Impossible Odds

off and disappears. Ali is not coming on our “walk” with us. But I have to believe he really has left us. We appear to be in the middle of nowhere, but he moves off like someone who knows his destination. Anyone would recognize his movements as the intention to be gone.
    His job has apparently just been to lead the muscle attackers in grabbing us and delivering us here to this place that looks like every other. With that done, his part must be complete. So he’s likely off now to collect his fee from whoever is behind this. I hate to lose a translator, but he doesn’t seem like the conversational type.
    After that, everything is shouted in Somali. There isn’t even an occasional English word to clarify a meaning. It doesn’t really matter. The language difference doesn’t shield us from knowing what they want of us from one moment to the next.
    And now rough shouts and the waving of gun barrels make the message all too clear—they repeat Ali’s order for us to start walking away from the vehicle. So he wasn’t just being melodramatic about his exit; they actually want us to head out into the scrub desert.
    I can’t keep quiet anymore. Somebody here has to understand me, understand my intentions if not my words. “Why?” I cry out, trying to look each man in the eyes. “Why go there? There’s nothing out there!” Now I’m crying, but no tears are allowed. Everybody out here has a broken heart; what they don’t have is money.
    To me, this new development has all the earmarks of a prelude to an execution. My stomach is a ball of ice. I refuse to go, clinging to my spot while the men scream orders. Every one of them appears loaded on khat. Their eyes are completely bloodshot and they’re hyped to frantic levels.
    I feel desperate to stall them for no more reason than the sheer terror of the moment. I point at the small suitcase they took from me and try to get them to understand, “There is a little black bag inside and I need to bring it with me. Medicine!” I cry, pointing at the bag. “It has my medicine!” I have to regulate my thyroid levels with regular medication. Without it, the wheels tend to come off as far as the rest of my physical system goes: deep fatigue, rising inflammation, obviously a long-term problem and none of this is related to the moment, but I’m grasping at shadows.
    I stare into unblinking faces. “Medicine! I need my medicine!”
    With Ali gone, I don’t know if anybody here will even bother to try to understand me, but I repeat over and over, “I need my medicine!” while I point at the large bag, scraping for any way to convey the information. Finally somebody seems to catch on and I’m allowed to go remove my small powder bag. There is absolutely nothing I will actually need if we’re about to be put to death. But I’ll grab at anything to slow this down. So the bag, sure, the little bag, got to have the little bag.
    I am still too petrified to obey their commands. The moment hangs like a pendulum at the tip of its arc. Then I see movement in the corner of one eye. Poul slips over to me and gently takes my arm. “It’s all right, Jessica,” he quietly lies. “It’ll be all right. Come on. We have to do what they tell us.”
    “Poul, no !” I whisper. “We can’t go out there! They’ll kill us!”
    Why doesn’t he see that? We cannot go out there. We can’t go .
    “Jessica, listen . . . no matter what they have in mind, unless we cooperate we’ll have ourselves a fatal confrontation, right here.”
    I look around at the other men. Several have their rifles trained on us. They will slaughter us as easily as blowing away a mountain goat. The truth of this registers with a part of the brain that’s been around for a long time. There is no hope in this moment except to perhaps earn another few minutes of life.
    I check Poul to see if he’s come up with any great ideas in the past couple of seconds, then look around one last time at the useless “safety” of the vehicle . . . and give up. Now the only control I have over anything here is to attempt to keep from dissolving into hysterics, if for no other reason than to avoid letting my life end that way.
    So we walk off into the wilderness. “I’m too young to die,” I blurt out to Poul. He gives me a blank look and keeps on walking. I know by panicking this way I must seem weak, but there is nothing I can do about how I feel. I keep my mouth shut from that point on, while my obsessive