inches from her back bumper, and behind that the traffic was backed up
solidly. Only the motorcyclists had freedom of movement. As she watched
in the mirror, one of these came weaving through the congestion with
suicidal abandon. It was a battered red 200 cc Honda so covered with
dust that the colour was hardly recognizable. There was a passenger
perched on the pillion, and both he and the driver had covered the lower
half of their faces with the corners of their white headcloths as
protection against the exhaust fumes and dust.
Passing on the wrong side, the Honda skimmed through the narrow gap
between the taxi and the cars parked at the kerb with nothing to spare
on either side.
The taxi-driver made an obscene gesture with thumb and forefinger, and
called on Allah to witness that the driver was both mad and stupid.
The Honda slowed slightly as it drew level with Royan's Renault, and
the' pillion passenger leaned out and dropped something through the open
window on to the passenger seat beside her, Immediately the driver
accelerated so abruptly that for a moment the front wheel was lifted off
the ground. He put the motorcycle over into a tight turn and sped away
down the narrow alleyway that opened off the main thoroughfare, narrowly
avoiding hitting an old woman in his path.
As the pillion passenger looked back at her the wind blew the fold of ck
she recognized the man she had last seen in the headlights of the Fiat
on the road beside the oasis.
'Yusuf!' As the Honda disappeared she looked down at the object that he
had dropped on to the seat beside her.
It was egg-shaped and the segmented metallic surface was painted
military green. She had seen the same thing so often on old TV war
movies that she recognized it instantly as a fragmentation grenade, and
at the same moment she realized that the priming handle had flown off
and the weapon was set to explode within seconds.
Without thinking, she grabbed the door handle beside her and flung all
her weight against the door. It burst open and she tumbled out in the
road. Her foot slipped off the clutch and the Renault bounded forward
and crashed into the back of the stationary bus.
As Royan sprawled in the road under the wheels of the following taxi,
the grenade exploded. Through the open driver's door blew a sheet of
flame and smoke and debris. The back window burst outwards and sprayed
her with diamond chips of glass, and the detonation drove painfully into
her eardrums.
A stunned silence followed the shock of the explosion, broken only by
the tinkle of falling glass shards, and then immediately there was a
hubbub of groans and screams.
Royan sat up and clasped her injured arm to her chest. She had fallen
heavily upon it and the stitches were agony.
The Renault was wrecked, but she saw that her leather sling bag had been
blown out of the door and lay in the street close at hand. She pushed
herself unsteadily to her feet and hobbled over to pick it up. All
around her was confusion. A few of the passengers in the bus had been
injured, and a piece of shrapnel or wreckage had wounded a little girl
on the sidewalk. Her mother was screaming and mopping at the child's
