Escape from Saddam by Lewis Alsamari

Author:Lewis Alsamari
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307409690
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2008-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

CAUGHT

The weeks turned into months. I procrastinated, putting off making any calls to my family and feeling terrified whenever I did call because I dreaded hearing terrible things. As the six-month anniversary of Saad’s beating by the military police arrived, I was even more full of foreboding. But the anniversary came and went, and I heard no bad news from home. It seemed as though they had decided to forget about me, for now at least.

I moved out of the company flat and used some of my earnings to rent a place of my own, deep in the Palestinian quarter of Amman. Here, years before, on the side of one of the hills on which Amman is built, Palestinian refugees had set up camp and formed what can only be described as a ghetto. Back then the hillside was covered in tents; now the buildings were more permanent, and the area was perfect for me: generally cheap and a place where I could melt into the background whenever necessary. The room was nothing to speak of: situated by itself on the roof of a high-rise building, it was a former laundry room with little in the way of amenities, and it was disproportionately highly priced; but it was my own space, where I could disappear whenever I wanted or needed to.

One morning I woke up to the sound of rain. The rainy season had arrived and such downpours were not uncommon. I lay in bed for a while, mustering the enthusiasm and the energy to get up. It had been a restless night, but that was nothing unusual for me these days—my dreams were filled with gunshots and wild animals and Republican Guards around every insubstantial, shadowy corner, and I awoke several times every night wide-eyed and sweating. Occasionally my dreams were accompanied by the same sinister and excruciating stomach pains that I had experienced the day I ran from the UN, and I lay there in darkness that multiplied my fears tenfold.

But just as the sun dispels shadows, so the daylight banished my nighttime anxieties into a far corner of my mind. I woke up, ate some breakfast, put on my suit, grabbed my umbrella, and left for another day at work. The rain was still heavy, and I was glad of the umbrella as I trod the familiar road to work. Just then, someone walked up from behind me and strode ahead. She was about my height and had long brown hair. As she passed, I caught a glimpse of her face, with its dark skin and the most stunning green eyes I had ever seen. Hers was the kind of beauty that made me catch my breath a little. Almost without thinking I stepped ahead and fell in beside her. “Would you like to share my umbrella?” I asked. My invitation was uncharacteristically forward.

She smiled a modest and appealing smile; I held the umbrella over her head, allowing it to protect her from the rain far more effectively than it did me, and we fell into slightly awkward conversation.

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