Under the Persimmon Tree by Suzanne Staples

Author:Suzanne Staples
Language: spa
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 2020-10-28T23:55:14+00:00

NAJMAH

Near Peshawar, Pakistan

14

I feel as if I’ve been tossed and bruised in the back of this fruit truck for hours. In reality, we’ve been on the road again for only a short time. But it’s plenty of time for me to think about what I have done, and how it will end up. It seems far more likely that I will be killed than arrive safely in Peshawar. And if I arrive safely, how will I get away from these dangerous men? I will need a lot of luck. I’ve never thought about luck before, and now I consider that my luck has not been good these last weeks. But I cannot let myself be immobilized by fear.

Without warning, the truck slows and turns. If the ride seemed bumpy before, now I fear that the vehicle will break down altogether as we seem to lurch from the one boulder to another. After a few minutes of this, the truck stops. I can’t hear the men inside the cab, nor can I feel any movement. Perhaps they’ve turned off the road because they decided the rain made it too dangerous to continue. Perhaps they are asleep.

I think at first of jumping to the ground and taking my chances with traveling on foot by myself. I think of the malek’s words about how dangerous it is to travel in this area. And I think of the murder of the driver, and I cannot make myself decide what to do. As I lie on the pears, I think that this rain is a sign that Allah is returning the earth to us. With the Taliban defeated in the North, we have a chance to rebuild our house and to live in peace again. If this is a sign from Allah, perhaps it also is a sign that He is looking after me. With this thought, I realize how exhausted I am and I fall into a deep sleep.

Sometime around dawn the doors of the truck open and slam closed again. I am instantly alert. The motor roars to life and the truck lurches over the boulders again as it turns in a circle. The rain has stopped. I lift the canvas. The truck pulls onto the roadway and we continue our journey.

The truck slows about the time that light begins to filter through the canvas. Eventually we come to a stop. The truck moves backward and forward a couple of times before the driver switches off the engine. I pull aside the canvas a tiny bit to see that we are parked alongside a large bazaar. The rain has slowed to a drizzle, and I hear people and vehicles moving through the mud.

Straight ahead is a lane of shops where workers prepare skewers of meat and pots of tea for customers to eat at rough tables with wooden benches drawn up to them. The tables and cots are empty at this hour, and my stomach is queasy at the thought of food after lying so long atop the fruit in the truck and wondering how I will get out without being caught.

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