

Hani looked at Murad, then nodded. “My brother,” she agreed. “Unfortunately he’s not very bright.”

The man asking Hani questions was big in a different way. His shoulders so broad that they seemed to stretch against his very skin. On his T-shirt was a simple fish made from a single line that curled back over itself at the tail; Hani had a feeling she’d seen the sign before.

“You have the fish.”

The man nodded. “You know what it means?”

Hani nodded. “Of course I know,” she said. “Everyone knows.”

“Carl…”
The word was a warning. “I know you want to do good in this heathen place but remember what our brochure said about preaching.”

“I’m not preaching,” said the man. “She mentioned it first.” He dropped to a crouch in front of Hani. “What’s this about an orphanage?” The words were soft, unlike his eyes, which were pale, watchful and just a touch angry. Mentioning his shirt had obviously been a bad move.

“We’re running away,” said Hani.

“I can see that.”

“From an orphanage.”

“What’s its name? Come on,” he said when Hani hesitated. “Spit it out.”

Hani looked puzzled. “Spit what out?” she said.

“Carl!”

“It’s a fair question,” Carl Vanhoffer said to his wife. “If she can’t instantly name the orphanage, then it probably doesn’t exist. And that boy isn’t her brother. Not full brother anyway. The skin colours are way different.”

“You’ll have to excuse Carl Senior,” said the woman with a tight smile. “He used to be a police officer. He gets like this sometimes. You should have seen him with Carl Junior when he was growing up…”

“That’s okay,” said Hani. “My uncle used to be a policeman. He gets like that too and your husband’s right. We’re not really running away from an orphanage.”

“Told you,” Carl Vanhoffer said. “What are you running away from?”

“Marriage,” said Hani and slowly pulled the shawl tight round her face, shrinking inside it. With her hunched shoulders and narrow back she looked frighteningly young. “And you’re right about the other thing too, Muri’s not my brother, he’s my cousin.”

“How old are you?” That was the woman.

Hani thought about it.

“Well?” The man’s eyes were less hard than they had been. Slightly mistrustful to be true enough but not out-and-out disbelieving.

“Twelve,” said Hani, adding a year to her age. Assuming Khartoum was right and she really had just turned eleven.

“You don’t look it.”

“Carl!”
Again that outrage, almost maternal. Like there were things men couldn’t be relied on to understand. Hani glanced at the both of them, the American man and woman. Most husbands and wives she’d met had harder edges to their lives and stricter boundaries. However, Hani had to admit to not having met many.

Hamzah Effendi and Madame Rahina were not a good model. Aunt Jalila and Uncle Mushin even worse. One now dead, the other apparently in a sanatorium. Uncle Ashraf and Zara? They weren’t even a couple, not properly.

“It’s all to do with food,” Hani told the woman. “The less you get to eat the smaller you look… A doctor told me,” she added, before Carl Senior had a chance to ask her how she knew.

“And the poor get married younger,” said the woman.

Hani wasn’t convinced this was true because, the way Zara told it, the really poor people in Iskandryia couldn’t afford to get married until their twenties, which might be why they got so cross. And that fact probably applied to Ifriqiya as well.

But Hani kept her silence.

Despite what Uncle Ashraf, Zara and everyone else thought, she always had known when to keep her opinions to herself.

“Have you met the boy you’re meant to marry?”

“Oh yes.” Hani nodded.

“What’s he like?” The woman sounded interested. Appalled, but still interested.

“Okay, I guess,” said Hani, jerking her narrow chin towards Murad. “As boys go…”

“This is him?”

Hani nodded again.

“And he’s running away with you?” Carl Senior sounded doubtful.

“Of course,” said Hani, “Muri doesn’t mind getting married but he doesn’t want to leave school.”

“Why would he leave school?” It was Micki’s turn to look muddled.

“Because he’ll need a job for when I have a baby…”

“When you…”
Their voices were so loud that Hani was afraid the Russian in the next cabin might start to wonder what was wrong.

“What exactly are you telling them?” Murad hissed, his Arabic so flawless he could have been reciting poetry at the court of a long-dead caliph. Needless to say Micki and Carl Senior understood not a word.

“That we’re running away,” said Hani. “Because our parents want us to get married.”

“Married?”
Murad stood openmouthed in outrage. “You’re eleven,” he said. “I’m twelve. Fourteen is the earliest a girl can get married in Ifriqiya. Sixteen for boys.”

“But they don’t know that, do they?” said Hani.

“What are you telling him?” Carl Senior demanded.

“That Muri shouldn’t be afraid of you,” said Hani. “That you won’t hand us over.” She was glancing at the man but she was talking to Micki.

CHAPTER 45

Friday 11th—Sunday 13th March

He stank and there was little doubt that he’d just pissed
himself again. Liquid his body could ill afford to lose. Raf had also started to think of himself as
he
and that was never a good sign.

Maybe it was this that allowed the fox to return. Alternatively, Raf had just got bored with trying to hold himself together.

“Now dislocate your other shoulder,”
ordered the fox.

Raf shook his head. His teeth gritted not from bravery or pain but because he was trying to stop his upper left canine from falling out and keeping his mouth closed was all he could come up with, given both his hands were shackled behind his back and fixed to a wall.

Impossible.

“Not impossible,”
said the fox,
“just painful. Work on the difference.”
And then Raf stopped letting the different bits of himself talk to each other and started to listen to the sound of a sea that had vanished millions of years before, after the Chott el Jerid finally separated from the Mediterranean to become first an inland sea, then a lake and ultimately the flood-prone salt flats it finally became.

Except that the waves like the voices, came from within him and there was nothing supernatural about them.

What Raf could hear was the sound of his own blood echoing off the stone walls of an azib, a domed shelter built for goats and now his prison. At first the noise had been slight as meltwater over pebbles, growing louder, until now it splashed like a fosse falling into a cool meltwater pool far below. He was listening to what was left of his own life.

“Do it,” Raf told himself. “Dislocate.”

His first idea after Major Jalal had bolted the heavy azib door was to somersault out of his predicament by rolling forward to hang upside down from his shackled wrists, then twist sideways to land on his feet, facing the wall, with the shackles now in front of him. All he needed to do then was free his wrists and dig himself out.

Two failed attempts had convinced Raf this was impossible. So now he was going with the fox’s suggestion, that Raf begin by convincing himself he was really merely testing the strength of the chains shackling him to the wall.

As ever, when facing something unpleasant, the trick was to remove oneself from the pain. A trick he’d previously spent many months unlearning. Although back then he’d been somebody else. Or rather, Bayer-Rochelle had made him somebody else and done a good job of it too; much better than any of his schools had managed.