The Boy with Two Hearts by Hamed Amiri

Author:Hamed Amiri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

It was about midnight by the time we met the handler. Dad said he felt bad about leaving Ali Reza, but there was no way he was taking any risks this time, so it was just going to be us.

The handler said he had a ‘different route’, but he didn’t tell us what it would be. He just took us out of the camp onto a different path, still as pitch black as the other one. I hoped it wasn’t going to be a replay of last night. But this time he seemed to be on our side. Before we’d gone far he stopped and stooped down. ‘Come on,’ he said to Hussein. ‘Get on.’ Hussein couldn’t believe it. A handler, offering him a piggyback? It seemed weird. ‘We can’t have you getting tired like last time,’ he said.

After a bit of struggling and a lot of giggles as the handler tried to get Hussein up on his back, everyone felt warm and excited. Hussein wanted to thank him, and the handler said his name was Soran. It was definitely an improvement on the night before. Even though there was still a lot of walking, my legs didn’t feel so heavy. I also didn’t feel as scared as I had last night. I felt like we might even make it.

I didn’t know whether I was imagining it, but as we walked along the path it seemed to be getting lighter. Then we went up and down a few slopes. The grass was much shorter than last night, which was a relief. Then the handler said we were getting closer and stopped to put Hussein down. ‘Not far now,’ he said.

We were getting tired and the last bit was uphill, but in the distance we could see a light – or maybe a set of lights – coming from the other side of the hill. As we got closer I realised the lights were coming from a road. They were streetlights, rows of them all along the side of a motorway. But there were no cars. Had Soran got us lost? Train tracks made sense, but an empty motorway didn’t seem like it was going to get us out of here.

‘What’s next?’ asked Dad as we got to the edge of the road.

‘We need to cross over to the other side,’ said Soran. As if it was simple.

‘And then what? Thumb a ride?’ I muttered. The place was deserted.

We followed Soran to a place where we could cross. Even though there were no cars in sight we still automatically looked both ways. It felt weird crossing what would normally be such a busy road. We walked halfway across to the middle section of the motorway. Here there were two big concrete blocks that separated the two sides. We waited again to make sure there weren’t any invisible cars on the other side, then crossed the final few lanes.

When we got to the other side we didn’t wait by the road like I thought we would but followed Soran away from it.

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