The Runaway by Erick Livumbazi Ngoda

Author:Erick Livumbazi Ngoda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worlds Unknown Publishers
Published: 2020-07-01T04:37:06+00:00

Chapter 7

HALIMA

S uddenly, Ahmed was walking along a beach. The sand was so white that if he wasn’t wearing his designer Calvin Klein sunglasses, he would have been totally blinded by it. He’d had them imported specially. He was rich and he had all the money he could ever need. The big house in the distance was his. His parents had bought it with the money he had won from the jackfruit.

Sheikha Abdallah was his girlfriend and had come to live with him because he had so much money. He had just been having his morning swim, and he was going to get a cool avocado smoothie. He was going to order one of the servants to make it for him. Then he would go and lie down in the deck chair and watch the tide coming in as he enjoyed the smoothie. Sheikha was going to sit down beside him, and they would joke and laugh the whole day. His parents let him do whatever he wanted to. His father was so nice that he always smiled at him and asked what he wanted to eat. His mother no longer had to sell mahamri and kashata and be worried all the time about money.

He hitched up the waist of his Bermuda shorts and adjusted his sunglasses on his nose. He slowly walked up the steps that led into the house from the beach, and a servant rushed to open the door for him. Just as he was about to enter, someone from inside the house splashed something cold onto his face. He spluttered and sniffed and woke up. Someone was laughing loudly at his antics. The very same someone who had splashed the cold water onto his face, and there were other people with him too. They were just boys, not much older than him.

“What are you doing in our territory?” the one who looked older asked. The look on his face made Ahmed quickly scramble onto his feet. He wildly thought that the liquid they had splashed onto his face was petrol and they were going to set him ablaze like in the video he had watched.

“Please don’t burn me!” he cried out. The boys looked at each other uncertainly.

“Would we splash cold water all over you if we wanted to burn you?” the bigger boy asked. His relief was so great, Ahmed almost sobbed—even more when he realized that his body still ached abominably.

“Who are you?” one of the other boys asked. There were five of them, and they were all dressed in shabby, oily-looking clothes. Three of them had small bottles with a dark brown liquid in them which they sniffed from time to time. Ahmed had seen street children in his estate a number of times, but everyone avoided them as if they had a contagious disease.

“Ahmed,” he answered, looking nervously from one to the other.

“Are you from Dharweish’s gang?” another asked.

“Yes, they are the ones who put on the fancy clothes and go about as if they are better than us!’ another boy said.

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