I need to drink water.
Don’t we all? I have money. But you’ll have to buy it yourself and bring it out. There’s not a bar I can enter in Umma where someone won’t see me.
See you? Anyone can see you! You mean recognise you.
Angrily Noor counters with: I know what I mean! To some people I’m invisible. They know I’ve been on the Leper Island. That makes me invisible.
Is that where you went? When you got off the ship.
Noor nods his head; the hood wriggles back on his hairless scalp a few centimetres; Noor wastes no time in rearranging his attire.
Come! he says.
Where are we going? I ask him, the muscles that relaxed now tensing up again. The question hangs in the air as Noor turns and walks away.
To get you a drink, first, he replies over his shoulder.
Then to the desert. Where else would we be going?
With my awareness of all that’s been said inside the walls of Dellacotte YOI, I am able to frame the next thought with succinctness.
Am I dead again?
But call him Dott or call him Noor, the evasiveness is ever present.
Only if you want to be, he says. Come on, walk faster!
We stop at a ramshackle bar. Outside, a rotund European-looking woman is breastfeeding her son. Or a boy at any rate. Reminiscences tell me not to take too much for granted, to take anything at face value.
Noor hands me a warped copper coin, the shape of a fifty pence but lighter in the palm.
Get me one as well, he says. Be quick.
I need something to eat.
I have food.
Where?
With the horses.
Which are where?
In the stable.
Christ, Dott. Which is where? I ask, exasperatedly, pulling on a door that feels like it’s about to fall off its hinges.
Close by. Don’t’ worry: I didn’t steal them.
How do you get them then?
Worked for them. I’ll explain on the way!
This is the extent of my rehabilitation, my integration back into society: a long drink of water in a busy but not packed bar that smells of peanuts, then a walk outside, the shirt I’ve been given glued with perspiration to my spine, and a terse review of my welcome-home repast:
You took your fucking time.
That’s King Billy to you, I want to say. Have I said it somewhere before? I’m not sure. All I know is, there doesn’t seem to be much love lost between Dott/Noor and me at this instant. I tell myself he’s nervous. He has worked as a blacksmith’s apprentice for six months. He has busted toil for no peas, rudeboy. The blacksmith asks if he’s a leper; he tells man no—but he’s been on the island. Why’s he been? Hiding. Wanted. Some blackguards are after his gizzard in a pie. Why, what’s he done? He’s had sex with a woman and left her pregnant. Not the end of the world, the blacksmith opines. The husband doesn’t agree with you, Dott tells him. The horses are on loan—and they’re not the most spritely of creatures. Dott has told the blacksmith, who waves us off (cutely) with a red-hot poker in his mittened hand, standing beside an anvil and sweating cobs. Not far out of earshot I say to Dott:
These horses’ll never make it.
I made it on foot the last time. With a boy to look after.
These horses’ll never make it, I repeat. He won’t see ’em again.
Dott shrugs his shoulders and flips back his hood. Or us, he says, kicking the sides of his steed with sandaled feet.
The horse bolts. Mine follows suit. The difference is, Dott appears to be a competent rider. Me, apart from a bicycle when I’m young and the occasional stolen motorbike I’ve crashed while joyriding, me I’ve never steered anything other than cars I’ve driven without a licence or insurance. Cars are easier than horses (though not as difficult as motorbikes). Takes some breath- catching lurches and near-falls before I learn to ride the animal’s rhythm. Takes skill. The township deliquesces in haze. By looking in glimpses over my shoulder I am able to see it first retreat, then dissolve, then get swallowed up by the yellow and white ground. The patches of sand thicken—stitch together—carpet outwards, the desert proper is what we’re in, and it hasn’t taken long at all. The horses’ hooves pound, their nostrils dilate; the sand is harder to negotiate than the chipped, cracked, lifeless, dry earth. For the riders, too. I for one feel my mount’s heart- meant endeavours and tribulations. I am breathing as hard as the stallion is, I reckon. The sand looks silvery in some directions, from some angles; time is passing, taking its toll on man and beast.
O my days!
The journey takes place in real time, which comes as an unpleasant surprise. What have I been expecting? Spiritual transportation? Well, yeah, I suppose I have. This riding lark’s for the birds, that’s for sure. Heat from the horse’s back is corrosive on my inner thighs, chaffing away at the underhang of my midriff travel bag. My balls are going crazy with jolts of pain.
I need to rest up! I call to Dott.
No time!
What’s the hurry fuck’s sake? Where’s the fire?
Night soon! Dott shouts—he is some ten metres ahead. Rest then!
Soon is no exaggeration—no palliative measure. Desert twilight does not really exist: as with cows sensing rain, the horses’ moods change abruptly as they foresee the end of their working day. At first I regard their slowing down as no more than a sign of fatigue, and fair enough; they’ve charged hard, they’ve earned their oats. But it’s something more instinctive and raw. It’s their body clock—it’s their telepathy with one another that causes them to kill their strides from gallop to canter to trot. They stop. Dott accepts defeat, dismounts and by flipping open his horse’s panniers he wordlessly prepares to camp out for the night. It falls dark and cools down in minutes. Opening my own horse’s panniers—it’s as close to receiving a birthday or Christmas present as I’m likely to experience anytime soon. Dott has been thorough. There is food in brown paper; there are plastic bottles of water. There’s a thick woollen sweater that smells rather too much like its original source for my liking, but which I don gratefully all the same.
Where are you going to tie the horses? I ask Dott.
Any suggestions? he answers me with cool sarcasm.
It doesn’t matter that the air is bruising up; I have seen the immediate vistas when the light’s good, and I know there are no trees to be used as hitching posts.
What if they run away? I continue.
Then we walk. The exercise’ll do us good.
Why is he still behaving in such an offhand fashion? I wonder. I’ve not said or done anything wrong. I’ve not said or done much of anything at all. Surely the nervousness he felt back in Umma has dispersed. I check myself. No. This is more than a big deal, I have to remind a portion of my own brain. This is literally a matter of life or death—for him. And for me? The question stings and makes my nose sneeze.
Hope you’re not catching a cold, he tells me—the first time he’s initiated a snippet of discourse since he met me at the water’s edge.
Allergic to wool innit, I lie.
I should’ve brought you silk.
No, no, I’m not ungrateful, blood. Don’t get it twisted.
Forget about it. We’ve got a few hours. Light the fire, would you?
A test of initiative, no doubt. Brain ticks. I recall what I can of TV survival programmes—celebrities in the wild, trying to kid us there’s no film crew around to bail them out of a bind. Collect wood; scrape stones together for a spark to work on something flammable. As I look for suitable fuel and a means to ignite it, Dott asks me with that petulant voice of his: