At the back of the truck, behind the veil of smoke and fumes, a bundle wrapped in dust-coloured cloth flapped wildly, as if about to be torn from its mountings: a boy, clinging to the ropes. The truck had a stowaway.
A thin, starved stowaway, agile as a monkey, who was coming down off the top of the load with an audacity that made Sharif’s groin contract. He watched as the boy stretched down one thin leg till his bare foot found the bumper. Then, standing, he glanced over his shoulder to check the road behind. Sharif realized with horror that his own car must be in the boy’s blind spot, for he now leaned out at the side of the truck opposite to the car, clinging with one hand, as if preparing to jump.
Sharif cursed in impotent amazement. Was he watching a suicide? But even as he slapped his hand to the horn, the stowaway lifted an arm and tossed something under the truck’s wheels.
The sound of an explosion drowned his own blaring horn. Ahead, the truck slewed into his path and shuddered to a halt. Pulling his own wheel to avoid a collision, he saw the small, slim figure leap nimbly down into the road directly in front of him.
Only then did the boy discover his presence. He flung a look of stunned horror towards the oncoming car, his eyes locking with Sharif’s for one appalling second, landed awkwardly, grimaced with pain, and rolled in a desperate attempt to get out of his path.
The car’s tires bit hard into the super-hot tarmac, screaming and jolting in protest as Sharif simultaneously hauled on the emergency brake and dragged at the wheel. Gravel flailed up against the body and windows with a sound like gunfire, and the hot, sharp smell of rubber pierced the air.
The silver car came to rest on the shoulder, its nose a foot or two from the banked edge that slanted sharply down to the desert floor. Ahead, the truck was angled the other way, its body forming a wide V with the car. Between them lay the boy, his thin arms wrapping his head, panting hard. Around him was a spread of fallen objects—chocolate bars, a toy, something that glittered pathetically in the harsh sun. An orange, its bright colour shocking in this dun-coloured landscape, rolled lazily along the tarmac.
The silence of settling dust. Sharif opened his door and got out. He was tall, as tall as the Sultan himself, with a warrior’s build and a proud, some might say arrogant, posture. His long face was marked by a square jaw and a straight nose inherited from his foreign mother. His upper lip was well-formed, his firm, full lower lip the sign of a deep and passionate nature which few ever saw. Dark eyes under low-set, almost straight brows showed the intense intelligence of the mind behind. His cheekbones were strong, his skin smooth. His fine black hair was cut short and neat, the curl tamed back from the wide, clear forehead.
The boy sat up, fighting to catch his breath. He seemed otherwise unhurt.
“You little fool,” Sharif said.
“Where…where did you…come from?” the boy panted.
His thick, sunburnt hair was chopped ragged. In the sharply revealed bone structure of the starved little face, the jaw was square but delicate for a boy, sloping down to a pointed chin. His wide, full mouth was too big for his thin face. So were the eyes. He was too young for the age in his eyes—but so were they all, in the camps. Sharif guessed him at about fourteen.
Sharif gave a bark of angry laughter. “Where did I come from? What the hell were you doing? You’re lucky to be alive!”
For a moment the boy simply gazed at him wide-eyed, taking in the sight of Sharif’s proud, stern handsomeness, the flowing white djellaba and keffiyeh so alien to this land.
“Yes. Thank you,” said the boy.
This was so unexpected that this time Sharif’s laughter was genuine. He drew a gold case out of the pocket of his djellaba, extracted a thin black cigar, and set it between his teeth. The boy, meanwhile, still breathing hard, got up on his knees and reached for a chocolate bar, then grimaced with sudden pain and turned to nurse one ankle.
Sharif paused in the act of pulling out his lighter. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” the boy lied, as if to admit to any weakness would be dangerous. Setting his teeth against pain, he turned doggedly to the task of gathering up his loot.
Sharif set his foot on a blue plastic ring in a brightly printed cardboard mount just as the boy’s fingers reached for it. The boy looked up into the dark eyes so far above, his gaze challenging, assessing.
“How bad?” Sharif asked.
The boy shrugged.
“How badly are you hurt?” Sharif insisted.
“What do you care? Does it make you feel better to think that you’re concerned? When you go on your way in your nice shiny car will it give you a warm feeling to know that you asked after my health?”
The cynicism was brutal, for it told of years of suffering, and the boy was still only a child. That such complete absence of trust could exist in a human breast suddenly struck Sharif as deeply tragic. He suddenly, urgently wanted this damaged child to understand that there was genuine goodness in the world.
Simultaneously he derided himself for the sentiment. He had visited nothing but scenes from hell for weeks past, and he had managed to keep his head above water. Why now? Why this skinny kid who trusted no one? He emphatically did not want to be drawn in. It was a one-way trip. Take one member of suffering humanity personally and there was no end to it. Like a surgeon, he had to keep a clinical distance.
“Don’t be a fool. Get in the car. I’ll take you to a doctor.”
The boy visibly flinched. “No, thanks. Are you going to lift your foot? I need this.” He tried to pull whatever it was out from under Sharif’s foot, but succeeded only in tearing the packaging.
They had both forgotten the trucker. Having moved his truck off the road, he now came towards them at a furious jog.
“You bloody little scum!” he cried, descending on the boy. “What were you playing at? You’re one of those bloody refugees, aren’t you?”
He grabbed the boy’s wrist and dragged him to his feet, spilling all his gathered possessions onto the ground again. The boy cried out with pain.
“Refugees?” Sharif Azad al Dauleh queried softly, his voice cutting through the other’s anger.
There was a pause as the trucker absorbed the powerful frame, the proud posture, the clothing from that other desert a world away.
“That’s Burry Hill over there.” He nodded towards the cruel, uncompromising rows of curling razor wire just visible in the distance across the bleak scrubland, ignoring the boy silently struggling in his ruthless hold. “It’s not as secure as the others. People say they can get out, but there’s nowhere to go, so they have to go back. I’ve heard of this trick—they throw some kind of firework under your wheels and when you stop they jump off and are out over the desert before you can catch them.
“But not this time, eh?” He jerked at the boy’s wrist and showed his teeth. “Not this time.”
“Let me go, you stinking camel-stuffer!” shrieked the boy, suddenly abandoning English to revert to a patois that seemed to be a mixture of languages, of which Bagestani Arabic and Parvani formed the chief part. A stream of insult followed.
Sharif flicked the gold lighter alive, a smile twitching his lips for the rich fluency of the invective as the boy informed the trucker that he was a man who didn’t know one end of a goat from the other, but wasn’t particular about it anyway. He briefly bent to the flame. When he lifted his head again his eyes fell on the boy’s contorted face, and for a moment he went perfectly still.
“Come here, you little—” The trucker was trying to deliver a kick, but even with his hurt foot, the boy was proving too agile. Beside the well-fed driver, he looked like a stick insect.
“Eater of the vomit of dogs!”
The lighter closed with an expensive click and Sharif Azad al Dauleh lifted his head and