A Kind of Fire
Only as the shore receded to a flat backdrop of treetops and
arrow-head roofs did I settle into my rhythm. For elusive moments my writhing,
overcast mind cleared to a flat calm, like the water, but regimented by the
paddle strokes. The scent of
the canoe resin was strong enough to be noticeable above the background
big-lake-smell, the smell of the water as it absorbed the vegetable matter in
it and the occasional dead small fry on the surface. The cedar paddle's
smooth shaft hardly strained in my hands and the drops of liquid light fell
back to the lake's surface in a string, like the molten sparks from a welder's
torch. It was so good to get away alone. If I'd stayed I would have come apart.
It had been
Cam's idea, the night before, after Mom and Dad had left for town, Mom in her
shiny black Matrix and Dad in his mud-splattered perhaps-red GMC pickup. But I
was always stuck with a lazy older brother. Cameron hadn't stirred until nearly
noon, so while I was waiting I downed a pile of leftover nachos and half a cold
pepperoni pizza and a can of something fizzy and sour. Then I grabbed a paddle
and life jacket, and lifted the red Langford Prospector to my shoulder to
zigzag between the balsam firs and jack pines, and over the black rocks to the water.
The canoe's bow swung down and butted one of the boulders.
I didn't
care about the scratches on the new canoe. I had to get out there. The island
beckoned, like a lighthouse in a hurricane.
Finally its
cliffs began to take on character. Its features were like those of the Finnish
grandpa I had hardly known. Laughing in the home-built sauna, his face had the
look of pink granite. Dropping his car keys in the mud, bending like his back
was a thick tree trunk. Making us smile with the same worn stories about
working in bush camps. He was long gone.
But
somewhere up on the cliffs lived a pair of bald eagles. Once, way up on the
top, I'd seen a pair of otters in the little lake. A friend said he'd glimpsed
a real caribou once. I don't know about that. Cam and I had almost lived out
there one summer in our teens, aiming to live off the land, to fish, to trap
squirrels, but we'd exhausted our cache of canned food in the end and come
home, more than happy.
Still, we
were only halfway. Dip, dip and swing. To paddle a long distance you need some
fire inside. Muscles shriek 'Stop!' and the fire must burn louder than the
shriek. Stroke – and back. Stroke – and back; with a sideways heave of the
blade as it emerges from the water, to keep the bow pointed, and a mighty dig
as it goes in. If you do it right, the disturbed water speaks just its own busy
chuckle, or a crashing gurgle if you dig your hardest. It's saying something,
telling the story of your journey. Sense the canoe surge and feel the slightly
lifted bow slap-slap-slap on the ripples as it nods slowly to and fro to the
rhythm. You have to dig down as far as it will go. The lake is deep. The fire
is burning. The cliffs are nearer now than before. That's all you have. That's
all.
The lake back at dawn was a mirror. Still, it's pretty calm
in early afternoon, and the greying clouds are gathering down over the Giant's
feet, not here. Ripples are like schools of flying fish darting across in front
of the bow, driven on a gust. Then it's back to the slow bolts of satin
parading in rows. The paddle tip smashes apart their tranquility, gouges down
into the dark places of the heart. I dig deep, searching for buried pearls. But
I can never make a hole deep enough. I never find the treasure, only more
darkness.
Cameron
wants a break. Okay, a break would be welcome. My arms were singing with relief
as I plunked the paddle across in front of me. My brother was hardly paddling
anyway, just staring at the lake and the bordering forest and stroking the
water with the paddle as if it were his pet. The canoe sighed and settled into
a slow turn. I let it drift through ninety degrees before I corrected it. I
didn't want to look back. There was too much back there; it would choke me. I
was expecting the water to rise to my eyes anyway, but it wouldn't come. A
cavity in my chest had been cracked wide open and sucked all the tears in. This
was one of the worst days of my life... so far.
The
Langford had been a gift from Dad a couple of weeks before: not a birthday
gift, he had stressed, just a gift. I knew what that meant, more or less. He'd
often given small gifts before disappearing on one of those contracts out west:
the handheld GPS, the iPod, the iPad, the fishing rod I'd snapped trying to
land that pike up at Nipigon last fall. But a whole canoe, and of this quality,
had indicated something on a different scale entirely. Still, I hadn't seen it
coming. Perhaps Cam had. Now Mom and Dad had come and said their lines.
'It will be better this way.'
'You'll
still see both of us whenever you want to.'
I was
staring into the cold fireplace where the ashes had taken over from the embers
long before.
'People
come through these things. You'll see.'
And they
left me with their concern: 'Will you be alright out here?' I had felt like I
should have screamed then, or wept, or said something, but I just nodded and
they left. Cam would have always started a shouting match, but this time he
just stared at them wide-eyed. They wouldn't even look at him or say his name.
Would I be
alright? I still had Cam, didn't I?
But he's
like a pressure cooker without the whistle. 'Hey, how's it going?' I ask. There
is no answer. So back to the dig-pull-lift-swing. The canoe surges forward
again. There is movement. I'm driven by the faint intimation that there can
be progress. I don't have to get stuck in my rut. My lighthouse draws me
on, to what I do not know, but onwards.
Maybe it's
the endorphins, the result of extreme effort; perhaps I'm in a paddle-induced
trance, but it's getting clearer to me. No matter that Mom and Dad couldn't
make it together. No matter my life up to this point has been smashed to bits.
There are other places to go, or other ways to navigate this painful passage. I
can choose. That's how it begins to look. But if I stop paddling for too long,
this will all fade. I know it.
'So we can
land at the tip today, right?' It's quiet in the front of the canoe. 'The beach
is too far in the time we've got.' I could tell he disagreed. 'Look, another
day. Okay?' He turned me a blank stare that said it all. He's looking younger
than me these days, with the buzz-cut accentuating his forceful cheekbones
tapering to a chin girls have swooned over. Me, I'll be into a few grey hairs
soon. Maybe because I work harder.
But I've
just about had enough of his big-brother ways. 'Fine. You take the canoe. Pick
me up on the way back from the beach.' With that, I rise to a crouch and slip
into the water, leaving the paddle in the bottom of the rocking canoe.
Entering
the water is a sudden birth into another world in which thoughts are
transmitted in bubbles, and the enveloping cool is like a strange blanket. Like
a newborn babe, too, for a moment I have little awareness of who I am or where,
but unlike the exile from the womb, I see that this new world is soothing. Perhaps
I should stay awhile.
Then the
air is thrust upon my head again, and I am once more reborn. Everything is
surprising. On one hand, some distance away, was an empty canoe drifting with
the rising wind, and on the other, not far off, was a great cliff decorated
with pine and fir. Oh yes, I was paddling across to the island.
The peace
was shattered by a titanic, splitting-apart grumble from the sky which echoed
from the cliff. I looked around and noticed how close the storm clouds had
crept, and how the waves were higher than my head. Without another thought for
the canoe, I struck out for the shore of the island.
I sat on
the biggest boulder I could find and shivered. I had sobered up. The Langford
was drifting into the distance, away from the island's tip, and I was stranded
on the island. If only Cam were around. If only he hadn't died. It's been a
long five years without him. Time enough to grow some strange habits, like
talking to him as if he was still here, like blaming my worst failings on him. Sure
enough, when he was pulled out of the car wreck I couldn't cope, and neither
could my parents. Perhaps from that time, the air at home had turned sour. More
than their son had died.
Getting
myself stranded here may have been a good thing. For the first time since I can
remember, I can think about stuff. It's like I've climbed that cliff up there
and can see ever so far. Cam and I did that once. To get there you have to
force your way up through so much brush, and we both emerged at the top
sporting more bloody scratches on our palms and knees than we could count. Then
we sat and talked and laughed. Our camp lay far away on the shore, a speck of
roof almost hidden among the trees. Kings for a day.
My clothes
are dripping. There's still water in my ears. It runs from my hair into my
eyes. And now it's raining. It falls lightly at first, from a sky ruffled like
the underside of a goose. Next to me on the boulder, I picture how Cam would
sit staring out over the water, dripping like me. That's how it starts: if you
keep it up stubbornly for long enough, you think it's real.
'Why did
you have to get in that car, that day?' I croak. Raindrops splatter on the
boulder, breaking into smaller droplets and rebounding, but not far, never able
to regain the sky. 'When you were gone, they...'
He would
stare back at me in silence. He had a distaste for this sort of thing. He might
say, 'And your point was...?' He was also the undisputed king of 'Whatever.'
'But what
they did... the divorce... it's all wrong. I want ... I need to be angry with
them. But I can't; I'm gutted.'
He would
know how to get angry. That was his forté, or one of them. Now he would just
look away and scratch his nose as the rain ran down his face.
I stand and
take a step to where he'd be. 'Say something!' I yell at him. 'Tell them it's
all wrong! They can't do this to me!' Suddenly he's gone, and the fire fills me
again. I turn back to the shore. 'You messed it all up!' I shout with all my
strength. 'Why couldn't you just...? Why couldn't you...?' Something's mingling
with the raindrops in my eyes now. Of course! It wasn't just them who started
going wrong when Cam died. Here's me getting so puffed up. Here's me shouting
at thin air.
The downpour,
the legions of drops, they hurtle down from the sky and turn the lake into a
field of liquid wheat stalks jumping to and fro. They too are telling the story
of my journey, like the paddle strokes and their gurgling song. I've reached my
lighthouse and now I can't leave. It's a small, ironic story.
Meanwhile,
up in the sky a grand orchestral drama is unfolding. I realise with a shock
that all stories are connected. The world - or life - flips, from cramped, flat
and greyscale, to a kaleidoscopic, mysterious, breathing symphony. I read once
about the non-existence of any great meta-story linking all narratives. It was
a scornful article, deconstructing the scaffolding I had put up to comprehend
my life. Now – the meta-narrative is flexing its muscles nearby, clearing its
throat, perhaps looking my way.
There are
two great excavators ripping up the cloud tops, one of them close, near the
shore, and one far away, somewhere beyond Pie Island. I imagine it's a
conversation, like an argument I've recently heard many times over, like a
mantra of self-destruction. They interrupt each other, then there is a
glowering pause. Then the door slams behind him and the truck rumbles away.
No, it's not
that, not now. It's not an argument, it's something deeper. It's digging into
our atmosphere. What kind of hands wield that paddle? What kind of fire drives
the stroke? Is it coming this way? For a moment, I hope so. The dregs of that
dread, adrenaline-fuelled insight are draining from me, but here it is,
packaged, coursing through my bloodstream: I need that fire to move me
on. I cannot move beyond this awful day on my own.
Perhaps I'm
still a bit deranged, but I lift my hand high, like a lightning conductor. Hey,
up there! Here I am! The rain sluices down my clothes. I lift my face to
the sky, asking, wanting to be scoured, reborn, for a clean slate.
The rain
slackens after much time has passed. I look around. The wind is dropping,
changing: a sense of confusion, of abandoning the past storm, then a long
moment of silence. I watch and listen. Finally the orchestra begins a quiet,
new movement in a major key. Over in the west there's a brighter patch.
Eventually I notice that the Langford
is drifting sideways on the new wind, back from the wide open waters. I can't
recall anything stranger happening to me, but at the same time it's the most
natural resolution to my day. If I wait long enough I could swim out to it and
climb in somehow. I picture myself lighting a fire in the grate, maybe making a
couple of calls. That would be alright. I might make it back to camp before
dark.
+ + +
+ + +
Dedicated to
the warm and long-suffering people of Socotra.
The Captive Guest
Mohamed drove me out of Hadibo and along the coast. My
breakfast of fried beans lay heavily in my stomach, stirred by the hum and
shake of the wheels on the road. The sun came pouring over the Hagahir
mountains behind us and over the wide coastal plain. Over to one side, children
splashed in a small lagoon by the beach. Short green bushes and grasses had
sprung up everywhere after the winter rain, looking as if they'd been
airdropped onto the dusty earth.
We came to
the Dixam junction and turned away from the sea towards the mountains. He was a
good driver, steady and careful. I realised that I knew nothing about Mohamed –
whether he was married, where he lived, nothing. The old Landcruiser trembled
under us like the steering was loose. Actually it was. That I knew.
Up on the
plateau I asked Mohamed to stop. I took out my camera and walked up close to
the nearest of the great umbrella-shaped trees. I looked up dutifully: a crowd
of fingery branches the colour of birch bark and chick peas supporting a
spreading canopy of thin blades like huge pine needles. Coming back to the car,
I glanced up to the peaks, sharp against the morning sky. I couldn't see
Ibrahim's distinctively gouge-peaked mountain yet.
Finally I was hiking up a moorland valley, on a faint trail
that kept fading out among the boulders and tree roots, only to pop up further
ahead among the heather-like bushes. It all reminded me of hikes in the
Scottish Highlands. I passed a bottle tree: squat like an obese, grey, alien
turnip sprouting matchstick arms and eye-stalks ending in tiny, delicate pink
flowers.
I heard the
man before I saw him. He was singing as he came through the trees, a song at
once wild, boisterous and innocent. He appeared on the trail between the
yellow-flowering bushes and stopped, silent, caught in a moment's surprise. His
wiry hair hadn't been cut for a while and his nose was crooked. He wore a grey
striped futa, a kind of skirt that men wore, and a long checked shirt of
custard-yellow.
I hadn't
learned much Socotran. "Al gurk?" I tried.
"Al
gu'k," he replied delightedly, adding more that I couldn't understand.
He peered at my face then switched to fluent Arabic that I could follow. We
came a little closer. He was about as far into middle age as I, but whether his
face was lined by laughter or hardship, or both, I could not tell.
Much about
me seemed to puzzle him. "Don't you have a companion?" he asked in astonishment.
I shrugged and tried to smile. Ah, the life of an English teacher overseas.
Brian was catching up on his pre-intermediate course marking and Jenny said she
preferred gardening to hiking when she wasn't visiting the female students from
her classes.
Tentatively,
he asked where I was going and his face lit up when I told him. From what he
then said, it appeared I was lost. I looked around. Yep. The cunningly curved
valley had gradually turned me off my intended course.
"Come, have lunch at my house. I'll show you on your way," he
said. I wanted to refuse. I'd been a captive in people's homes in the Middle
East too often, a victim of their legendary hospitality. And there were those
long silences. A Socotran islander is as conversant with hockey as I am with
goat husbandry.
His name was Saleh Salem and he lived with his family in a stone hut
resting on a bare hilltop. There were great views out there, but I found myself
sitting cross-legged and shoeless on a thin mattress in a room with only a small
window. It felt barely habitable with old lino and mats around the edges. A
leather bag and clothes hung on rough wooden pegs. Raw logs and twigs made up
the ceiling. The dark room was awash with odours: stale goat, open drains,
cooking smoke. As the house, so the man, I
thought, testily. I waited and fidgetted. I had no way of letting Ibrahim know
that I wouldn't get there today.
Saleh's children peeped around the door with shy grins. A whole family
of goats poked their inquisitive nostrils into the room. Then Saleh shooed them
all away as he came in with a plate of rice and a small bowl of goat meat
broth.
As we ate I told him about my promise to my student. "Mish
mushkila", he said: no problem. I sighed.
So I ate quickly, then tried to excuse myself. But no, the main goat
course hadn't arrived yet. After that, endless small cups of sweet, black tea.
Finally I thanked him decisively and lurched onto stiff legs. At the
door I glanced down for my shoes and noticed a thumbnail of dull metal in the
packed dirt. I unearthed it and rubbed it to reveal a leaf on one side and a
head on the other. "A Canadian cent!" I exclaimed to Saleh. "How
did you get this?"
"From Canada," he replied with a sharp smile. As he told his
tale I settled back on the mat, screwing up my face to decipher his Arabic.
He'd travelled off the island as a youth, to work in
Montreal with an uncle who had leapfrogged to there from Abu Dhabi. So Saleh
worked for a few weeks in a supermarket.
I couldn't understand all of what followed, but he'd been
travelling south of the border when those people flew the planes into the twin
towers. At the border he was stopped and questioned. He'd ended up in detention
for months, speaking no English and very little French. His ordeal sounded
harrowing, and he'd ended up back on Socotra with little else than that one
cent to show for his travels.
"Sorry," I said, then regretted how flat it sounded.
"Mish mushkila. Government bad, people
good," he replied, good-naturedly.
Finally I got out of the door, wordless, empty. I needed to give him
some gift, something that might make up for the way he had been treated, and
nothing I had would do. In the end he pressed into my hand a small disc of
coppery metal. Then he showed me a convincing path and I said thank you again.
Somehow the sun was still high. I was glad and waved to him from the
next hilltop. A smile occurred on my lips as I shook my head. I heard him call
something like, "Au revoir."
+ + +
+ + +
Dedicated to
the overwhelmingly friendly and welcoming people of Yemen.
May your
tomorrows outshine all your yesterdays.
The Hostage
Walking along the alleyway, sniffing the fresh flatbread
from the little bakery, he glanced up at the old Turkish castle on its rocky
pinnacle. It had opened to tourists a year or two ago, but still it hung like a
stone vulture over the old city. Its walls, though mostly restored, gave the
impression that the grim history of Yemen had been hurriedly brushed down and
now squatted on guard, brooding high over its uncertain present.
He stepped into the courtyard of his landlord, through the
pale blue metal gate, and was quickly surrounded by a shower of pale blossoms
falling like fat snowflakes from the tree which grew like a bronze sculpture of
itself in the centre of the courtyard. Instant flashback: he saw his brother
Tom's wedding party again, just a few months before in Bath, England, coming up
the steps of the rented reception hall. The featherlike overcast had loomed low
over the rooftops, but to the several dozen family members and guests, it was a
sunny day. One of Tom's college friends had unloaded a bucket of cherry
blossoms onto the happy couple from an upstairs window, and a gust of wind had
spread them over everyone's heads. The air had burst with laughter and flecks
of pink and white.
Now, for a moment, he was clothed in the tree's selfless
glory. Already it looked almost bare of colour save for leaves, but its
branches seemed to stretch towards the distant, cloudless sky in glad
surrender.
The landlord's small son, Saqr, was staring intently at him
from one of the barred windows on the ground floor, looking like a morose
jailbird. He offered the child a grin and shook the blossoms from his hair. As
he passed inside, he ran his fingertips along the rough stones of the outside
wall from which the lower storey was built.
Ali Abdurahman Al-Abassi poked his head around the door to
his apartment, appearing without warning like a wizened sprite. "Aadaaam,
peace be upon you! And how goes your health?" His wrinkled, rubbery smile
was one of the constants of Adam's day. Though he suspected it to be somewhat
false, he played along with the landlord's forced friendship and bantering
flattery with a patient jollity he'd not discovered in himself before. It
helped to improve his Arabic, too.
Once he'd passed the time of day with Ali, he climbed the
stairs to the apartment he shared with the Kiwis.
Chris was in the kitchen, chopping fresh kingfish steaks and
plopping them into a bamboo shoot stir-fry. Well-built, a little shorter than
Adam and topped with ginger curls, he was Adam's hiking buddy of choice. He
turned his freckled face and gave Adam a wave. "Hi! How's King Adam the
Second?" he called. This had been the Kiwis' standing joke since he'd
arrived: there was already one Adam at the language school where they all
taught, so everyone called them Adam the First and Adam the Second to avoid
confusion. There was little to confuse, in fact, apart from the name: the other
Adam was short, stocky, and sported a ribald sense of humour that made Adam the
Second cringe inwardly on occasion.
"Never better, thanks. Hey, what's cooking, Waltzing
Matilda?" Adam replied. Baiting the New Zealanders was one of his idle
pleasures, although he rarely succeeded.
Chris bridled in exaggerated distaste. His thick lower lip
hung down. "You can't call me that! See?" He waved an ankle at
Adam. "No shackle marks here." Then his manner changed, toned down.
"Hey, did you hear about the kidnapping?"
"Nope. Who'd they snatch this time?"
Chris frowned. "Some girl from up in Sanaa. French
chick, I think, or Swiss. Juliette something. Out walking with some friends in
the hills, they pulled up in their truck and grabbed her. Would have grabbed
the friends, too, but they got away."
Adam drew a blank at first, but the name finally stuck to a
rosy face framed in auburn waves, an ironic smile and a couple of brief
conversations they'd had the last time he'd been up in the capital. He told
Chris yes, perhaps he'd met her, and shrugged.
"Yeah, and it wouldn't be so bad," Chris went on,
"but it's not the tribes this time. It's the nasty guys, the Ansar
something-or-other. They don't tend to let people go. Makes you angry, eh?
Makes you want to do something."
Adam nodded without conviction, then made for his room to
dump his bag.
Chris called out an invitation to share the stir-fry with
him and Bill, the third resident of the apartment, who had stayed on at the
school to talk to somebody.
Adam declined; Chris insisted. "But I said I'd meet
Hamid for fasuliya," Adam said.
"Well, if you don't like my cooking..."
"Chris, you know I love your cooking."
"I won't take offence... I mean, not much..."
"See you soon."
"Bye. Say hi to Hamid from me."
Walking back past the bakery towards the row of cheap restaurants
in the street, Adam found more brush strokes adding to the recollections he had
of meeting Juliette in the house of a mutual friend, yet another English
teacher. She'd tended to speak sharply, or not at all, which had defeated him
in the end. His few attempts at conversation had either been cut to ribbons or
deflated by a faraway nod. Her clothes, perhaps chosen for their drab colours,
had not complimented her appearance so much as cloaked it. The thought had
fleeted through his mind that she could probably be quite attractive if she
tried.
All he'd gathered about her was that she had set her sights
on pioneering a community health training project way out on the fringes of the
Empty Quarter, "where the real poor people are," she'd said.
The remark had stirred both annoyance and admiration in him, but still he was
left wondering when he'd meet a woman he could share his life with. He'd
reached a kind of apex of restlessness, his ambitions and desires pulling him
so many ways at once. Recently he'd been
straining to hear even a whisper from God when he prayed. What shape should his
life take? What can I do for you? went the Bob Dylan song. Might this
abrasive, determined girl be a part of that shape? Hardly. The idea was too
daunting. In the end he'd excused himself and taken a long walk to the Old
City. The next day he'd caught the Peugeot taxi back to his home city and
forgotten all about Juliette.
The main street was humming with people walking home from
work and going out to look for dinner. Three small, white minibuses were
jostling for passage through the bottleneck at the corner of the street.
Purple-orange streamers in the darkening sky announced the sunset. The sizzling
and the raised voices of the waiters declared that dinner was ready, and the smell
of frying beans and vegetables drew Adam in.
Hamid pierced Adam with a look. "Why do you Christians
shave? Is it written in your book?" They were waiting for their fried
beans to arrive. The obligatory plastic plate of short white roti loaves
had already been dumped on the table.
In order to communicate with his friend in the bustle of the
cave-like restaurant, Adam almost had to shout. "No! It's just what I
prefer." He looked over Hamid's long, rather emaciated features, gauging
how much he could get away with. "Why do you grow your beard so
long?"
"We follow the example of our prophet." Hamid
rarely joked around, but the lively intelligence with which he engaged in
conversations made up for a lot.
The steaming metal dish of fasuliya was plonked down between
them. "And we try to follow the example of Jesus."
"Really? How do you do that? Do you dress like him, or
speak like him? What language did he speak?"
The questions ploughed Adam's brow. To win some time, he
fished out the clasp knife from his pocket and took one of the roti to
slice it open. Then he noticed how rusty the blade had grown, and changed his
mind. "Well... it's not so much the outward details, it's his character.
Like, um, how he loved us."
Hamid's hand hovered in slow motion above the basket of rotis.
"How do you know he loves you?" His hand retreated, distracted.
"Well, we, um... He was crucified. Like I told you
before."
"Yes. So is that the example you must follow?"
Adam knew that a telling coup de grace was on its
way. Hamid had a way of stringing one proposition to another in a fashion that
seemed logical at the time, until Adam had little to say but "I see what
you mean." Now he could see only one way to wriggle out. He said, "Bismillah",
the Muslim's way to invoke God's name and begin the meal, and Hamid smiled.
They both ripped off a big scrap of roti and scooped up the beans.
On the way home, as the moon rose above the mountain, Adam
still had no idea how he could have answered Hamid. How could he say that he
believed if he wasn't prepared to follow the example he'd been set? He knew
very few people who'd actually lay down their life for someone else. Perhaps
that kidnapped girl was one of them.
Whatever shape his life would take, it had to be authentic.
Honest, warts and all, no hypocrisy. There was a whole movement somewhere in
the States based on the question, "What Would Jesus Do?"
+ + +
A couple of old oil drums and a pile of rocks in the centre
of the road and a stone hut by the side made up the checkpoint. Adam flexed his
shoulders, still stiff after the long ride, and approached the four soldiers
dressed in khakis and steel helmets. Their automatic rifles were slung
carelessly over their shoulders and each gripped the trigger guard in one hand.
"Where are you going?" one of them asked him in Arabic. He showed his
passport and pointed up the road. The truth was, he didn't know the name of the
village where Juliette was being held anyway. He felt nauseous and fought to
keep his hands from shaking.
An officer stepped out of the hut and sauntered over, and
was joined by a man in plainclothes who might have been a farmer, for all Adam
knew. No - Political Security, he realized.
After some much sharper questions, the officer sent Adam
away with a warning. "The people here are animals. It's dangerous for a
stranger. Go back to Sanaa."
Adam nodded, and began walking back to the village where the
Peugeot taxi had dropped him. When he re-entered the town the sun was pressing
down on the road in earnest, and he stood under the awning of a grocer's shop
to think.
He'd been travelling all day, from the taxi stand in Sanaa
to this village by way of two dusty market towns. But there'd be nowhere to
stay here. He glanced up at the rocky hills that hedged in the road near the
checkpoint. The same line of hills rose above the village's fields for some
miles towards the south. Was there another way to do this? After coming so far,
could he just turn back? His stomach was clenching in threat of rebellion if he
didn't back out of his crazy, self-imposed quest.
He bought another bottle of mineral water, another tin of
tuna and another packet of Abu Walad biscuits. The sun still had a fair arc of
sky to traverse before the dusk came falling. Then no one would see him leave
the village along the path between the fields.
+ + +
He had begun to mutter to himself. "How did you get
yourself in this mess?"
He was halfway up a mountainside, in the darkness before
moonrise. The palms of his hands and his fingertips had been battered raw
against the stony slopes. He'd stumbled many times, once slipping back down
some way amidst the clattering of loose rocks. And several times he'd slumped
onto a boulder and closed his eyes. The muscles in his legs, in particular,
protested their need of rest. How long it had been before he'd opened his eyes
again, he had no idea.
"You can do it. Steady now."
A stubborn spark drove him onwards. To capitulate, to run
home, would be worse than to carry on, even if he carried on and failed. He
clung to one hope, a snapshot that he knew must lay somewhere over the crest of
the mountain: Adam and Juliette, walking towards each other across a bare patch
of land, watched intently by a band of armed men as he approached them and
Juliette walked towards freedom. There was a look in her eyes that said,
"Thank you."
That was the last snapshot in the series. What came after
that was a blank.
To his surprise, it seemed that he'd finally reached the top
of the slope. Ahead lay a confusion of boulders and tilted rock faces. By
heading so far away from the checkpoint, he had been confident of avoiding the
attention of the soldiers there. But where to next?
+ + +
Half an hour after dawn he stood up, emerged from his
resting place, and walked down the bare slope into the village. Three small
children saw him first. It was always children first, or goats. One child ran
away, calling out, while the other two stood like figures in a painting,
staring with wide eyes.
An old man emerged from the narrow alley between the tall,
stone houses and shouted at him, "What do you want?"
Adam started over to him, but he walked away mumbling,
throwing anxious glances behind him. Two women dressed in a mosaic of colourful
dresses and scarves came out of a doorway, glanced at him, whispered to each
other anxiously, then hurried away.
At last he was approached by a young man wearing a short
beard and a white prayer cap. His off-white maqtab robe flapped as he
walked. With a sharp gaze at Adam's face, he greeted him and said, "How
can I help you?"
Not long afterwards he was sitting on the man's flat
rooftop, sipping scalding black tea and tearing off chunks of freshly-baked
flatbread to scoop up steaming scrambled eggs from a pan.
The view at that time in the early morning was splendid. The
mists played lazily among the waking hills, above the dimly-seen terraced
fields and intervening lines of thorn trees. Down a defile between two of the
hills could be seen the checkered blanket of the plains far below. The sky
overhead was shedding its dark coat, the last of the stars was snuffed out, and
the sun rose, a ball of orange flame.
Adam explained himself once more. Did Rafiq know in which
village the foreign woman was being held?
His host, Rafiq, as well as a younger brother and an uncle,
had eaten their fill and now squatted an arm's length from the pan, observing
him. All of them reacted in the same way: There was no way that Adam could do
what he proposed! This was a foolish plan! All three were men of the world,
used to bearing arms and using them, accustomed to assessing deadly risks.
They debated with each other in rapid Arabic, too rapid for
Adam to follow. Rafiq appealed to his uncle, who scowled, shook his head and
wagged a finger at Rafiq as he replied, raising his voice.
Then Rafiq turned to Adam once more. "My uncle says you
are a brave man, but foolish. I say you are a foolish man, but brave. You are a
good man, Adam, but what you want to do is not good. Mish tamam."
Adam held his palms upwards. "But she's a woman, and
holding her is very wrong. The men who hold her must be cowards if they
are afraid to kidnap a man." All three of them chuckled at his jibe,
nodding a little sheepishly at each other. "So please help me. At least
tell me where they are holding her."
Rafiq nodded without conviction. "In sha'allah,"
he murmured: If it is God's will.
So Adam stayed the day with Rafiq. He asked for and wrote
down his host's name and the name of the village. These were basically decent,
trustworthy people. Rafiq walked Adam around the village and introduced him to
the neighbours, half of whom were close relatives.
As they lay back against the cushions after a filling lunch
of rice, selta stew and fresh cow's milk, Rafiq said, "My friend
Adam, I will send a message to the other village. I have a cousin there. Then
we will see what they say."
Adam's eyebrows shot up as he realized what Rafiq was
saying. He heaped his thanks on his new friend, who merely said again, "In
sha'allah."
+ + +
Adam awoke in the night to the sound of anger. Two or more
of the men were arguing in another room. He'd been given a mattress and
blankets in which to sleep, in the long lounge used for qat-chewing
parties during the long, lazy afternoons. He pushed himself to a sitting
position, and felt scraps of discarded qat stems and leaves under his
palm. He listened for a while, then fell back to sleep, none the wiser to what
was going on.
The next thing he knew, Rafiq was gently shaking him awake.
Rafiq's younger brother Hisham stood nearby, holding a hissing propane lamp. It
was still dark. "Adam, you must come now. Come, wake up."
Outside the room in the hallway stood a man clothed in what
Adam immediately recognised as a Pakistani shalwar kameez, the loose trousers
and long tunic made from the same drab brown cloth. Few Yemenis wore this, yet
the man seemed as Yemeni as Rafiq. The man's wide, uncut beard announced his
zealous faith. He carried an AK-47 slung over one shoulder. He squinted at
Adam, as if attempting to categorize a strange new species of lizard.
"This man will take you to the village where the woman
is held," announced Rafiq. "He promised me they will not hurt
you."
Sleep still clung to Adam's eyelids. "But... where is
the foreign woman?"
"Come," barked the bearded warrior. "We must
go now. We'll talk when we get there." He turned and motioned towards the
door.
Adam balked. Excusing himself, he retrieved his flashlight
from his bedding and went to the bathroom.
He took his time. Was there no other way? This would take
him closer to Juliette, but at what cost? What good would it do him if they
locked him up, too? On the other hand, what could he accomplish by staying with
Rafiq? He hesitated to open the door and rejoin the other men. In his pocket he
fingered his clasp knife. He was defenceless.
So many times he'd told family and friends back home that he
was in the safest place possible: right where God wanted him to be. It had
sounded right. He had lived his life as fully as he could. But until now he'd
never faced this kind of danger. He sucked in a breath to attempt to still the
trembling in his chest and hands.
Finally he emerged and nodded to Rafiq, thanking him again
for his kindness and hospitality. Rafiq didn't say much. Perhaps he was tired.
Adam walked out of the door, followed by the mujahid and
his AK-47.
+ + +
Adam's walk with the armed man began on a sour note. He
asked the man his name, but the reply was, "Silence!"
Mr Silence took the lead, striding quickly out of Rafiq's
village along a field-side path then sharply up a hillside through the night.
With a shock, Adam noticed that another figure had stepped out of the darkness
and was now following him. The two men exchanged a few words as they continued,
then fell silent.
The going varied between jumbled, clicking rocks underfoot
and edges of ploughed fields where the mud clung to Adam's shoes in great
clods. He strove to keep up with the silhouette ahead of him, despite the
weariness which weighed him down. Whenever he slowed to feel his way up or down
a difficult slope, the man bringing up the rear would make a clicking sound in
the back of his mouth, rather like Adam had heard boys using to encourage their
donkeys. At least he's not switching me with his rifle butt, he thought.
When much more than an hour had passed and they were still
walking, hurrying it seemed, and the sky was still black and starless with cloud cover, he felt as if he
had fallen asleep into a dreary dream that would never end. Once he appealed
for rest, and dropped to sit on a boulder, but the first man pulled him to his
feet after a few seconds and commanded him onwards, though not severely. His
tone was almost that of a veteran to a green private.
They seemed to be passing through an especially dark and
narrow ravine, when Mr Silence stopped
and opened a door in the ravine wall. They were actually in a village, between
stone-walled houses. They had arrived.
Indoors and upstairs,
Adam was shown by lamplight to an empty lounge of threadbare cushions
and linoleum rivered with rips. He hardly cared where he was or who were the
people talking quietly by the door. One of the men patted him down for weapons,
checked his pockets and shoes, then nodded. Adam dropped to the floor, put his
head on one of the cushions and slept.
+ + +
It must have been dawn when he was awoken by the entrance of
several men, because he could just make out the shape of the long, narrow room
and the features of the four Yemeni men who stood over him, talking rapidly.
The thinnest one of them - they all seemed strangely thin,
as if shrunken - who was also stooped over and wore full-moon spectacles on his
nose, spoke to Adam in English. He enunciated slowly and carefully, sounding as
though he were teaching a classroom of
dim-witted children.
"Welcome to the home of Sheikh Jamal Quraishi
Al-Buruq." At this, the teacher indicated each of the group with a polite
sweep of the hand, beginning with the eldest. "And this is his son, Hassan
Jamal Al-Buruq, and his advisor Ali Muhammed Abdu. And myself, Nasir Jameel
Al-Naqili, at your service."
Adam stood, not without protests from his calfs and thighs,
and nodded to each in turn. He was pretty sure they would not shake his hand,
since he was not a Muslim and they were members of a strict sect, so he kept
his hands by his side. The sheikh's pinched features and sharp manner
proclaimed, Here is a shrewd man whom you would be ill-advised to cross.
His son, Hassan, showed much the same sharpness, but with a predatorial edge. Keep
out of his way, thought Adam. In contrast, the advisor seemed a dove
amongst hawks. He was shorter, a little plumper, and would not meet Adam's eyes
but rotated his gaze between his own fingers, the sheikh's face and somewhere
else inaccessible to everyone except himself.
Nasir, the interpreter, asked Adam his full name and
nationality. Adam was about to answer in Arabic, feeling condescended to by the
assumption that he could not speak their tongue, but checked himself at the
last moment. It might be a useful card to play later.
As he answered Nasir's questions and waited for him to relay
the answers to the other men, he surveyed the sheikh and his son. They were
plainly men used to getting their own way, but the father lacked the bristling
arrogance of the son. His eyes twinkled. How can he look like that, so
fatherly, when he's doing what he's doing? Meanwhile, Hassan's restless
hands spoke of desires untamed and violence unchecked.
Nasir attempted a thin smile. "The skeikh asks who you
work for."
Adam felt his body tense as the implications of the question
deployed in his mind. "I work at a language school," he replied, in a
tone that he thought innocent English teachers ought to use. Because that's
what he was, right?
The sheikh shook his head when Nasir translated this. He
rattled off some Arabic that Adam could not follow. Hassan's gaze pierced
Adam's skull, as though Adam had just made an oddly foolish move in chess, and
he was trying to discern the bluff.
"No, that is not the question," relayed Nasir.
"Who sent you? The Americans? Are you a journalist? Mossad?"
Adam sighed. "None of those. I just came so you would
release the girl and keep me instead."
They were puzzled. They debated whether he was joking, or
deceiving them. Nasir demanded, not so politely now, the identity of Adam's
real masters, the nature of his true mission. "You must tell," he
ended, glaring, "because you are a prisoner here."
Then they left, abruptly. The door was not locked, but a
guard stood or sat outside the room over the following hours.
The day passed and nothing happened except that someone
relieved the guard and brought a simple lunch of rice and vegetable stew. At
sunset, the guard performed his ritual prayers and ate his meal with Adam in
the room. Adam had himself been praying much through the day, avoiding excesses
of both lethargy and panic by dragging his wandering thoughts back to the person
he claimed to follow.
Once he recalled his last conversation with Hamid in the
restaurant. Was he just doing all this to prove something? How could he have
imagined that he would succeed?
+ + +
When he asked his guard - or Nasir, during his occasional
visits the next day - where Juliette was being held, there was no reply.
Instead, the sheikh sent him more questions to answer. Some concerned the
details of his life back at the language school, and some verged on the
surreal: Who was the current American ambassador? How many US marines were
stationed at the embassy? What was the number of Adam's bank account? He
hesitated to mention anything that might endanger his colleagues, and he could
only protest - respectfully - that he knew almost nothing about the American
embassy, being British himself. Eventually the sheikh and Nasir relented.
After a long, boring morning he was finally led outside for
exercise in the narrow passageways between the old houses of the village. He
was never allowed to walk in the open. "Drones," said Nasir, poking a
finger at the sky, and grinning like a fox.
That evening as he sat on his own and watched the night
falling like a silk scarf, he heard footsteps through the ceiling. The more he
pondered the sound and strained to hear, the more he couldn't help but imagine her
up there, walking to and fro. Did she eat the same scant meals of rice, fried
eggs and beans? Had she watched the same sunset? Did she wish for someone to
talk to, just as he did?
Sleep was a distant stranger. He sat up, got up and paced,
stood and listened, then dropped down and tried to rest once more. They've
made a fool of me! They're keeping us both. The last time he'd seen Hassan
his whole demeanor had mocked Adam. The little man, the idiot hero, the pawn in
greater games than he could imagine.
There was nothing to stop them holding him for weeks, or
years.
That is, unless I do something about it.
The next day he spent in covert study of his guards, their
habits and varied attentiveness, and the house in which he was held. From the
windows of the room he could make out a little of the landscape.
Finally, at the evening prayer time, when the night had
again crept up and the subdued sounds of village life had dwindled to an
occasional muffled word or a foot crunching the gravel outside, Adam was
sitting near the door of the room.
The guard in the hallway got up, stretched, and dragged his
feet to the stairway. He would join the others in the village mosque; his
relief would arrive shortly, having gone to his prayers early. Adam heard him
talking to another man who was descending the stairs from above.
As soon as the men's footsteps began to recede down the
winding staircase, Adam stood up and made his own way to the top of the stairs.
But instead of descending, he ascended. After a day of listening and thinking,
he was almost certain that Juliette was being held in the room directly above
his own.
The hallway above was dark and he had no flashlight. A door
to his left opened, and a woman emerged halfway, and froze upon seeing him. She
was clad in a neck-to-floor balto dress of black and a black headscarf.
She still held her thin lithma veil in her hand. He could not see the
expression on her face; it was too dark for that. She hissed a few words in his
direction and darted back into the room. Had she even known it was him, the
foreigner?
There was nothing for it but to keep moving. He pushed open
the other door, stepped into the room and closed the door behind him as softly
as he could.
Faint moonlight through a window was the only illumination.
The room was much the same shape and size as the one in which he'd been kept. A
dim shape stirred and stood up. "Who is it?" she said in Arabic. It
was her!
He whispered, "It's Adam Collins. We met in Sanaa
once."
Her reply was a few seconds in coming. "Oh! What are you
doing here? Did they..."
"I'm okay. They put me in the room below you for a
couple of days." He stopped, charged with the urgency of escape, but
suddenly feeling the distance between them as a perilous divide that could
prevent him communicating. How could he tell her why he'd come? What was he
thinking? They hardly knew each other. But her very presence in the room with
him changed everything, lighting up the deep places inside him that had
remained like a musty old cellar for so long. She was fragile, like a cherry
blossom, yet as tough as the cherry stone inside. She was a work of wonder.
More than anything he felt drawn to sit and talk, to discover her for who she
really was.
He stood there, silent and hesitant, for the space of
several breaths. But there was nothing he could say. The first shy word refused
to materialise on his tongue.
He blinked, and hurried on with his plan. "We've got to
get you out of here. I came to trade places with you, but they're holding me
too. So we need to escape, right now, before the guards check on my room."
"Isn't that dangerous? They'll shoot us if we try to
run."
"Not if they don't see us leave."
They both heard the heavy steps of the guard treading up the
stairs and taking his place near the door of the room.
Adam turned his back on Juliette for a moment and reached
under his belt. With a flourish he produced his old clasp knife, and grinned.
Hiding it in his underpants the whole time had been uncomfortable.
Juliette smothered a giggle as she realised what he'd done.
Unfolding it, he
stepped over to the window in silence. He inserted the blade into the dry,
flaking wood of the window frame. He'd noticed in his own room just how old and
fragile the frames were. The house's ground floor windows were all equipped
with steel bars, but there were none up here on the top floor. The hardest part
was to keep silent as he pushed the blade deep into the frame and slowly sawed
to and fro.
It was a long job, and they took turns working. Adam's
shoulder and hand ached from the hard work of conquering the old wood's
lingering stubbornness. Juliette sat nearby while he sawed away. He could tell
from her breathing and tense movements that she was holding onto her sanity by
a thread.
After perhaps an hour they had cut around the frame almost
completely. Several times while cutting, Adam had almost decided that it was
too difficult, or that escaping into the night would just get them both killed.
But now, riding a wave of adrenalin, there was no stopping. Outside, the moon
was imprisoned in the clouds.
With her help, he eased the heavy window out of its
slaughtered frame and down to the floor. He tensed, waiting for a cry of alarm
from the guard outside the door as the corner of the window rubbed on a mat and
gave out a low noise like crumpling newspaper. There was nothing. Finally it
was leaning against the wall, and Juliette was sweeping up the sawdust,
splinters and specks of white paint that lay about their feet.
He found he was breathing quickly as he ushered her silently
towards the gaping hole. Putting his lips to her ear, he whispered directions
to the next village, and Rafiq's full name.
She pulled back, whispering, "What about you? You have
to come!"
"I could delay them," he replied. He hadn't
thought it through completely.
"How?"
Adam stared at her, stared around the dark room, and nodded.
"Alright." There really was no point in staying behind, and he could
lead her to safety.
She squeezed out of the remains of the window frame, dislodging
needles of powdery wood, until she was sitting on the edge, legs dangling in
space.
"Bend your knees and roll," he whispered.
She nodded, and took a deep breath. Then she was gone, and
there came a terribly loud thump from down below. Adam knew he mustn't linger,
but pushing his own legs into the open air and ducking his head through the gap
seemed to take minutes rather than seconds. Then he was falling, the ground
hammered him into a heap, and he rolled halfway into a bush. His knee gave a
sharp protest of pain.
Still no alarm was sounded in the house. Perhaps no one had
noticed. He stood up, shakily, to find Juliette flattened against the wall of
the house. He beckoned, and limped ahead of her along the narrow path which led
around the side of the house, away from the centre of the village.
The skinny qat bushes and perhaps-lime trees on one
side of them hedged the path in. Beyond the foliage, the narrow, terraced
strip-fields fell away in staccato drops to the dry river bed, the seila,
far below.
They had almost reached the corner of the last house in the
village when Adam heard footsteps behind them. Someone was approaching around
the corner of the house they'd last passed. The clouds chose this moment to let
loose the half-moon. There was nowhere to hide, no time to slip into the
bushes. Without hesitation, he hissed, "Run!" and took to his heels.
Slipping around the corner of the house, they both paused,
only to hear running footsteps not far behind. There was nothing for it but to
flee. They still had enough of a head start.
Adam urged Juliette ahead of him as they scrambled down a
narrow, stony path away from the village. He had an unconvincing notion that
they just had to cross the seila on their left and cross the wide
hillside to draw close to Rafiq's village. They had gained a little on their
pursuer, but still they could hear the pursuit and a man's cry alerting the
other guards. The voice sounded like Hassan's. Adam's blood ran cold even as he
ran.
Paths like this were reliable in the daytime, leading from
one village to another, or from a village out to the nearby fields, but at
night it was so hard to be sure where exactly it twisted and turned among the
rocks and bushes. They found themselves running across a field, with no path in
sight, but there was not a moment to waste in retracing their steps. Ahead lay
a copse of acacia trees, and to the left the land dropped away into a gorge.
The other side of the rock-clad seila showed dimly in the moonlight.
Along the edge of the vertical drop ran another path. Near
the acacia grove it began to run down, perhaps to the gorge, and in the other
direction seemed to continue along the lip of the seila, back towards
the village. Adam knew that there was no way for them to outrun the pursuit,
with the locals knowing the ground so well. They were moments from capture. He
had to do something.
When they had almost reached the acacias, he grabbed
Juliette's sleeve. "Hide in the trees," he whispered sharply.
"Cross the seila and make
for the next village. I'll catch you up." When he saw that she would
comply, he doubled back along the cliff edge. One man, probably Hassan, was not
far behind now, and two or three others were running at breakneck speed from
the village. The night was split apart with shouts, and then with a volley of
gunshots fired (so Adam hoped) into the air, designed to intimidate, or to
rouse the whole village. The echoes swooped off the hillsides and the cliffs of
the seila.
When he was certain that Hassan was following him, he made
his best speed along the clifftop path. Ahead lay a jumble of huge boulders; if
he could make it that far, perhaps he could go to ground and double back.
Then he was dodging between the boulders, skinning his
fingertips on their coarse granite trying to make more speed. At least she
can get away. At least it will be worth it, he thought.
He rounded the last boulder of the group and the path was no
longer under his feet. There was nothing even for his fingernails to dig into;
one last horrified scramble for a handhold and he was falling, crashing down
the rock face, dislodging rocks, hurtling down an almost vertical scree slope
and slamming into the unforgiving floor of the gorge.
Every part of him felt smashed. His head had hit the rocks
more than once, and all his limbs appeared to be broken. All of him was on fire
with pain. He managed a moan, but it came out as a gurgle. His breathing was
agonizingly laboured. He could think nothing except, Oh no, oh no, O Jesus,
O God. He'd never, ever been so injured, or imagined the distress he was
in.
After a while he fell into a grim routine of shallow
breathing: in... out... in... out. That was his world. That was all he could
manage. Then he managed to open his eyes. He saw little but shadows.
Then from far away came voices, faint voices, but even so,
the sound brought more pain to his head. They spoke Arabic, and he found that
with a great effort he could understand some of what they said. Are they
over there? No. Did they descend the...? No! Just rocks. Keep looking! They
came this way. They're going back to the village! Hurry! Little by little,
the voices receded, and Adam returned to his vigil of breathing, of rowing
across a sea of pain.
In and out. Take in what you need, give some back. The free
air, take it in, it gives you life. God's gift. He gives it. He takes away.
Blessed be. His holy name. Oh no. It hurts. Blessed be. Oh no. Ohhhhh...
Cautious footsteps approached. She knelt by his side.
"What happened?" she whispered, terrified of the answer.
Adam blinked, saw her silhouette, pursed his lips. Could he
still speak? Yes. Must. He delivered the answer between sharp gasps.
"Fell. Hurt."
"Can you walk? We have to go!"
"Dying!" came Adam's hoarse, quavering voice. He
held his arms and legs at alarming angles. His clothes were soaked.
She wept, trying to stifle the sound. Her shoulders jerked
with each sob.
He gasped, "Go!" Then, gathering strength again,
"Live!"
She held his battered hand. A single leaf drifted down from
the open sky. No blossoms this time, he mused, as his body began to go
numb. I missed out on so much. He longed to tell her of his strange,
ungrown love for her. But my life is complete, now. Authentic.
The pain was dying down like a smoldering fire. I did the right thing. I
followed.
He looked up through faltering eyes at the curve of her
cheekbone, but she was fading from his view. And beyond her, where a
long-awaited dawn seemed to be flooding the skies already, fell storms of
blossoms, but slowly, as though hanging on a breeze, pink and white and red and
every unnamed shade between, caught in beams of radiance that lit up the whole
sky from one end to the other. He wanted to say, Are you seeing all this?
But his lips rebelled. He sighed, slept, and woke in another land.
+ + +
She stumbled away through the quiet night, on a path that
squeezed up a rock face, up endless terraces, pushing through bushes, weeping,
steeling herself for the journey through the darkness. The lonely night closed
in on her. She kept repeating what she could remember of the man's name and the
name of his village. She felt like giving up. She'd rather die on the spot than
carry on. How could this happen? Coming to live in Yemen had been her
dream, to serve the needy, to reach out to the unreached. Now this.
But she had to keep going. He died so that I could live.
The stars dusted the sky, and the moon crept towards the
skyline. The silhouette of houses showed far on the next mountain ridge. She
pressed onwards, wiping away tears.
+ + +
Originally
an engineering graduate from the UK keen to become an astronaut, somehow John
Peace ended up working in community development in the Middle East for some
years. Two of these short stories owe their settings to the kind and hospitable
people he knew there. He recently settled with his Canadian wife and their two
sons in Ontario, where they enjoy the great outdoors, Finnish pancakes and
blueberries, preferably all three at once. The Great Lakes world of rock, tree
and water forms the backdrop for A Kind Of Fire.
+ + +
This is the first time that any of these three short stories
have been published as ebooks.
A Kind Of Fire first appeared in the Thunder Bay
Writers' Circle collection, printed in 2012.
A slightly abbreviated version of The Captive Guest
was published in Inkspots, the Polar Expressions 2011 collection of
short stories by new Canadian writers.
The Hostage has not previously been published in any
form.
+ + +
Photo and design (c) John Peace 2012
+ + +
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