You can’t shake the tight, wound-up, jumpy hope in your belly that you’ll somehow, against all the odds, be reunited with Rahama again. And, oh, what a story you’ll have to tell her when you get there. The thought makes you smile, just a little.
The airport in Turkey is noisy and busy. You can smell food and petrol. You cast your eyes around the crowd. Piggy said someone would meet you here, but nobody stands out in the sea of dark hair and hijabs.
Warily, you go outside. You are greeted by a blast of heat and sunshine – Jamilah weakly folds her body into yours. You wait for hours, watching taxis come and go, until you notice a guard with his eye on you.
‘Come on, it’s not safe to wait any longer,’ you tell Jamilah. ‘Let’s go.’
Most of the traffic seems to be heading in one direction, so you follow it, walking along the side of the road. The street signs use the same alphabet as English, but the words don’t make any sense to you. You have no money, and no idea what to do next.
Just then, a fancy black car screeches to a halt next to you. The driver, a man, nods at you as if to say: Get in. Thinking this must be the person who was meant to meet you at the airport, you and Jamilah climb into the car.
IT’S BEEN NEARLY three years now, since you took that ride. You’ve asked yourself so many times, Could things have worked out differently, if we hadn’t got in? Or would he have kidnapped us anyway?
You knew within minutes of getting in the car, that it wasn’t his intention to take you safely to Italy. You still have nightmares about it. The man smuggled you out of Turkey, drugged and bound, and passed you along a chain of criminal hands: people who make their profit by kidnapping vulnerable children. Jamilah was passed in a different direction. She could be anywhere.
You weren’t even sure which country you’d ended up in at first – just that it was bitingly cold, with pale-faced people who spoke in guttural voices; a place where the colour seemed to have leached out of the sky. Now, you’re pretty sure it’s Russia, or one of its neighbouring countries.
You work in a match factory. You aren’t paid. The owners say you owe the people smuggler thousands of dollars for your journey and have to work here until you’ve repaid him.
You’ve been beaten more times than you can remember. Sometimes, your fingertips are so cold when you work the machine that you’re not even sure you’d notice if one of them were sliced right off.
But you suppose you would still feel the pain. You’re a human: you breathe, you bleed, you struggle. Even when you don’t want to anymore. Even when Allah seems to have deserted you, and the hot, spicy-smelling streets of Mogadishu seem like a lifetime ago.
You work, and you survive, and you keep a tiny flame of hope alive that, one day, you will find a way to escape.
To return to your last choice and try again, go to scene 28.
You clamber out of the bush, pins-and-needles shooting down your legs. The torchlight instantly swings towards you.
‘Hello,’ calls the same heavily accented voice. ‘How many of you are there?’
‘Just two,’ you say, pulling Jamilah out of the bush, and then – too late! – you realise your mistake. If this was the people smuggler, he would already know there are only two of you. It must be the police!
Still holding tight to Jamilah’s arm, you start to run. Vines lash at your bare arms, and the trees seem to bounce wildly in the torchlight as the man behind you blows a whistle and runs after you. The ground is a tangle of roots and holes, and Jamilah is trying her best to keep up but keeps falling heavily against your arm every few steps.
The policeman’s footsteps are closing in, and you can hear that more of his colleagues have joined in the chase, shouting to each other in Indonesian as they run.
You glance over your shoulder to see how far behind you the policeman is, and he closes the remaining gap in only a few bounds, his eyes and teeth shining in the torchlight, his breath loud and menacing.
He grabs Jamilah, and she squeals and wriggles violently. You throw your full body weight at him, aiming to headbutt him in the nose, but he dodges nimbly and you miss, only clipping the side of his body and lurching face-first into the leaf litter.
The other policemen are on you now, and they use their batons to beat you on your thighs, shoulders, back and arms. You throw your arms over your head to protect it from the beating, and then you feel a tight, cold band of metal snap shut around your wrists. One of the officers hauls you to your feet by the handcuffs he’s just placed on you.
In the Indonesian jail, you are separated from Jamilah, and this hurts much more than the bruises from where the batons hit you, or your stomach, which aches from hunger after your long day on the boat. You are in an adult cell: a concrete room with filthy bunks and iron bars, which you share with about forty men.
The roughest of the prisoners pick fights with the other men, steal their food, and bribe cigarettes from the jailors. They have skin laced with homemade tattoos, and their teeth are broken and brown. This prison is their den. They are known here, and feared. You try to stay as invisible as possible.
You have only one hope to get you and Jamilah out of here: to offer the cash Abshir gave you to a jailer as a bribe. The bag you had with some food, drink, and the phone
