Impossible Odds

my “son, Erik Junior,” or some other name while they were on the phone, Erik was likely to play along. He has a fine ear for nuances of conversation, sharpened by years of ferreting out the truth in testy negotiations. I felt sure he would recognize this as a signal from me and wouldn’t contradict me.
    When we rescued Smulan in Hargeisa the year before, he was filthy, hungry, afraid—oddly enough a mirror image of my present condition—and now the thought of Smulan’s gratitude for his new home and for the love he found there made me smile in spite of myself. That smile seemed to do the trick to convince Abdi I was smiling at the memory of my “son.” In an odd way, Smulan brought me some welcome payback for his new home with us in that moment. I could take some degree of hope in having convinced Abdi I really was the mother of a little boy and that it might help me avoid rape. These circumstances offered little enough hope to any captive female, unless special considerations could be invoked. There was just so much drugged-out male energy everywhere. Otherwise the worst seemed inevitable, a matter of time and circumstance.
    Abdi loosened up at the story of my “son” and confided his own situation as a father of four. I looked into his face—the bloodshot eyes, the green drool on his chin—and I could not repress a wave of real pity for those four kids. Here was Daddy at work.
    We got back into the car, and the caravan started up again, proceeding out into the middle of the desert and more or less following an old camel track. There was no reliable sense of distance.
    Just as the bump-along journey threatened to become boring, the first car in the convoy broke down and stalled the whole line. Several men swarmed the smoking car to begin makeshift repairs and scream at one another about the best way to do them.
    Abdi shrugged and pulled out the sleeping mat, then went to the rear vehicle and pulled Poul out. It was good to see he was still with us. I was grateful for visible proof that I wasn’t completely alone out there. Rationally, I realized there was nothing Poul could do to help me against these people, but he represented companionship. When he looked at me he saw me, Jessica, not an offensive piece of meat from a rich country who owed each and every one of them a millionaire’s riches in compensation for their hardscrabble lives.
    Abdi tossed the sleeping mat on the ground and placed Poul next to me. “Sleep!”
    I could have hugged Poul and told him I was grateful they hadn’t separated us. I didn’t. He could have spoken to me about whatever greater fears he was able to discern from key words in their conversation during his solo ride. But the silence was already beginning. One meeting of my hot and swollen eyes with those of my fellow captive was all either one of us got.
    For me, it was enough. The sense of aloneness disappeared with it. Aloneness is where despair begins, and we were still pledged to fight against that feeling.
    But we both seemed to be in that strange place where you are so tired you can’t make yourself sleep. After about an hour thesquabbling, jabbering men, who didn’t appear competent at much of anything, turned out, after all, to be competent. In my eerie state of unsleep I was physically weak and certainly confused, so I had to wonder how these men managed automobile maintenance under such heavy narcotic influence.
    What explained their mechanical success, muscle memory? Maybe the guy who actually fixed the problem had done enough mechanic’s work in his time that he could still pick up the right tools and twist the proper bolts even after chewing khat until his eyes popped.
    At that moment I saw Jabreel come reeling by, still with us after all. Either his threats to leave were bluffs, or somebody was keeping him around. He looked as tired as I felt, and he was so blitzed on khat he couldn’t walk straight. I couldn’t tell whether his presence in this mess would make any genuine difference, but the sight of him was consoling.
    Such was the state of things. He could speak with us when he was coherent and he had insisted several times that he realized the prices being quoted for us were madness. Perhaps he could somehow inject a little sanity into this squad of jabbering addicts, if he got some sleep and sobered up a little.
    Abdi piled us back into our respective cars and the caravan started up again. After another fairly short drive they all stopped one