Impossible Odds

he even concerned himself enough to find the failure of his predictions embarrassing, instead of merely amusing himself with our disappointment.
    As the sun went down, the big guy called “African” was in charge of the men while the Colonel was away. I didn’t know what made African any more African than the others, but that’s how he was known. He was dirt poor, wearing only a very old and tattered cotton shirt, the traditional Somali men’s skirt, and nothing else, every day. He didn’t seem to possess anything else, either. And yet for some reason the Colonel had decided to leave African in charge. I guess it was a simple matter of size.
    We hadn’t seen Jabreel for days; he wasn’t spending as much time at the camp with the men so unhappy over his negotiation efforts. This was fine with me; it provided a little breathing room. Poul was permitted to come and help me move my sleeping matand the foam mattress down to our sleep spot out under the open sky. I usually moved them myself every night, but it was getting hard to walk without stabbing lower pains from my bladder infection. I was glad for the help and a minute of company.
    But when no one was paying attention, he muttered that he had information. I was so skeptical at this point, I didn’t even react. He confided that Dahir had talked to Jabreel a few days ago and asked him when this was all going to be over. He claimed that Jabreel promised it would all be finished in two weeks. They said Bashir planned to accept whatever our people offered to them.
    My problem with that idea was mostly that Dahir had been telling us pretty stories for over a month. I found this one hard to believe, but the cruelty of hope is such that I couldn’t keep myself from igniting a little flame in my heart. It might have been idle gossip, but at least it was positive news, not another assurance that we would be killed or sold off if the price wasn’t met. We bid each other goodnight, and Poul headed for the other side of the camp to go count the satellites.
    I made my crude bed and lay down to wait for my mom to show up. I always gave her name to the first star to appear at night. Soon she emerged, and I could see her star, shining bright. I talked to her for a while, telling her about my day almost as if writing a verbal diary. I sometimes imagined what her answers would be. It was almost like hearing them.
    Finally, a thin overcast engulfed the sky, and the stars were blotted out. I think I closed my eyes at that point, but the sky was so dark it was hard to tell. Sleep was elusive for awhile, so I began another mental walk through our apartment at home. I moved into our living room, slowly dragging my fingertips across the images of the keepsakes lying around the room, trying to actually feel them, the unique feel of each one, the texture and temperature. I traveled down the hall to our bedroom, felt the floor under my feet,my constantly bare feet. I climbed into our big Zanzibar bed, felt the mattress sink under my weight, just a little, not too much, the sheets, freshly laundered, crisp and clean against the skin.
    The scene I played out there was always the same. It was the best I could imagine, and there was no need to change or improve it.
    Erik appears and we sit together in the bed, holding our new baby, our first child, here at last. The scene becomes more real than the ground beneath my dirty foam mattress. Soon I hear Erik’s voice, feel his touch and the strength of his arms, the stubble on his face, the scent of his skin.
    And our baby—a boy, I think, but don’t really know—I feel the impossibly smooth baby skin and smell the clean baby hair. Here nothing matters but that our child is with us and we are together and I can feel the whispery breeze of baby breath gentle against my lips.
    That scene helped me keep going, much farther than I would have been able to do on my own, reminding me I had to survive this ordeal and allow the images to become reality. I prayed for strength and asked God to be with Erik and my dad on the coming day. I could feel that Erik was pounding down every door he could. For him, the sheer frustration of it had to be as corrosive as my sustained hunger and deteriorating medical condition. Knowing him and his need to put things right, I wondered if his torment was worse than mine.
    I fall asleep in his arms, holding our baby, safe with my husband and our child in our great big bed at home.

Part Four

N IGHT OF THE B LACK M