[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

"Things like this never happen on cruises," she said. "I'll get Carl Senior
down from the bubble. You wait here."
"You say he's your brother . . ."
Hani looked at Murad, then nodded. "My brother," she agreed. "Unfortunately
he's not very bright."
The man asking Hani questions was big in a different way. His shoulders so
broad that they seemed to stretch against his very skin. On his T-shirt was a
simple fish made from a single line that curled back over itself at the tail;
Hani had a feeling she'd seen the sign before.
"You have the fish."
Page 149
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
The man nodded. "You know what it means?"
Hani nodded. "Of course I know," she said. "Everyone knows."
"Carl . . ."
The word was a warning. "I know you want to do good in this heathen place but
remember what our brochure said about preaching."
"I'm not preaching," said the man. "She mentioned it first." He dropped to a
crouch in front of Hani.
"What's this about an orphanage?" The words were soft, unlike his eyes, which
were pale, watchful and just a touch angry. Mentioning his shirt had obviously
been a bad move.
"We're running away," said Hani.
"I can see that."
"From an orphanage."
"What's its name? Come on," he said when Hani hesitated. "Spit it out."
Hani looked puzzled. "Spit what out?" she said.
"Carl!"
"It's a fair question," Carl Vanhoffer said to his wife. "If she can't
instantly name the orphanage, then it probably doesn't exist. And that boy
isn't her brother. Not full brother anyway. The skin colours are way
different."
"You'll have to excuse Carl Senior," said the woman with a tight smile. "He
used to be a police officer.
He gets like this sometimes. You should have seen him with Carl Junior when he
was growing up . . ."
"That's okay," said Hani. "My uncle used to be a policeman. He gets like that
too and your husband's right. We're not really running away from an
orphanage."
"Told you," Carl Vanhoffer said. "What are you running away from?"
"Marriage," said Hani and slowly pulled the shawl tight round her face,
shrinking inside it. With her hunched shoulders and narrow back she looked
frighteningly young. "And you're right about the other thing too, Muri's not
my brother, he's my cousin."
"How old are you?" That was the woman.
Hani thought about it.
"Well?" The man's eyes were less hard than they had been. Slightly mistrustful
to be true enough but not out-and-out disbelieving.
"Twelve," said Hani, adding a year to her age. Assuming Khartoum was right and
she really had just turned eleven.
"You don't look it."
"Carl!"
Again that outrage, almost maternal. Like there were things men couldn't be
relied on to understand. Hani glanced at the both of them, the American man
and woman. Most husbands and wives she'd met had harder edges to their lives
and stricter boundaries. However, Hani had to admit to not having met many.
Hamzah Effendi and Madame Rahina were not a good model. Aunt Jalila and Uncle
Mushin even worse.
One now dead, the other apparently in a sanatorium. Uncle Ashraf and Zara?
They weren't even a couple, not properly.
"It's all to do with food," Hani told the woman. "The less you get to eat the
smaller you look . . . A doctor told me," she added, before Carl Senior had a
chance to ask her how she knew.
"And the poor get married younger," said the woman.
Hani wasn't convinced this was true because, the way Zara told it, the really
poor people in Iskandryia couldn't afford to get married until their twenties,
which might be why they got so cross. And that fact probably applied to
Ifriqiya as well.
But Hani kept her silence.
Despite what Uncle Ashraf, Zara and everyone else thought, she always had
Page 150
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
known when to keep her opinions to herself.
"Have you met the boy you're meant to marry?"
"Oh yes." Hani nodded.
"What's he like?" The woman sounded interested. Appalled, but still
interested.
"Okay, I guess," said Hani, jerking her narrow chin towards Murad. "As boys go
. . ."
"This is him?"
Hani nodded again.
"And he's running away with you?" Carl Senior sounded doubtful.
"Of course," said Hani, "Muri doesn't mind getting married but he doesn't want
to leave school."
"Why would he leave school?" It was Micki's turn to look muddled.
"Because he'll need a job for when I have a baby . . ."
"When you . . ."
Their voices were so loud that Hani was afraid the Russian in the next cabin
might start to wonder what was wrong.
"What exactly are you telling them?" Murad hissed, his Arabic so flawless he
could have been reciting poetry at the court of a long-dead caliph. Needless
to say Micki and Carl Senior understood not a word.
"That we're running away," said Hani. "Because our parents want us to get
married."
"Married?"
Murad stood openmouthed in outrage. "You're eleven," he said. "I'm twelve.
Fourteen is the earliest a girl can get married in Ifriqiya. Sixteen for
boys."
"But they don't know that, do they?" said Hani.
"What are you telling him?" Carl Senior demanded.
"That Muri shouldn't be afraid of you," said Hani. "That you won't hand us
over." She was glancing at the man but she was talking to Micki.
CHAPTER 45
_____________
Friday 11th--Sunday 13th March
He stank and there was little doubt that he'd just pissed himself again.
Liquid his body could ill afford to lose. Raf had also started to think of
himself as he and that was never a good sign.
Maybe it was this that allowed the fox to return. Alternatively, Raf had just
got bored with trying to hold himself together.
"Now dislocate your other shoulder,"
ordered the fox.
Raf shook his head. His teeth gritted not from bravery or pain but because he
was trying to stop his upper left canine from falling out and keeping his
mouth closed was all he could come up with, given both his hands were shackled
behind his back and fixed to a wall.
Impossible.
"Not impossible,"
said the fox, "just painful. Work on the difference."
And then Raf stopped letting the different bits of himself talk to each other
and started to listen to the sound of a sea that had vanished millions of
years before, after the Chott el Jerid finally separated from the
Mediterranean to become first an inland sea, then a lake and ultimately the
flood-prone salt flats it finally became.
Except that the waves like the voices, came from within him and there was
nothing supernatural about them.
What Raf could hear was the sound of his own blood echoing off the stone walls
of an azib, a domed shelter built for goats and now his prison. At first the
noise had been slight as meltwater over pebbles, growing louder, until now it
Page 151
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
splashed like a fosse falling into a cool meltwater pool far below. He was
listening to what was left of his own life.
"Do it," Raf told himself. "Dislocate."
His first idea after Major Jalal had bolted the heavy azib door was to
somersault out of his predicament by rolling forward to hang upside down from [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]