Page 72 of Never

But if she was going to die, so be it. She could not do what she could not do.

She disposed of her few possessions to the other village wives: mattresses, cooking pots, jars, cushions and rugs. She called them all into her house, announced who was to have what, and told them they could take the stuff as soon as she left.

That night she lay awake, thinking of all the things that had happened in this house. She had lain with Salim for the first time here. She had given birth to Naji on this floor, and everyone in the village had heard her crying out in pain. She had been here when they brought Salim’s body home and gently laid it on the rug, and she had thrown herself on him and kissed him as if her love might bring him back to life.

On the day before the bus was due to leave, she woke before dawn. She put a few clothes in a bag along with some food that would not spoil: smoked fish, dried fruit, and salted mutton. She looked around the room and said goodbye to her house.

She left home at the break of day, with the bag in one hand and Naji on the opposite hip. At the edge of the silent village she looked back at the roofs of palm leaves. She had been born here and had lived here for all of her twenty years. She looked at the shrinking lake. In the silver light its surface was as calm and still as death. She would never see it again.

She passed through the village of Yusuf and Azra without stopping.

After an hour Naji became heavy, and she had to stop for a rest. After that she stopped often and her progress was slow.

In the heat of the day she took a long break at another village and sat in the shade of a little grove of date palms. She breastfed Naji, then drank some water and ate a slice of salted meat. Naji napped for an hour. They set off again in the cooling afternoon.

The sun was low when she reached Three Palms. She walked past the gas station by the café almost hoping that Hakim would have departed early and left her behind. But she saw him, outside the door to the garage, talking with boastful assurance to a group of men who carried baggage of all shapes and sizes. Like her, they had arrived the day before departure, to be ready to go first thing tomorrow morning.

She walked slowly and tried to get a good look without appearing to stare. Those men were going to be her companions on a difficult journey. No one could say with confidence how long it would take, but it could not be less than a couple of weeks and might easily be twice that. The men were mostly young. They talked loudly and looked excited. She imagined that soldiers going to war might be like that, eagerly anticipating strange places and new experiences, knowing that they were risking their lives but not really taking it in.

There was no sign of the cigarette vendor. She hoped he would turn up. It would be a relief to have one person on the trip who was not a complete stranger.

There were no hotels in Three Palms. Kiah went to the convent and spoke to a nun. ‘Do you know a respectable family who might give me and my child a bed for the night?’ she said. ‘I have a little money, I can pay.’

As she had hoped, she was invited to stay at the convent. She was instantly taken back to her childhood by the atmosphere, an air of candle smoke and incense and old bibles. She had loved school. She wanted to know more about the mysteries of maths and French, past history and faraway places. But her education had stopped at thirteen.

The nuns made a great fuss of Naji, and gave Kiah a hearty meal of spicy lamb with beans, all for the price of a hymn and a few prayers before bedtime.

That night she lay awake worrying about Hakim. He had demanded the full fare up front, and she feared he would repeat this demand tomorrow. She would not give him more than half, but what if he then refused to take her? And what if he made a fuss about Naji travelling free?

Well, there was nothing she could do. She told herself that Hakim was not the only people smuggler in Chad. If the worst came to the worst, she would look for another one. It would be better than doing something foolish like giving Hakim all her money.

On the other hand, she felt that if she did not go now she might lose her nerve for ever.

In the morning, the nuns gave her coffee and bread and asked her what she was planning. She lied, saying she was going to visit a cousin in the next town. She feared that if she told them the truth they would spend hours trying to talk her out of it.

Walking through the town, letting Naji toddle beside her, she realized that after today she would probably never again see Three Palms and soon she would say goodbye to Chad, and then to Africa. Migrants sent letters home, they seldom returned. She was about to abandon her whole life so far, to throw away her entire past and move to a new world. It was scary. She began to feel lost and rootless in anticipation.

She was at the gas station before sunrise.

Several other passengers were there before her, some accompanied by large families who were evidently seeing them off. The café next door was open and doing a lot of business while everyone waited for Hakim. Kiah had already had coffee but she asked for some sweetened rice for Naji.

The proprietor was hostile. ‘What are you doing here? It doesn’t look good, a woman alone at my café.’

‘I’m going on Hakim’s bus.’

‘On your own?’

She made up a lie. ‘I’m meeting my cousin here. He’s coming with me.’

The man walked away without replying.

However, his wife brought the rice. She remembered Kiah from her last visit, and told her to put her money away as the rice was for the child.

There were kind people in the world, Kiah thought gratefully. She might need the help of strangers on this journey.

A minute later a family asked if they could sit with her. There was a woman of Kiah’s age called Esma, and her parents-in-law, a kindly looking woman called Bushra and an older man, Wahed, smoking a cigarette and coughing.

Esma was immediately friendly with Kiah and asked if her husband was with her. Kiah explained that she was a widow.