For a moment you think the ute isn’t going to stop, but it grinds to a halt right in front of you. As you take in its occupants, your heart begins to pound and you feel dizzy.
The driver wears reflective sunglasses and is swathed in the chequered scarves that al-Shabaab militants sometimes wear. He wears a loop of bullets around his chest. In the back of his truck is a cargo of soldiers dressed in camouflage. Some of them don’t look much older than you.
Your truckload of ‘saviours’ is a truckload of al-Shabaab recruits and their unit commander. You took a gamble, and the people who’ve stopped for you, the first people you’ve seen in all these days, are the same ones who ripped you from your homeland and want to kill you.
You think about running away, but it’s hopeless – you don’t have the energy to run alone, let alone with Jamilah’s unconscious body slung over your shoulder.
‘Where are you going?’ the driver growls in Somali.
‘Nairobi,’ you manage to answer.
‘Give me that gun and I’ll take you there,’ he barks in his gravelly voice.
You look again at the group of soldiers in the back of the ute. Their faces seem hard and closed. Nobody smiles or makes eye contact.
If you go back out into the desert, praying for another ride, you may not survive.
But hitching a ride with this truckload of enemies – and giving them your only weapon to boot – seems positively suicidal. What if they work out who you are, or whom you stole this gun from in the first place?
You wonder if, either way, this will be the last decision you ever make.
To take your chances in the desert and refuse the ride, go to scene 26.
To accept the lift, go to scene 27.
You sigh. ‘I think Adut is right,’ you say. ‘Let’s just stay here a little longer and see if we can raise a fare to Nairobi.’
Two children walking alone through the desert for such a huge distance would be food for the vultures before too long.
The four of you stay awake late into the night listing all the ways you could try to raise the money.
‘You could call your Uncle Aadan back and ask him to send some money direct to Dadaab?’
‘Or call Sampson, and ask him for money?’
‘We could always keep the half of the gold pen with the memory stick attached, and sell the other half.’
‘Could I leave school and take up full-time scavenging and bottle-light making with, Jok?’
‘We could all go mostly without food for a couple of weeks, and sell the rations?’
‘Why don’t you become a rap star?’
‘Or a famous soccer player?’
‘I could marry the president’s daughter!’
‘We’d better find out which presidents have nice daughters.’
You are really going to miss Jok and Adut when you’re gone.
JUST BEFORE DAWN, when you are nearly asleep, a shock of adrenaline runs through your veins and launches you wide awake. You sit still as a stone, trying to work out what woke you.
Was it a bad dream? Jamilah twitching? Jok muttering? No … there’s someone outside the hut. You’re sure of it.
Calm down, you tell yourself. Of course there’s someone outside the hut. It’s nearly dawn – it will just be someone going off early to work, or perhaps a guilty man sneaking home after a night of drinking moonshine liquor with his mates.
You decide, as a favour to Adut, to take the water drum to the bore-hole and fetch her some water before the household wakes up. She has been so kind to you, and you would like to show your gratitude.
And besides, you need to get out of the hut – the air is musty and thick, like the air in the ruined theatre by the sea when Zayd told you his story, and you’re feeling as jittery and trapped as you did then. It will be too dangerous for you to go out later, when the camp is properly awake, so now is your chance.
You sneak to the door and open it slowly. Creak. You need to open it wider to get the water drum out with you. Creeeeak.
Outside, you look left and right. Nobody. One or two stars are left shining as the night’s ink drains from the lightening sky. The shadows are still deep and dark, and the air smells like smoke. The sandy track to the bore-hole is cold under your bare feet.
Whump! As you pass a tall thorn-tree fence, someone steps out from behind it and whips a sack down over your head.
You fight desperately, wriggling and kicking, but they are strong and your arms are pinned tight to your sides. Through the sack, a hand clamps your mouth firmly closed, so that you struggle to breathe and your screams come out as a ‘Mmmmph!’ through your nose.
You hear a hollow thump as you kick the plastic water drum where you dropped it, and feel yourself strike what you think is a leg. Then your legs are promptly kicked out from under you and you fall backwards, your body hitting the dirt.
Someone has their knees on your chest. They are still pressing down on your mouth, too, so that the back of your head is shoved hard against the sandy ground.
Someone else standing nearby starts to kick you, and your chest and sides are on fire. You can manage to suck in tiny cracks of air through your nose, but if you don’t get a deep lungful of air soon, you’ll pass out.
‘Where is it?’ you hear a voice hiss in Somali. ‘Where is it?’ Then: ‘Stop kicking him and search him!’
The kicks stop, and a hand rummages through your left shorts pocket. You realise what they’re after: the pen. If only you’d left it in Jok’s hut. But you know it’s
