The One That Got Away - Junior edition

a group standing or sitting around, chatting in quiet voices. Several times I picked up the glow of a cigarette and had to box round it. (Boxing is when you walk in a box shape round an obstacle, counting your paces and turning right-angles so you end up walking in the same direction as before.) Often I just smelled smoke, either from cigarettes or from a fire or stove, and pulled off without seeing anything. It seemed odd that so many citizens should be out of doors on a freezing winter night.

Again and again I saw or sensed people ahead of me, brought up the night-sight for a better look, and had to make a detour. In the end my lack of progress became quite frustrating, and I started to think that if things were going to be like this all the way to the border, I would never get out. I would become too weak from lack of food, and would end up getting captured.

During that night I was on the move for eight hours, and must have covered thirty or forty kilometres, but I made only about ten kilometres towards the frontier. I would walk gently forward for a while, see someone, back off and box them. Immediately I’d come on someone else, box them, and carry on. It was zigzag, zigzag, all the time, five or ten steps sideways for every one forward.

I found it incredibly difficult to maintain concentration for any length of time. Wild animals like antelopes and deer, which are preyed on by carnivores, have the ability to remain on the alert for hours on end. Their lives depend on it. But humans have lost the knack, and it takes conscious effort to stay watchful.

Often I found I was having silent conversations with myself.

I’ll walk as far as the top of that hill, I’d say. Then I can have a rest.

Soon I’d ask, How did you get yourself into this mess? And where have the others got to now? Casting ahead in my mind, I wondered what the border with Syria would look like, and how I’d cross it. People and personalities from my past kept drifting into my head: my mum and dad, my brothers, my school teachers. I’d wonder what they’d be doing at that moment — and I longed to tell them where I was. I imagined how surprised they’d be if they knew what I was doing. Often I heard their voices, and these became so real that I’d forget about my own security and pay no attention to my surroundings. Suddenly I’d come to and realize that I’d covered a kilometre or more in a dream.

Whenever I passed a house, the dogs would start barking, and the noise would ricochet down the valley. One lot of dogs would alert the next, and they’d start up before I even reached them. Those tell-tale alarm calls progressed along the river ahead of me, and to my ears they sounded as loud as the wail of a siren.

The dogs were a real nuisance. As I was skirting one village, above me on a mound, I looked up at the houses — square, dark silhouettes with flat roofs and no lights showing — and saw a whole pack of them coming down, barking their heads off. Through the night-sight I watched them make straight for me. One ran up to within three metres, with four or five more close behind it. If I stopped, they would stop, and also they’d stop barking. But the moment I threatened them or moved, they’d bark like hell again and creep on some more, stalking me.

I kept looking anxiously up at the houses, expecting lights to come on at any second. I felt like the Pied Piper, with all the dogs following me. I stopped, picked up a rock and hurled it. The pack ran away for a few metres, only to close in again. As I cleared the houses, they followed for a couple of hundred metres. They stopped, and stood or sat, watching and barking until I was out of their sight. Then, when my nerves were in tatters, they turned back and trooped home. The one saving grace was that their owners seemed to pay no attention whatsoever. So far as I could see, nobody ever came out of a house to see what the noise was all about.

For a while I stayed as close to the river as I could, partly for navigation, partly so that I could get more water when I needed it. But then, deciding I was too close to the inhabited stretch, I drew away to the south again and returned to the edge of the desert. There I started cross-graining through the wadis, which were running down towards the Euphrates at right-angles to the way I was going. I wanted to try to stay far enough from the river and its habitations, but at the same time out of the wadis, so that I wasn’t forever scrambling up and down.

By five in the morning I was starting to worry about finding somewhere to lie up for the day. At 0530 it was still fully dark, but when I came to the top of a cliff looking out over the river, something made me decide to scramble four or five metres down the face. There I found a ledge, and at the back of it a nice flat area, with a crack going back underneath the cliff. That seemed as good a hiding place as any, and I lay in it until day broke.

Monday 28 January: Escape — Day Five

When the light came up, I found I could look straight down into the river. On the opposite bank there was a small village. The houses were simple, single-storey structures, mostly built of breeze blocks, with flat roofs. They stood in areas of dirt, with no sign of a garden. Soon, as I watched through binoculars, people started to come out and walk up and down, going about their daily tasks. There seemed to be very few men, but plenty of women, all dressed in black robes from head to foot and heavily veiled. Groups of them came down to the water’s edge to fill their buckets. Surprise, surprise, the place was alive with dogs.

I was looking for any strange activity which might suggest that the area was on the alert — military vehicles driving about, or troops on the move, but I saw nothing of note.

Two men spent the whole day fishing, paddling up and down in a boat. On each pass they let themselves drift maybe a hundred metres downstream. The speed at which the boat picked up confirmed that the current was strong, and I felt glad that I hadn’t tried to swim across. In daylight the water looked a dark brown colour, and a good deal of rubbish was floating about inside my bottle; but the sight of the shining fish reassured me. If they could live in the river, I thought, the water couldn’t be too bad.

All that day — Monday 28 January — I lay on the ledge, with my webbing under my head as a pillow. I felt secure, almost peaceful. It was the sort of place, I thought, in which an eagle or a peregrine falcon would nest. There was no movement close to me, and my main enemy was boredom. I spent hours studying my map, trying to work out exactly where I was. Again I managed to convince myself that I was well to the west of my true position, and a great deal nearer the border.

I tried not to think about food, but inevitably, with all that time on my hands, it had become a major preoccupation. Each one of those houses opposite had food in it, even if it was only flour or bread. If it weren’t for the dogs, I could nip into one under cover of darkness and steal a loaf. In my mind I kept seeing the sachets of fruit that I’d left in my bergen. What wouldn’t I give for some pineapple in syrup? When I get out of here, I thought, I’m going to eat a gallon of ice cream.

The day passed. From my perch on the cliff face, I watched the shadows lengthen in the village opposite. Gradually the grey-brown fields beyond the houses faded into the dusk. As evening came on, I wanted to get going again, and had to hold myself in check.

* * *

Monday 28 January: Escape — Night Five

When darkness fell at last, I moved out, climbed to the top of the cliff and started walking. That night, thank goodness, people disappeared into their houses and after dark there was nobody about. But to keep out of the way, I pushed up towards the wadis, between a line of pylons and the main road. Up there, I found myself in steep country. I kept coming to what looked like small quarries, so I’d have to climb down, walk across a flat floor, then scramble up again and along the top. It was really tiring, and my feet were seriously sore.

After studying the map all day, I thought I’d worked out where I was — a big bend in the river with a village on it. This looked only about a day’s walk from the border — a fact which lifted my morale and gave me strength.

Again I walked all night. The occasional car went along the main supply route, which was three or four hundred metres down to my right. Some had headlights on, others were driving blind. At some point late in the night the headlights of a car illuminated a motorway-sized sign. I was too far away to read the names, but I decided to move down to the road and check what it said.

It was then that I saw the only wild animal in the whole of my trek. As I dropped towards the road I looked through the night-sight. There, on top of a mound, stood a big fox, staring down at me. I knew what he was from his sharp-pointed face and sticking-up ears. For a whole minute I watched him, and he never moved; then I went on, and left him in possession of his territory. In that fox I recognized a fellow creature of the night. I bet that, like me, he lay up all day and came out only when darkness fell. He can’t have been as short of food as I was, but I found it hard to imagine what he lived on, because never in all my time on the move or lying up did I see any form of rodent.

Closing on the sign, I peered up at it. It was written in English as well as Arabic: