by Vi Grim
5.
Emily lost all sense of time.
Eventually the tent stopped flapping and she awoke to silence and sunshine. She slipped outside and looked around.
They were camped in the ruins of an old fort. Dusty old walls with a few prickly, threadbare trees sheltering behind them. The walls grew out of the landscape of sand and red rocks.
It was quiet, no one around, just the camels stirring and steaming in the cool morning air.
I’ll escape, thought Emily
Treading quietly, she walked up the little hillock behind the ruins and sat on the rocks. She was too weak; she knew she couldn’t get far. The sun warmed her skin and lifted her spirits.
There was so much space, space like she’d never seen before. No houses, not trees, no factory chimneys or tall buildings or street lamps. The sky was empty; there were no clouds, not even one. At home there were always clouds, usually one big grey one that filled the sky from corner to corner, pressing down on hills and houses.
Here, there were red rocks and orange hills, naked like they forgot to put their clothes on, with splashes of green in the valleys and the big blue sky overhead.
Emily sat for ages soaking in the landscape and drawing strength from the sun. She must have been daydreaming because she didn’t hear a thing as Saleem approached. A shadow flitted across the edge of her vision, there was a flutter of wind in her ear and a soft weight on her left shoulder like someone was touching a finger there. She looked around and see yellow eyes, alert and intense staring from just inches away, too close to focus.
‘Don’t move,’ Saleem said softly as he sat down beside. The bird hopped across onto his shoulder and sat there, glaring at Emily suspiciously.
‘Tsul, my dear, if you follow that valley to the north,’ he said, gesturing with his brown hand, ‘and cross the hills, you will reach a town and be free. You’re too weak at the moment,’ he added, with a sparkle in his eye. ‘So enjoy the sunshine and the view and get strong.’
‘What’ll happen to me?’
‘Who knows? You’re a slave, but not our slave. We’ll take you across the Sahara desert and sell you. We’re Tuareg, desert people. We’re traders. Our camel train heads south carrying cigarettes, electronics, weapons and sometimes a white slave, like you, and brings back black slaves, salt and whatever else we can find.’
Emily wasn’t so keen on being merchandise. It was a bit like being a can of baked beans sitting on the shelf in the supermarket waiting for someone to toss you in their trolley and head for the checkout. ‘So you just sell me to the highest bidder?’
Saleem looked thoughtful for a moment, ‘Yes.’
‘But I’ll travel with you across the Sahara Desert first?’
‘Yes,’ said Saleem, as he batted at a fly that buzzed too close.
‘And the box,’ Emily continued, ‘the skinny one with the elephant inside. That’s what you’re here for. Isn’t it?’
Saleem looked puzzled, then changing the subject said, ‘Did you know that Sahara means ocean? Our camel train is the ship that crosses that ocean. You are part of the crew that will sail it, so welcome aboard.’ He took another swipe at the fly, batting it with the back of his hand. There was a flurry of gold and brown feathers and the small hawk caught it in his sharp beak before it hit the ground and returned to his perch on Saleem’s shoulder. ‘Watch what we do, it’ll help you to survive. Learn the ways of the desert; it’ll help us to survive.’
It all sounded quite exciting.
‘Watch the camels. They’re foul tempered. You’ll get to know them by name and personality. Never treat them bad, however mad you are, they hold grudges and, like your elephant, they never forget! We’ll get underway the day after tomorrow.’
He got to his feet and slipped away as silently as when he arrived.
6.
Emily sat on her rock and thought about how she’d escape. The desert, the smuggling, the camel train; it was exciting, but she didn’t like the sound of being a slave, being a can of baked beans, up for sale. She missed her mum and dad too.
I’ll run away, I’ve had enough adventure already.
She studied the red valleys and hills, tying to remember the route that Saleem pointed out. The sun rose higher in the sky, changing from yellow to white and slowly hiding the landscape behind a shimmering blue haze. From her rock she had a bird’s eye view down on the camp. Smoke and the sweet smells of cooking drifted up from the jumble of tents and camels. The tents weren’t like the triangle one that Annie and her slept in when they camped in the backyard but were all higgledy-piggledy, made of goat skins stretched between wonky sticks. Men and women dressed in blue and black with scarves around their heads tended to camels and crouched in groups on the red sand. The murmur of their voices and snatches of laughter drifted up to her perch.
The sun rose higher, chasing her back to the camp with its burning rays.
Ouch!
Someone pinched Emily’s bottom. She spun around and came face to face with a big fat belly, a hippo belly. Looking up she saw dark glasses and a flash of gold teeth. He pinched her bottom again. She kicked him in the shin. He laughed then knocked her to the ground, pushed her face into some camel dung and sat on top of her. The poo was wet, warm and horrible. She couldn’t breathe. He was crushing her. She struggled as much as her weak body could but it was hopeless against the weight of the hippopotamus.
I am going to die from poo-fixiation.
She came to having her face slapped and her ears pulled.
I want out of here, soon. I’ll escape before something nasty happens.
In the morning Emily got up early while it was still dark. Seeing no movement in the camp, she pussy footed between the sleeping camels and men and snuck off into the desert. The route she planned the day before was lost in the darkness so she headed towards a bright star. She shivered as she walked, probably more from fear and excitement than the cold. She was on her way to freedom, on her way home. The cool sand felt wonderful between her toes.
The sky slowly lightened in the east. Her star faded then the first rays of sunlight painted the desert landscape, bathing her in warmth and hope. Friend at first, the sun was soon a fiendish enemy, blazing down at her, attacking her senses with light and heat. She was lost and desperate, running to try to escape the ruthless sun.
There was no escape. She collapsed in a sobbing, exhausted heap, crying for her mum. It was blazing hot and she was surrounded by harsh, oppressive light. She shouldn’t have run away. She was going to die, a shrivelled-up baked bean in the desert.
She felt a hand on her shoulder.
‘Soom water?’ asked a young voice.
She grabbed the bottle and gulped the warm water, letting it trickle down her front.
‘Slowly, slowly,’ said the boy. He looked about twelve and was much taller than Emily. He had the same bright eyes as Saleem. Locks of thick black hair escaped from under the folds of bright green wrapped around his head. ‘I’m Azulay, he said. ‘Let’s go back to the caravan.’
The boy helped her up onto the camel, then sitting in front of her said, ‘Hold on.’
The camel rose up and up, then up some more, doing its best to tip them over its head, then ambled off, retracing its hoof prints in the sand.
Emily was sun burnt, sore and sad. She’d failed miserably at escaping. She cried for her mum and dad, she missed them so, so much. She missed Annie and her little brother and sister, even if they had stolen her mum away. She cried like a baby.
‘Don’t waste your strength,’ chastised the boy.
It made her cry more; he didn’t understand.
She thought of home. They lived in a little house that was joined to the one next door, that was joined to the one next it and so on. The houses covered the rolling grey hills in all directions to make a sea of rooftops. She liked their house, it was small and squished, but it was home. From her window, she watched the weather sweep in from the west over the top of the house
covered hills. At night, when there was a gap in the clouds, she could see the stars. Not many because of all the bright lights, but she could make out the main constellations. The stars watched over her, she liked them.
Thinking of the stars made her blub. She was glad no one she knew was here to see her, especially her dad. He wouldn’t rescue her if he saw her kicking up a fuss.
‘Shhh, be quiet,’ said the boy, turning around to offer some more water. They rode silently back to camp.
Emily spent the day curled up in a snotty heap in the corner of her tent being miserable, thinking of home, the clouds and the grey hills. She’d been abducted. Horrible things happen to kids that get abducted. That’s why kids aren’t allowed to play on the streets and roam free, in case they get abducted. Fat nasty men do nasty things to them, things the papers never mention. She’d probably die.
She snoozed fitfully, waking up to a deep buzzing sound. A bright orange dragonfly hovered inches from her. He darted off; zigzagging around the tent chasing flies, then came back to the same spot. She put her finger out and he landed gently, resting his delicate lacelike wings for a moment while sizing her up with alien eyes. Then he shot up, grabbed a fly and disappeared through the tent flap into the orange world outside.
Wiping the sand and tears away with the hem of her wine coloured tent, Emily got up and walked back up to her rock above the camp, just in time to watch the sun set, a blaze of orange in the west. The day faded and the stars arrived, friendly and familiar; not just one or two like at home but hundreds and thousands of them, gazillions of them.
The clouds in her head cleared.
I will escape, I will go home! I’ll be patient, get strong and learn the ways of the desert then I’ll slip silently into the night and be home, standing in the rain on the doorstep waiting for Mum and Dad to answer my knock.
7.
Nuuuuurrr.
Nuzzing camels woke Emily up as the caravan got ready to go. The Tuareg worked silently, taking down tents, folding them neatly, then gathering wonky tent poles into bundles and tying them on top of the camels with frayed pieces of coloured string. Some camels carried tents, others bright plastic containers of food, rubber inner tubes sloshing with water or sacks of merchandise. One of Saleem’s camels carried the elephant box.
The boy, Azulay, came and found Emily. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, the first light of day reflecting back green-brown from his eyes.
‘Emily,’ she said, ‘but everyone calls me Em.’
‘Zula,’ he said. ‘Ride me.’
Emily smiled, her first smile in a long time. ‘We gotta improve your English,’ she said, laughing. ‘You should say, “ride with me.”
‘We speak Arabic and Tamasheq,’ said Zula.
‘And English,’ Emily added.
‘And Engleesh,’
‘Why speak Arabic and Tamasheq?’ she asked.
‘Better price.’
‘For me?’
‘Yeese, for you. White skin, blue eyes that sparkle like diamonds, yellow hair, velly good price,’ he said with a smile, offering Emily a leg up onto the camel. ‘Speak you Arabic, get double,’ he added as he jumped up in front of her, the cool morning breeze making his green tent flap in her face.
‘Why does everyone wear tents?’ she asked.
They wore scarves wrapped around their heads and robes down to the ground; some blue black, others bright blue and green. The scarves were really long, like about forty feet long and wrapped around and around until they hid most of the wearer’s face. You could only tell if someone was smiling by watching his or her eyes.
‘Cool’ said Zula. ‘Keep us cool.’
‘But why do they hide their faces?’
‘It keeps out the sand.’
Emily travelled with Zula. Sometimes they both walked, sometimes one of them rode on the camel, others, they were both up on the camel, or on different ones. They talked, mostly in English at first, but soon Emily knew some Tamasheq and a sprinkling of Arabic words. She could say, ‘I sell you my sister for three camels,’ in Tamasheq and, ‘Two strawberry ice creams, please,’ in Arabic, phrases that might just come in handy in the desert!
Everyone in the caravan had caught a cold. They coughed and sneezed and complained and, in a friendly way, they all blamed Emily.
Cough, cough! Achoo!
‘We never catch cold before, never ever. English cold,’ they said, as they coughed and sneezed. After all the poking and teasing when she arrived, they’d now accepted her, all of them that is, apart from the hippo with the gold tooth.
‘Who’s the hippo?’ Emily asked, pointing to the fat purple blob wobbling about clumsily on a black camel further up the caravan.
‘That’s Gamel, he no good man, not Tuareg. He’s paying lots of money,’ said Zula.
‘Is it to do with the box, the box that came with me?’
‘I don’t know, Abdullah our agent sent him.’
8.
The caravan started early. They packed up in the cool before dawn, caught the hobbled camels, loaded them up and got underway quietly. The sky in the east lightened, turned yellow, then up came the sun, turning the desert red, orange and yellow and making the nomads shadows a hundred feet tall. Perched on top of the camels, they made monsters and birds, ogres and trolls with their shadows, filling the crisp morning air with laughter. Then the heat cut in and all was quiet again.
Around noon, the caravan stopped. If there was water, shelter or fodder along the route, they stopped earlier, or rode on into the afternoon until they reached it. The main meal of the day, rice or porridge, was cooked up on camel dung fires and the men and women drunk tea or slept in the shadows. The season was still hot so they waited until the sun started to drop until they restarted, heading southwards until dark. Some tents were set up at night but mostly they slept out in what they wore.
Once she was strong again, Emily was given her job: poo picker, the lowest of the low in the caravan. She collected the camel poo then dried it out in the sun. It was exhausting work. She rode or walked at the back of the caravan, scooping the warm poo up and tossing it into woven baskets that hung on either side of her camel. She hardly ever missed a bit but if it was really sloppy, she flicked a little sand on it, hoping no one would notice; leaving a little something for the dung beetles.
She had never imagined that poo could be so important. In the desert it was good as money. They used it as fuel for their fires, for warmth and to cook with; it was traded for food and fodder and you could mix it with mud to build houses.
When the caravan stopped at noon, she laid the poo out to dry. A flat rock was best but if there weren’t any, she spread it out on the sand, turning it every hour then collecting it back into the bags when the caravan was preparing to get underway again. Sometimes Zula and her moulded it into sculptures of snakes, hippos and camels. When no one was looking, Emily left little camel poo messages: Help Emily! Emily Taylor, HELP! and ET was here. The last one wasn’t very clear, but if her mum and dad saw it, they’d know it was from her.
The camels and the Tuareg did ones and twos in the middle of the desert but it was different for Emily, she wasn’t comfortable with it. She was used to shutting and locking the toilet door, sitting on a comfy seat, wiping with two ply paper and flushing it all away to who knows where before washing her hands with sea breeze scented soap. Here there was no shelter, no door, no privacy, no toilet or toilet paper, no water and no sea breeze air freshener - nothing!
But Emily couldn’t hold on forever. A girl has got to do what a girl’s got to do; a girl has got to go! Not wearing any knickers helped. Her polka dot bikini bottoms had gone a week ago, they filled with sand and bugs and were smelly and horrible. Worse still, they complicated things when you had to go in a hurry. Being at the back of the caravan there was still no privacy, as everyone in the caravan seemed to be aware of everything that happened at all times. She just got on with it and to hell with d
ignity!
‘Watch out for the scorpions,’ warned Zula.
She thought he was joking until it happened. Her scream brought the caravan to a halt and the men laughed as Saleem squeezed the venom out of the welt on her bum.
‘What are these?’ he asked looking at the scars from what Sheryl did.
Sheryl and her mates caught her at the bus stop when she was going to soccer practice. They dragged her around the back and pulled her knickers down, sat on her and burnt her bottom with cigarettes. She was screaming and screaming and people walked by without stopping. Her cousins Jeff and Mel rescued her. Her dad got mad; she’d never seen him like that before. He went to Sheryl’s house and smashed their car and beat up her dad. Sheryl didn’t bother her no more. She wished he would beat up Charlene’s dad too.
Emily said nothing, She didn’t want to say that she got bullied; it made her look weak.
Saleem applied some melon ointment.
‘Will I die?’ asked Emily, feeling dizzy.
‘Maybe,’ laughed Saleem. ‘If you survive, be more careful next time. It’s happened to us all. It’s the vipers you really have to watch out for!’
‘But how do you know where they are?’
‘You’ll learn. Everything in the desert leaves clues.’
Emily felt sick for a couple of days then was right as rain again. When the pain and swelling went away there was a red welt where the scorpion had left his calling card amongst the burns on her pale English bottom.
At home she had a scorpion, a brown plastic one with evil red eyes, its stinger raised high in the air ready to strike a deadly blow. It sat on the windowsill locked in battle with the two-headed dragon. She never liked dolls; she liked creatures with a bit of oomph about them. There was the hammerhead shark and her favourite; the griffin with the hooded rider swinging a mace with spikes sticking out that was a present from her mum and dad when Julie was born.
She wondered if they are still there, staring angrily out the window at the sparrows, or if her mum had cleared out her room like she was never there.