“Hello there, pretty lady,” the talkative, arrogant one said. He and his friend were now positioned directly in front of me. A red warning light went off in my brain.
“You’re up early,” I said, trying to keep my tone light while simultaneously glancing frantically from side to side, desperate to find a way to squeeze by them. But this was a narrow pathway and they had comprehensively blocked the way forward.
“We wanted to say goodbye,” Mr. Arrogant said.
“Goodbye, then,” I said.
I immediately tried to dash past the other guy, who had a jar of some liquid and a rag in one hand. As I made a break for it, Mr. Arrogant caught me by the arms and pinned them behind me. I tried to scream but his friend had the rag over my nose and mouth within a nanosecond. The rag was sodden in a liquid that gave off a high chemical aroma. Kicking out with my feet, connecting with nothing, I tried not to inhale its toxic fumes. But the rag was forced down on my face with such force, while my hair was simultaneously being yanked backward, that I could no longer hold my breath.
When I exhaled the chemicals hit me like a sucker punch to the head. This is not happening, this is not happening.
And then the world went black.
NINETEEN
WHEN THE WORLD came back into focus, I wanted to jump back into the darkness again. Because to be conscious meant facing my imminent death.
I was nowhere. I was being bounced up and down. Tossed from side to side. My head felt as if it had been split in two. Nausea was consuming me. But even if I wanted to be sick, that was impossible, as a rag had been tied tightly around my mouth. To vomit would be to risk suffocation. My hands had been bound to my feet. Movement was impossible.
I had been thrown into the cargo area of an open-back truck. It was still night outside, though a small hint of dawn was beginning to cleave the sky. I forced myself up for a moment and spied nothing but emptiness around me. Until another bump in the terrain slammed me back down against the floor of the truck.
I was being driven into the Sahara. Once they had me at a place far away from any hint of civilization, I knew what they would try to do with me. I also knew that two against one meant that, once they had raped me, they would then have to kill me. And bury my body deep within the desert. And return to their road gang job by sunrise and act as if nothing had happened. When my absence was eventually reported, what trace would there be of me? I saw my backpack out of a corner of my eye. It had been thrown into a corner of the cargo area, near a plastic jerry can that had slid down and was bumping against my face. From the fumes emitting from its cap I could tell that it was filled with spare gas.
They are going to rape me. They are going to then strangle me. Then they’ll use the gas to burn my body and bury its charred remains deep in the drifting sand.
I began to scream. I screamed through the gag. I screamed like a lunatic. I screamed in the desperate absurd hope that someone would hear me. I screamed with rage and fury and disbelief. I screamed with hatred. I screamed with terror.
I tugged at the ropes that were binding me. My hands had been so fiercely tied to my feet, the knot pulled so tightly, that there was absolutely no way of loosening it, let alone undoing it without a knife. I pulled and yanked and desperately tried to get my fingers—gone numb owing to the pressure on my wrists—to deal with the knot. But it was impossible. Every time I yanked my hands, the ropes seemed to apply more pressure, increasing the numbness, making me wonder if the lack of circulation would . . .
This is not happening . . . this is not happening.
But this was definitely happening. With the sky beginning to lighten, I was pretty certain it was going to happen very soon. That would be their logic: fuck and strangle her before sunup. Cremate the body, bury the remains, be back on the road with the new day dawning.
I struggled and struggled and struggled. My muzzled screams turned into hysterical crying as I began to realize there was no way out of this. I am doing to die. Before that happens I am going to suffer the worst sort of degradation imaginable. A monstrous death by strangulation. There was nothing I could do to stop them.
The truck began to slow down, then came to a halt. The motor was cut. I heard both front doors being opened, then slammed shut. Footsteps. Then a voice.
“Sleep well, pretty lady?”
He climbed into the back of the truck and began to stroke my hair. When I began to struggle, he slapped me hard across the left ear. The effect was like being instantly concussed, ferocious pain coupled with a profound echo effect. I screamed in agony, and was rewarded this time with a fist to my cheekbone. I blacked out for a moment. When I came to again, it felt as if the cheekbone had been fractured. The little shit now was brandishing a knife in front of my eyes and yanking my hair at the same time.
“You fight me again I will cut you,” he hissed. “Cut off your tits, maybe gouge your eyes. You want that, cunt?”
I shook my head many times, fear making me whimper. Now his fury turned into a broad frightening smile.
“You fight me, you will get hurt. You no fight me, everything will be very nice. Understand?”
To give emphasis to the last word, he yanked back hard on my hair. I whimpered again, nodding many times.
“Good girl,” he said, stroking my cheek. Then he shouted something in Arabic and his accomplice came over, a knife in hand.
“My friend is going to cut off the ropes,” the little shit said. “You going to struggle?”
I shook my head many times.
“Good girl,” he said.
More shouts back and forth in Arabic as the cords were cut. Immediately the restoration of blood flow to my hands made me shudder. A hard clip across the ear was the punishment for that involuntary movement.
“I fucking told you: no movement,” the little shit hissed.
“Sorry, sorry,” I whispered through the gag.
“Tell me you want this,” he whispered.
I tensed and was hit again.
“Tell me you want this,” he repeated.
“I want this,” I muttered through the gag.
“You move you get cut.”
He threw my now untied hands behind me as he slid off the truck and, with his accomplice helping him, cut the remaining rope off my ankles, pulled off the gag, then proceeded to lift my buttocks up and unzip my pants, pulling them down with my panties at the same time. As he did so my free right hand quickly darted around the immediate vicinity of the cab, trying to find something I could use as a weapon. I knew I only had seconds—and nothing came to hand. Until my fingers connected with the jerry can. I managed to get my hand around its cap when I felt my legs being spread wide and I looked up and saw the little shit above me, his pants pulled down, his penis erect.
“You going to fight me?” he asked as he climbed on top of me.
I shook my head, seeing out of the corner of my eye his goon standing on the ground by him, folding up his knife, lighting a cigarette, frightened and scared and also waiting his turn. With my hand still on the cap of the jerry can I reached over with my left hand and touched the little shit’s arm, actually stroking it in a come-on way. A huge smile came on his face.
“You want me, yes?”
I nodded. Another big smile from the little shit. I could now feel the head of his penis rubbing against my vulva, trying to gain entrance, but being defeated by the absolute dryness within.
“Open wider,” he ordered, and heard him spit into his hand then rub it against the lips of my vagina and force his way in. I felt as if I was being ripped apart; an agony beyond agony. But as I glanced upward at him I could see that he had his eyes snapped shut as he began to thrust wildly within me. My left hand tightened around his arm, and I deliberately began to match his thrusts with my own as a way of letting him think I was into it. Meanwhile, my right fingers were manically unscrewing the cap of the jerry can. As I could hear his moans rising, and feel his penis beginning to stiffen even further as ejaculation approached,
the cap finally came loose enough that a small trickle of gas came spilling out. That’s when I reached up with my free hand and stroked his face. He opened his eyes and I dug my nails directly into them, digging down, blood spurting forth, his screams deafening. I let go with the jerry can, drenching him with the gas. He jumped back, falling to the ground, his face in his hands, blood now gushing from his eye sockets. In a nanosecond I jumped off the truck, grabbed the Zippo lighter from the hand of his startled accomplice, ignited it, and tossed its flame directly at my rapist. All this took maybe three seconds. There was a huge conflagrating whoosh. The cigarette had ignited the gas. The little shit burst into flames.
His cries of agony were mirrored by a scream from his accomplice, especially as I was now gunning for him with my claws. As I sideswiped his cheeks, he caught me with a punch to the face. I fell to my knees. He kicked me with full force in the head.
And the world went black again.
TWENTY
THE HEAT BROUGHT me back to life. Then it threatened to finish the job and kill me.
When I snapped back into murky consciousness, the pain was beyond ferocious. My head battered, my cheek fractured, my lips split, a reverberating echo in one ear, the throbbing in my skull unbearable.
I’d collapsed facedown in the sand. I knew this because when my eyes finally opened, sand cascaded into them, making me jump upright and then nearly fall over again as the pain hit. I held my head for several moments, eyes snapped shut. I became aware of the boiler-room heat. And the fact that I had no pants on. The entire exposed lower half of my body felt as if it was charred.
I tried to stand up. I failed. I sank to my knees, but the sand was so fiery that it forced me to somehow become vertical. That’s when I doubled over. Because that’s when I saw him. Or what was left of him. Still on his knees. Charred everywhere. Most of his features burned beyond recognition, but half his face still intact. The upper half, where his two eyeballs had been gouged so fiercely that one of them had dislodged and was dangling by his cheek.
I turned away, pulling off the gag. I was sick, the vomit disgorging from me with a ferocity and a vehemence that had me collapsing again. Until the scorching sand forced me back on my feet.
It all came flooding back now. Every appalling detail. From the moment they grabbed me. Everything that transpired. Everything they did. Everything I did. Evidence of which was right there in front of me. And the punch in the face and the kick to the head that blacked out the world. Blacked out everything. Until now.
All the vomiting left me with a ravenous thirst—though I was already severely parched from all the time unconscious under that pitiless sun. How long had I been left here? I instinctively glanced at my wrist, thinking they must have snatched my watch. But my father’s Rolex was still there. So too were my engagement and wedding rings. The watch told me it was 8:23 a.m., the hands on the dial blurring before me, as my vision felt as if it had been knocked out of kilter with that final boot to the head. The vehement sun blanched the landscape. As I tried a step forward, my foot felt something soft underfoot. I stared down, almost crumbling again. The blurriness in my vision was alarming. But I could discern white pants in front of me. My white pants and underwear, stripped off me by the little shit before he forced his way inside me. Before I tore out his ability to see the world. Before I set him ablaze.
It took considerable work to reach down and pick up these discarded garments. Trying to put them on was torture. When I finally got the underwear and the pants back on, and also located the pair of sandals pulled off my feet, I then noticed the tire track right by me. A tire track that continued forward for a few feet before turning into a circle and then . . .
He’d driven off. After kicking me in the head, the punk had clearly jumped into the truck and driven off into the dawn. Leaving his accomplice on fire and his victim unconscious in the sand, exposed to the monstrous elements that would kill her in a manner that might have made strangulation preferable. Because as I looked up from the encircling tire track what I saw was . . .
Nothing.
Nothing but sand.
Stretching to infinity. Burned beige in color. Lunar, with craters and fossilized dunes. A boundless, evaporated void on the far side of the moon.
And nothing hinting at human life in any direction.
Nothing but the tire track. When the punk raced off in the truck, he took with him everything that gave me an identity and a means of contacting the outside world. My passport, my credit cards, what cash I had left, my airplane ticket, my laptop. He’d also taken the few clothes I had, including a hat to shield my head. I was alone in the Sahara with nothing. No water. No protection from the fireball above. No papers indicating who I was.
I glanced back at the blackened corpse of my attacker. This would be my fate. I would not last more than a few hours out here. I would fall over somewhere, succumbing to sunstroke, dehydration, ravenous thirst. I would slowly die. If I was ever found—and that was unlikely, given that they had brought me to a place no one dared to venture—my body would be so burned by the sun that . . .
No, no, don’t think that. You can’t think that. You must somehow try to find help. Or a water hole. Or . . .
I scanned all corners of the horizon again. Nothing. Not even a speck in the distance of some outpost of civilization. Nothing but the tire tracks.
That’s it! The punk did a U-turn and headed back to civilization. Just follow his tire tracks and you will eventually . . .
Die. For you are miles and miles away from anything resembling life.
I stared down at the tracks. I started following them, my gait hesitant, unstable. My head was throbbing, my vision obscured, the need for water desperate. I could now feel the sun smoldering the top of my head.
But I forced myself to walk, to let the tracks be my guide. I had no choice. To stand still was to accept death.
My sense of balance began to leave me. I must have been walking a good quarter of an hour, each step a small agony, my mouth desiccated with dried vomit, my saliva in increasingly short supply, the back of my throat beginning to tighten. Is this how death by thirst begins? The esophagus slowly contracting due to the lack of hydration, eventually strangling you mercilessly?
My death.
I felt myself beginning to stumble.
My death.
Who would notice my passing? Who would care that I was no longer walking the planet? Would Paul—were he still alive—feel some sort of guilt? Beyond him? A few friends and work colleagues might mourn my absence. Otherwise . . . my forty years on this planet wiped clean. My footprint on life as insubstantial and impermanent as the marks that my sandals were now making in all this Saharan sand.
I stumbled, collapsing onto one knee. The sand singed it. But I didn’t have the strength to somehow lift myself up. I so wanted to ask for some sort of celestial help, for God to save me. But how could I call out to an Almighty whose existence I still doubted? How could I cry out, Don’t forsake me . . . show me a way out of this wilderness, this hell.
My other knee sank into the sand. I tried to swallow. I shut my eyes. My head felt near to implosion. This was it. Endgame. The final moments of my sorry little life. Throwing my head back I reopened my eyes and looked straight up at that fiery object that was about to kill me.
Thy kingdom come.
The sun burned right into me.
Thy will be done.
I pitched forward. Gone from this world.
No white light greeted me. No heavenly way station. No cognizance of anything. Just blackness. I remained there until . . .
Until I felt a hand touching me. And whispering to me in a language foreign to me. The whispering became louder, as if the voice was right up against my ear.
“Salaam, salaam . . .”
I opened one eye. Vision was clouded, indistinct.
“Salaam, salaam . . .”
I tried to open my mouth. It was seared closed. I had no energy. I had no will to do anythi
ng, let alone respond to the hand shoving my shoulder, her little voice louder:
“Salaam, salaam . . .”
Her little voice.
What I could discern from my one befogged eye was a small figure, in a robe, her face obscured by a flowing head scarf that covered everything but her eyes and mouth. From the sound of the voice emitting those words, and the lack of force behind the hand trying to rouse me, it was a young girl crouching beside me.
Was she some intermediary figure sent to guide me to the next afterlife passage?
But why was she speaking in Arabic?
“Salaam, salaam . . .”
Hello, hello.
And I knew what es-hy meant because one of the cleaners in Essaouira used it when trying to rouse the man always asleep behind the hotel front desk.
Wake up, wake up.
But I couldn’t do anything beyond halfway open that one eye. And wish myself back into the darkness again.
Suddenly I felt liquid against my lips.
The little voice intoned, “Ma’a . . . ma’a . . . shreb.”
More liquid against my lips. I opened my mouth wide and let her pour in . . .
Ma’a . . . ma’a . . .
Water.
Within moments my throat opened again.
Water.
With it came the knowledge that I was still here. Prostrated in the Sahara. Alive, albeit barely. But still here. With water flowing into my mouth. And the little voice then saying:
“Bellati . . . bellati . . .”
Then I felt a cloth being put over my face.
And I was alone again.
Within moments, the darkness enveloped me once more.
Until I heard the little voice again. Accompanied by two other voices. Older. Male. Shouting to each other. Then to me.
“Shreb . . . shreb.”
Now someone pulled the cloth off my face and was holding up my head, while someone else was filling my mouth with water. At first I gagged it up. The man holding my head gripped me tightly as I heaved, then used something to clean my mouth, then gently pushed the bottle back between my lips. This time I could hold it down. And drank and drank and drank, the water surging through me. At another point I started choking on it again. The man cleaned me off, then made me drink more. He was not going to stop feeding me water until he was certain I was somewhat hydrated again. I have no idea how long this process took. What I do know is that the water brought back enough consciousness that I could see two men—both with hard, wizened faces—engaged in the act of saving my life. I also heard the one who seemed to be doing all the talking shouting orders. Then I was being lifted and put on a mattress. The smell of animal dung nearby. Then someone climbing in beside me. Opening one eye I saw the young girl who had found me now seated beside me, smiling shyly at me before covering my head again with a cloth, then taking my hand and holding it. I felt some movement in front of us, and the slope on which I had been placed righting itself out, and the crack of a whip and the bray of a donkey.
The Blue Hour Page 23