In the heat of the day she took a long break at another village and sat in the shade of a little grove of date palms. She breastfed Naji, then drank some water and ate a slice of salted meat. Naji napped for an hour. They set off again in the cooling afternoon.
The sun was low when she reached Three Palms. She walked past the gas station by the café almost hoping that Hakim would have departed early and left her behind. But she saw him, outside the door to the garage, talking with boastful assurance to a group of men who carried baggage of all shapes and sizes. Like her, they had arrived the day before departure, to be ready to go first thing tomorrow morning.
She walked slowly and tried to get a good look without appearing to stare. Those men were going to be her companions on a difficult journey. No one could say with confidence how long it would take, but it could not be less than a couple of weeks and might easily be twice that. The men were mostly young. They talked loudly and looked excited. She imagined that soldiers going to war might be like that, eagerly anticipating strange places and new experiences, knowing that they were risking their lives but not really taking it in.
There was no sign of the cigarette vendor. She hoped he would turn up. It would be a relief to have one person on the trip who was not a complete stranger.
There were no hotels in Three Palms. Kiah went to the convent and spoke to a nun. ‘Do you know a respectable family who might give me and my child a bed for the night?’ she said. ‘I have a little money, I can pay.’
As she had hoped, she was invited to stay at the convent. She was instantly taken back to her childhood by the atmosphere, an air of candle smoke and incense and old bibles. She had loved school. She wanted to know more about the mysteries of maths and French, past history and faraway places. But her education had stopped at thirteen.
The nuns made a great fuss of Naji, and gave Kiah a hearty meal of spicy lamb with beans, all for the price of a hymn and a few prayers before bedtime.
That night she lay awake worrying about Hakim. He had demanded the full fare up front, and she feared he would repeat this demand tomorrow. She would not give him more than half, but what if he then refused to take her? And what if he made a fuss about Naji travelling free?
Well, there was nothing she could do. She told herself that Hakim was not the only people smuggler in Chad. If the worst came to the worst, she would look for another one. It would be better than doing something foolish like giving Hakim all her money.
On the other hand, she felt that if she did not go now she might lose her nerve for ever.
In the morning, the nuns gave her coffee and bread and asked her what she was planning. She lied, saying she was going to visit a cousin in the next town. She feared that if she told them the truth they would spend hours trying to talk her out of it.
Walking through the town, letting Naji toddle beside her, she realized that after today she would probably never again see Three Palms and soon she would say goodbye to Chad, and then to Africa. Migrants sent letters home, they seldom returned. She was about to abandon her whole life so far, to throw away her entire past and move to a new world. It was scary. She began to feel lost and rootless in anticipation.
She was at the gas station before sunrise.
Several other passengers were there before her, some accompanied by large families who were evidently seeing them off. The café next door was open and doing a lot of business while everyone waited for Hakim. Kiah had already had coffee but she asked for some sweetened rice for Naji.
The proprietor was hostile. ‘What are you doing here? It doesn’t look good, a woman alone at my café.’
‘I’m going on Hakim’s bus.’
‘On your own?’
She made up a lie. ‘I’m meeting my cousin here. He’s coming with me.’
The man walked away without replying.
However, his wife brought the rice. She remembered Kiah from her last visit, and told her to put her money away as the rice was for the child.
There were kind people in the world, Kiah thought gratefully. She might need the help of strangers on this journey.
A minute later a family asked if they could sit with her. There was a woman of Kiah’s age called Esma, and her parents-in-law, a kindly looking woman called Bushra and an older man, Wahed, smoking a cigarette and coughing.
Esma was immediately friendly with Kiah and asked if her husband was with her. Kiah explained that she was a widow.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Esma. ‘I have a husband in Nice, that’s a town in France.’
Kiah was interested. ‘What work does he do there?’
‘He builds walls for rich people’s gardens. He’s a stonemason. There are many palaces in Nice. He works all the time. As soon as he finishes one wall there is another to be built.’
‘Is it good money?’
‘Amazing. He sent me five thousand US dollars so I could join him. He’s not a legal resident in France so I have to take this route.’
‘Five thousand dollars?’
Bushra, the mother-in-law, explained. ‘It was supposed to be just for Esma. He said he would send more later for his father and me. But my daughter-in-law is such a good girl, she wants to take us with her.’
Esma said: ‘I made a deal with Hakim, the three of us for five thousand. It means we have nothing to spare, but it was worth it, for soon we will all be together again.’
‘God willing,’ said Kiah.
*
Abdul spent the night at the home of Anand, the man who had bought his car. Abdul had haggled over the price, to avoid arousing suspicion, but in the end it had been a bargain, and he had thrown in his remaining cartons of Cleopatras as a bonus. Anand had seemed pleased, and had invited Abdul to spend the night. Anand’s three wives had made a tasty dinner.
That evening two of Anand’s friends had shown up, Fouzen and Haydar, and Anand suggested a game of dice. Fouzen was a thuggish young man in a dirty shirt, and Haydar was small and mean-looking, with one eye half closed by some old injury. At best, Abdul thought, Anand hoped to win back some of the money he had paid for the car; but he feared their intentions might be more sinister.
Abdul played carefully and won a little.
They asked him questions and he explained that he had sold his car to pay his fare to Europe with Hakim. They could tell by the way he spoke Arabic that he was not from Chad. ‘I’m Lebanese,’ he said, which was the truth, and the accent would be recognized by anyone from there.
They asked him why he had left, and he gave them his standard reply. ‘If you were born in Beirut, you’d want to leave, too.’
They were interested in what time the bus would depart and how early in the morning Abdul had to get to Hakim’s gas station, and his misgivings strengthened. They were probably thinking of robbing him. He was a stranger and a drifter; they might even think they could get away with killing him. There was no police station in Three Palms.
Abdul would dodge a fight if he could, but in any event he was not worried. These men were amateurs. Abdul had been a high-school wrestler and had fought in mixed-martial-arts contests to make money at college. He recalled an embarrassing moment in his CIA training. It was the unarmed combat course, and the trainer – a densely muscled man – had said the traditional words: ‘Okay, come at me and hit me.’
‘I’d rather not,’ Abdul had said, and the class had laughed, thinking he was afraid.
‘Oh,’ the trainer sneered, ‘so you know all about unarmed combat?’
‘I don’t know all about anything. But I do know a little about fighting and I avoid it when I can.’
‘Well, let’s see. Give me your best shot.’
‘Pick someone else, please.’
‘Just do it.’
The man was stubborn. He wanted to strike awe into the students’ hearts with a display of mastery. Abdul did not want to spoil his plan, but he would have to.
Abdul said: ‘Look, let’s talk about this,’ then he kicked the trainer in the stomach, threw him to the ground, and got him in a chokehold.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he said, ‘but you insisted.’ Then he released his hold and stood up.