The girl tilted her head, motioning for them to follow her. They walked a short distance through the trees and could see smoke rising up in the clearing. Around a fire, four older men—or at least men who looked older, it was impossible to tell—were sitting on the ground doing not much of anything.
Chris and Tsu sat cross-legged beside them. They spoke in turn, but it wasn’t possible to know what they were saying. Most of them were smiling, and given the treatment Tsu and Chris had received. They had no reason to fear these men. Hours passed as the strangers tried to communicate.
Through gestures and explosion sounds made with puffed-out cheeks, Chris managed to explain that they had ended up here because of a plane crash. One word was clearly understood among the group: “America.”
One of the elders asked the one-word question repeatedly: “America?” Chris repeatedly pointed at his chest. Confirming yes, America. The man couldn’t seem to grasp that Tsu was not also American.
The sun fell low and the fire grew larger. A huge metal pot, probably acquired during some other rare contact with the outside world, was placed on it to boil. Chris and Tsu were looking forward to some tea or coffee. When the water boiled, a young girl brought out a large wooden bowl containing long roots. The roots were tipped into the water.
Even from some distance there was a pungent smell coming from the pot. Now, all of the men were smiling broadly. One of them, who had four remaining teeth, looked at Chris and tapped his own head.
Water from the pot was transferred into small cups, and Chris and Tsu were handed one each. The tranquility they had been feeling, and the relief of recovery, were quickly evaporating among the steam rising from the pot. They both knew that tribes like these often used hallucinogens. Some of them did so to be closer to whichever god or gods they worshipped. Some did it for spiritual healing. Some, no doubt, did it purely for recreation.
Chris knew full well how hard these substances were on the body. The mind would get its trial over several hours, then maybe positive stimulation, but there would be an awful lot of mental challenges. Especially for people who’d been through what he and Tsu had so recently survived. Following the mental effects, the body would feel exhausted after having tried to filter out this poison.
But there seemed to be no other choice than to drink. The men were already drinking theirs. Tsu turned to look at Chris.
“The guys back at college are gonna love this story,” she said with a smile. Chris smiled back at the idea they were having a gap year adventure. Tsu then knocked back the full contents of her cup in one go.
It wasn’t long before things got strange. First, the hallucinations.
Chris, having been deprived of simple comforts for too long, imagined things within his grasp that did not exist. A pillow, an ice cold soda, a collection of vinyl records and a magnificent sound system. It was only when he saw Tsu grasping out at nothing, during brief moments when he could figure out who she even was, that he realized he had been doing the same thing. As she reached out and grabbed the air while moving in small circles, she mumbled to herself like the insects buzzing in the trees.
Then, clarity. This drug had been used by Amazonian tribes for centuries to stimulate in a person a realization of who they truly are. The broadest sense of this is a feeling of being connected to everything around; to the entire rainforest, to the plants, the leaves, and the creatures, and to the fullness of existence. An integral part of the living, breathing natural world. Yet, within this, an individual. An individual whose presence is stark and matters, but not in the way the person thought it did.
The elders had gone, but the fire still burned. Chris and Tsu sat beside it and could know once again that they were in each other’s presence. They were now in a different phase. Thoughts were not dreamlike but instead were completely lucid. But thoughts did not follow the usual patterns. Parts of the brain were accessed that were usually closed.
Chris was confronted with a memory from his childhood that was so strong it was like a vision. He was walking back from school past a quiet parking lot when he saw a group of four children in a dark corner. They were around the same age as he was, maybe fourteen years old, but he did not recognize them from his school or the neighbourhood. He noticed that the smallest of them was being pushed around.
The kid was so small and thin he looked malnourished. A lot of kids in his neighborhood were in those days. The young Chris Collins approached and saw one of the bigger kids stubbing a cigarette out on the small boy’s hand. The boy howled and wept.
Chris wanted to attack those bullies with his fists and his feet, but he didn’t. He just shoved them aside and grabbed the small boy, running with him in his arms to the center of town where he knew he would find a police officer. He asked the officer to help the boy and never heard of him again. But the effects of what he had seen stayed with him forever.
“After that, I wanted to help people,” he told Tsu. “To protect. Nobody should be treated like that.”
He was hearing his own accent, realizing everything that had crafted it. A childhood without fixed locations due to his father’s military postings. College. His own time in the Navy.
“I always felt big and powerful,” he continued. “Almost luminous. I was always tall and healthy. I wanted to protect, but I also wanted to shine. I had to be Deputy Director. Would have wanted to be Director if I’d had the chance. A field agent wasn’t enough, nor was being a firefighter or a paramedic. Those roles protect people, but I needed the profile. Now, I want to be hidden.”
“I don’t deserve you,” Tsu said quietly. She was staring into the fire.
“What do you mean?”
“The truth is that, most of the time, I wanted to hurt people. The work I chose, the actions I took. They protected people, but if I could use protecting people as an excuse to inflict injury on someone I decided deserved it, I jumped at the chance.”
Chris put his hand on Tsu’s. She slid hers away and clasped her hands together tightly in her lap.
“Most of them probably did deserve it,” Chris told her. “But I believe you are a good person. Actually, I know you are. What happened to you that made you want to inflict pain?”
Chris turned, and in the firelight he could see that tears were streaming down her face.
She paused, leaving only the sound of the jungle and the crackling fire. Finally, she said:
“My parents were never there for me. They were too busy with work, and I think they wanted to be. They never seemed happy to be at home. I think they hated each other, but I felt like they hated me. I lived in Japan as a child, and being half Korean it wasn’t easy to make friends. When I was fifteen, the best friend I had was seventy-five years old.”
Chris was listening intently.
“Mimi was a bar owner. She ran an izakaya, a traditional Japanese bar. It was in a tiny wood building on a sidestreet in central Tokyo. A place known as Piss Alley. It’s one of the few traditional drinking streets that survived the war and the regeneration. I first met her when I noticed this incredible smell of ramen noodles coming from her bar. After that, I went every day. She became like a grandmother to me. That was until…”
More silence. This time even longer.
“Until?”
“Until she died. Or, I should say, she was murdered. The yakuza, the Japanese mafia, wanted to take control of the bar and all the others on the street. Mimi refused. They tried to persuade her with payment, but she said her family had owned that bar for generations. One night, a young guy from the yakuza grabbed her by the arm and tried to drag her into a backroom. She threw a pot of boiling water into his face. He killed her on that spot, in her own kitchen.”
Chris wanted to put his arm around Tsu, but he did not.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“I went looking for the man. I wanted to hurt him. I never found him, so I hurt others.”
“I have hurt people too,” Chris said. “A lot of people. Some of them, I didn�
�t need to hurt as much as I did. You’re not alone.”
“Can we really have love when we have seen so much violence?” Tsu asked, turning to Chris with deep, intense eyes. “Continue our lives happily when we have seen so many lives ended right in front of us?”
The fire was dying.
After a long pause, Chris replied:
“I don’t know.”
24 Valley Of The Kings
Now, Ned and Abrax were in the desert for real, following the course of the Nile. This leg of the journey offered sights that did much more than break up the monotony of the sand. After a full day of riding, they approached Luxor.
Among the buildings of the modern city, they could see the astonishing monuments that remained from the ancient settlement of Thebes, the former name for Luxor. On one side, they saw the crumbling stone towers and obelisks of Karnak, a temple dating back to 2,000 BC. On the other, the rock-cut tombs of the pharaohs nestled among winding, sloping cliffs in the Valley of the Kings.
These glorious sights sustained Ned as much as any food or drink, as they put behind them another day of riding, passing through the city of Aswan and along the royal blue waters of Lake Nasser. After a short and uncomfortable night’s sleep by the side of the road, they pushed on for the Sudanese border.
The border crossing was quicker than expected. The officials seemed to have been zapped of energy by the heat and had no inclination to ask questions. The town of Wadi Haifa was a welcome relief. Among the immaculate low-rise buildings lining the shore of Lake Nubia and surrounded by golden dunes, they found a basic but clean hotel that felt like heaven.
The next day, after a breakfast of flat bread and sheep offal stew, they were ready to take on the desert once again. They started the engines and powered onto the bumpy road that led out of the town, into one of the most desolate areas of the desert.
Ned was flying. No matter the circumstances that had brought him to Africa, there was an undeniable exhilaration that came from powering across the sands of the Sahara desert on a motorcycle, its engine roaring. By the time they were a day’s drive from Wadi Haifa, it was barely even possible to see where the road was supposed to be, and at times it was easier...and more fun...to traverse the slope of a sand dune than to try to stick to the path.
Ned made his way up and down the edges of those dunes, keeping himself close enough to his companion that he wouldn’t lose sight of him, because he knew full well he would be dead in no time if he was lost in the desert, but far enough ahead to prove who was the better motorcyclist. He wasn’t really sure why he felt he had to prove that, but he did.
Then, a thud. His back wheel hit something big. The bike jerked violently to the left. Ned managed to straighten it, his eyes wide and his teeth gritted. He was still not fully in control.
The front wheel hit something even larger. His helpless body was catapulted off the bike and he tumbled through the air completely out of control. He landed on his back with such force that oxygen was fully removed from his lungs. As he stared up in an intensely blue sky, he gasped desperately for breath. Now, he realized just how hot the air was. His lungs burned.
Finally, he felt he could breathe. But he was frightened to move. He was sure something must be broken. He could tell he had landed on soft sand, but not soft enough to avoid injury from a heavy landing like that. Yet, there was no pain. He kept waiting to feel it, but apart from a sore behind he could feel nothing.
He placed his palms in the scorching sand and slowly pushed himself up. Somehow, he’d gotten away with it. He looked across to where his bike lay flat on the sand.
It was difficult to assess the damage from a distance, but the motorcycle seemed to be intact. Then it hit him.
The water. He had been carrying both of the large plastic containers they had managed to acquire, because they had to be balanced out on either side of the bike. When he had first looked at those containers, they seemed to be made from very cheap, thin plastic.
Stumbling, he moved towards the bike as fast as he could. As he approached, he saw a wet patch on the floor. Actually, the patch was more of a flood. Abe was off his bike and approached at the same time. Both men looked on in horror as the last of their water dribbled onto the sand. There was nothing left.
Ned then noticed a strong smell of gasoline. Water was not the only fluid leaking after the crash. The gas tank seemed to have cracked.
“Move away,” Abe said urgently. “Now.”
Ned grabbed his backpack, which had been thrown to the ground a few meters from the bike. He jumped onto the back of the other bike as the old man pulled hard on the throttle.
As they picked up speed, Ned turned and looked at the disaster he had caused by being overconfident and letting his ego get the best of him. He felt like a stupid child. He was here to rescue his sister, not let her down before he got anywhere near her.
As he watched, he saw a glow that was the same deep red-orange as a desert morning. Then, a giant explosion. He turned his face away as fuel-fed flames reached high into the sky. When he looked back again, the sky was filled with thick black smoke. He closed his eyes in shame and disbelief.
Progress was slow. Like most things he had encountered in Egypt, the vehicle he was now traveling on had probably been at its peak some thirty years ago.
The two men were now in one of the most unforgiving parts of the desert. The Bayuda volcanic field was just as Abe had described. A stark desert landscape where the marks left by volcanic activity offered a slight variation to unbroken sand. It felt like the most remote place on earth.
They could not afford to lose the bike, but Ned had to admit it was a real possibility. He couldn’t tell if he was imagining it, but the engine already seemed to be straining under his weight.
His concerns were not allayed by his companion’s words that were shouted at him through the noise.
“You are very heavy, sir! I hope this bike can hold you!”
Funny, I was just thinking about how impressively slim I have always been and how I couldn’t give a crap if this bike gets us out of the desert or not.
Silent sarcasm had always been one method Ned had used to deal with comments he didn’t like. The other was vocal sarcasm.
The next hours were spent in silence. Ned tried to keep a positive frame of mind, but he couldn’t help thinking about the stories he’d heard of how awful death from dehydration is.
Every mile that went by seemed like a blessing, but the ground they had covered was almost meaningless in the vastness of the desert. They had not seen any sign of human life for more than forty-eight hours.
As night quickly fell, Abe pulled the motorcycle to a stop. One small mercy was that he had been carrying the food. One very big drawback was that the food was completely dry. There was stale, rock-hard bread and a few nuts. Abe did not seem to have packed any of the well-sealed and nutritious meals modern adventurers might take with them on an expedition such as this. Instead, he appeared to have collected whatever was left in the doctor’s kitchen. He didn’t seem like a guy with a big appetite.
“I’m sorry I didn’t bring a lot of food,” Abe said as if reading Ned’s mind. “In the desert, people don’t have a lot of appetite. Water is far more important.”
“I’m sure it is,'' Ned said quietly. The man gave him a weak smile. He seems like a pretty decent guy, Ned thought. I hope my stupidity doesn’t ruin his life. Or end it.
25 Bound For Africa
Chris had certainly been right about the physical effects of drugs like the one they’d had forced upon them. Having spent less than twelve hours feeling like he had recovered somewhat, before he had imbibed, he now felt physically drained. Looking at Tsu, he could tell she was in the same condition. The conversation they’d had had done nothing to improve their mood. Having been forced to confront their entire existence, they now doubted whether they could ever have a meaningful relationship or any kind of contentment. Settling down somewhere to dwell on the memories of death and viole
nce…sitting in a rocking chair or on a porch reminiscing about destruction did not seem so appealing. None of their stories were ones to tell the grandkids.
But what was the alternative? Continue the same life, itinerant, supposedly in love but in a relationship that made no progress other than lurching from one dangerous situation to another?
The last thing they needed right now was another trek through the jungle. But that is what they were getting. A boy who looked to be around fifteen years old, short and stocky and strong, had walked up to them that morning and simply said:
“Go home?”
When the elders, the round-faced girl, and others came to clasp their hands together and wave goodbye, Chris and Tsu knew their time with the tribe was at an end.
The boy, who smiled often but said nothing, led them back to the stream where they had encountered the first member of the tribe. The man who had been beaten.
They walked along the water, stopping occasionally to drink. They ate food foraged from the jungle by the boy. Chris and Tsu had no choice but to trust him. He seemed to know how to pick his way through the vegetation without becoming entrapped in it like they had been so many times.
After around twenty hours of walking with short rests and no sleep, they reached the outskirts of a town. There were concrete buildings and streetlights. Civilization of a sort.
Without acknowledgment, the boy turned and plunged back into the jungle. Chris and Tsu followed the dirt track into town.
They had nothing. No money. No passports. Only the tattered clothes they had been wearing at the time of the crash. They reached the edge of the town, a quiet and unremarkable place with one-story houses and stores. When they reached a convenience store, Chris could see through the window that the solitary clerk was a huge, tubby guy with lank hair.
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