Abdul glanced across at Naji. Kiah was not as embarrassed as she should have been at him seeing her breast. After more than two weeks of sitting side by side all day, every day, a weary intimacy had set in.
Now he spoke to Naji. ‘There was once a man called Samson, and he was the strongest man in the whole wide world,’ he said.
Naji stopped grizzling and went quiet.
‘One day Samson was walking in the desert when, suddenly, he heard a lion roar nearby – really near.’
Naji put his thumb in his mouth and snuggled up to Kiah, at the same time staring at Abdul with big eyes.
Abdul was everyone’s friend, Kiah had found. All the passengers liked him. He often made them laugh. Kiah was not surprised: she had first seen him as the vendor of cigarettes, joking with the men and flirting with the women, and she had recalled that the Lebanese were said to be good businessmen. At the first town where the bus stopped for a night, Abdul had gone to an open-air bar. Kiah went to the same place, with Esma and her parents-in-law, just for a change of scene. She had seen Abdul playing cards, not winning or losing much. He had a bottle of beer in his hand, though he never seemed to finish it. Most of all he talked to people, apparently inconsequential chatter, but later she realized he had found out how many wives the men had and which shopkeepers were dishonest and who they were all frightened of. Thereafter it was similar at every town or village.
Yet she felt sure this was an act. When not making friends with everyone he could be withdrawn, aloof, even depressed, like a man with worries in his life and sorrows in his past. This had at first led her to think he disliked her. In time she started to believe he had two personalities. And then, beneath all that, there was a third man, one who would take the trouble to soothe Naji by telling a story that a two-year-old boy would understand and like.
The bus was following tracks that were hardly marked and often invisible to Kiah. Most of the desert consisted of flat, hard rock with a thin layer of sand, an adequate driving surface at low speeds. Every now and again a discarded Coca-Cola can or a ruined tyre confirmed that they were in fact following the road, and not lost in the wilderness.
Every village was an oasis: people could not live without water. Each little settlement had an underground lake, often showing itself on the surface as a small pond or a well. Sometimes they dried up, like Lake Chad; and then the people had to go somewhere else, as Kiah was doing.
One night there was nowhere to stop, and they all slept in their seats on the bus until the morning sun woke them.
Early in the trip some of the men had pestered Kiah. It always happened in the evenings, after dark, when all the passengers were lying on the floor of some house, or in a courtyard – on mattresses, if they were lucky. One night one of the men climbed on top of her. She fought him off silently, knowing that if she screamed, or humiliated the man in any other way, his friends would take revenge on her, and she would be accused of being a whore. But he was too strong for her, and he managed to pull aside her blanket. Then, suddenly, he jerked away, and she realized that someone strong had pulled him off her. In the starlight she saw that Abdul had the man pinned to the ground with one hand gripping his neck, preventing him from making any noise or, perhaps, even breathing. She heard Abdul whisper: ‘Leave her alone or I will kill you. Do you understand? I will kill you.’ Then he was gone. The man lay gasping for breath for a minute then crept away. She was not even sure who it was.
After that she began to figure Abdul out. She guessed that he did not want to be seen as her friend, so she treated him like a stranger in front of others, not chatting to him or smiling at him or seeking his help as she struggled to perform everyday tasks with a wriggling two-year-old in her arms. But sitting beside him on the bus, she talked. Quietly and undramatically, she told him about her childhood, her brothers in Sudan, life beside the shrinking lake, and the death of Salim. She even related the story of the nightclub called Bourbon Street. He said nothing about himself, and she never asked him questions, because she sensed that would be unwelcome, but he often commented on the stories she told, and she felt a growing sympathy.
Now she listened to his soothing low voice, with its Lebanese accent. ‘She took a lock of his hair between her finger and thumb, and he did not wake up, but just snored on. She cut off the lock of hair with the scissors, and still he did not wake up. Then another lock. Snip, snip, went the scissors, and snore, snore, went Samson.’
Her mind went back to the nuns’ school, where she had first heard the Bible stories – Jonah and the whale, David and Goliath, Noah and his ark. She had learned to read and write, divide and multiply, and speak a little French. She had gathered knowledge from the other girls, too, some of whom knew more than she did about adult mysteries such as sex. It had been a happy time. In fact, her whole life had been happy until that awful day when they brought Salim’s cold body home to her. Since then it had been all disappointment and hardship. Would that ever come to an end? Would there be happy days again? Would she get to France?
Suddenly the bus slowed. Looking forward, Kiah saw steam coming out of the front of the vehicle. ‘What now?’ she muttered.
Abdul said: ‘And when he woke up in the morning, his head was nearly bald, and his lovely long hair was on the pillow all around him. And what happened next, we shall find out tomorrow.’
‘No, now!’ said Naji, but Abdul did not answer him.
Hakim stopped the bus and turned off the engine. ‘The radiator has boiled,’ he announced.
Kiah felt scared. The bus had broken down twice before – which was the main reason the trip was already taking longer than expected – but the third time was no less frightening. There was no one nearby, phones did not work, and they rarely saw another vehicle. If the bus could not be fixed, they would all have to walk. Then they would either reach an oasis or drop dead, whichever came first.
Hakim picked up a toolkit and got out of the bus. He opened the hood to look at the engine. Most of the passengers got off to stretch their legs. Naji ran around, getting rid of surplus energy. He had only recently learned to run, and he was proud of his speed.
Kiah and Abdul and several others looked over Hakim’s shoulder at the steaming motor. Fixing old cars and motorcycles was an important activity in the poorer areas of Chad and, although it was a male responsibility, Kiah had picked up some knowledge.
There was no sign of a leak.
Hakim pointed to a snake-like piece of rubber dangling from a pulley. ‘The fan belt has broken,’ he said. Gingerly, he reached into the hot machinery and drew out the rubber. It was black with brownish patches, worn and cracked in places. Kiah could see that it should have been replaced long ago.
Hakim returned to the bus and pulled a large tin box from under his seat. He had produced this during the previous breakdowns. He put the box down on the sand, opened it, and rummaged through assorted spare parts: spark plugs, fuses, a selection of cylinder seals and a roll of duct tape. Hakim frowned and looked through it again.
Then he said: ‘There is no spare fan belt.’
In a low voice Kiah said to Abdul: ‘We’re in trouble.’
‘Not quite,’ he replied, equally quietly. ‘Not yet.’
Hakim said: ‘We will have to improvise.’ He looked at the passengers around him, and fixed his eyes on Abdul. ‘Give me that sash,’ he said, pointing to the cotton strip around Abdul’s waist.
‘No,’ said Abdul.
‘I need to use it as a temporary fan belt.’
‘It won’t work,’ said Abdul. ‘You need something with more grip.’
‘There is a spring pulley that acts as a tensioner.’
‘The cotton would still slip.’
‘I am ordering you!’