When the boy stayed silent, Micki Vanhoffer sighed. She was a large, home-loving woman very far from Ohio. Doing what her husband thought she should be doing, taking a break from comfortable cruises around the Caribbean. A month in North Africa was his idea. Well, and her eldest son's, Carl Junior. An anniversary present supposedly. So here she was on a glorified bus in the middle of a heat wave, in March for heaven's sakes.
"I'd better tell the driver," Micki said mostly to herself, reaching for the door handle. "And then we can call your parents."
"He doesn't have any," said Hani, rolling out from under the bunk in a tumble of arms and legs. After scrambling upright, she took Murad's hand and gripped hard when he tried to pull away. "We're orphans," she added quickly. "From an orphanage. A cruel place."
Huge black eyes looked up at Micki Vanhoffer from beneath a rather dirty scarf. Eyes that swam so deep with tears they appeared larger than was humanly possible. Below those eyes jutted a nose too prominent to fit any Western idea of beauty and under this a mouth that positively quivered with anguish.
"You speak English . . ." Micki meant it as a statement rather than a question, but her words were inflected, rising towards the end so Hani found herself answering.
"Yes," Hani said. "I learnt it from tourists. When I was working in a café with my mother."
Micki looked puzzled. "I thought you said you lived in an orphanage?"
"This was before my mother died," Hani said firmly. "When I was little."
"When you were . . ." The large woman looked at the small girl and sighed. "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."
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 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.