Any friend will give you twenty dinars if he knows you are traveling to Kuwait.”
“Twenty dinars?”
“Twenty, twenty.”
“To Baghdad?”
“Directly.”
But he lied to him. He took advantage of his innocence and ignorance, tricking him, making him get out of the lorry after a journey on a burning hot day, telling him that he must walk round H4 so as not to fall into the hands of the frontier guards, and then promising to meet him on the road.
“But I don’t know this area. Do you realize what it means for me to walk all this distance round H4, when the sun is at its height?”
Abul-Abd hit the dusty side of his lorry again. They were standing by themselves a mile before H4. He shouted out:
“What do you think will happen? Your name is registered at all the frontier posts. If they see you with me now, without a passport or an exit visa, a plotter against the state, what do you think will happen? Stop making difficulties. You are as strong as a bull, and you can move your legs. I’ll meet you on the road beyond H4.”
They all talked about roads. They said: “You will find yourself on the road!” And all they knew of the road was its blackness and its pavements. Here was the fat man, the Basran smuggler, repeating the very same tale. “Can’t you hear? I am a very busy man. I told you: fifteen dinars and I will get you to Kuwait. Of course you will have to walk a little, but you’re young and strong; it will not do you any harm.”
“But why don’t you listen to me? I told you that I will give you the money when we reach Kuwait.”
“You will get there. You will get there.”
“How?”
“I swear to you on my honor that you will get to Kuwait.”
“You swear on your honor?”
“I swear to you on my honor that I will meet you beyond H4. You have only got to walk round that damned place and you will find me waiting for you.”
He had given H4 a wide berth. The sun was pouring flame down on his head, and as he climbed the yellow slopes, he felt he was alone in the whole world. He dragged his feet over the sand as though he were walking on the seashore after pulling up a heavy boat that had drained the firmness from his legs. He crossed hard patches of brown rocks like splinters, climbed low hills with flattened tops of soft yellow earth like flour. If they had taken me to the desert prison, Al-Jafr, at H4, I wonder if life would have been kinder than it is now. Pointless, pointless. The desert was everywhere. Abul-Abd had given him a headdress, and he had wrapped it round his head, but it was no use for keeping off the blaze. Indeed it seemed to him that it too was catching fire.