Soldiers had the road blocked, and the bus wasn’t going any further. Everyone got off. The driver ambled to a café and parked his smelly body at a rickety table to have a meal before turning the bus around and going back where he came from. A large crowd waited patiently for him to drink and eat before pestering to board the southbound run.

Sora had concluded some sort of checkpoint. Soldiers dominated it, randomly examining the papers of those heading south, and gave directions. She eased out of the crowd and sat near the town wall on her haunches, trying to look typical. Other Arab men did the same thing, sat and chatted to their neighbours, watching the world to go by.

So that’s what she did, except she kept her comments to herself. She knew two Arabic words, salaam and Inshallah. Both have universal use. When that didn’t get her by, she pretended to be in pain and cried off.

There was a lot to see from the narrow wedge of shade by the wall.  F-14’s race across the blue, sun-washed sky. American made helicopters hovered low over the parched desert, scaring up the devils in their wake. Yup, she thought and grinned her semi toothless, horrible grin. Somewhere just north was the air base.

Adjacent to the checkpoint stood a temporary medical station. Most of the villager’s activity centered in those two canvass tent. 

Spurts of traffic came out of the north. None-whatsoever returned. A variety of vehicles came to the barricade road, from dust-covered Mercedes and late-model American cars with air-conditioning, to battered trucks and crowded vans.

All had to stop and surrender their papers before being allowed to use the unguarded road Sora had just travelled. All had the looks of refugees, and some needed medical attention.

Well past midday, an open truck of soldiers arrived and relieved those on duty. One group disembarked, the other packed up on and headed north. Nothing escaped Sora’s scrutiny. She contentedly sat and watched the show, not risking going north on foot until sundown at the earliest.

Arabs were talkative people, it seemed. Everything was a big deal. To Sora’s ignorant ears, all their conversations sounded like arguments, especially with soldiers. When a really battered city bus came to a grinding halt at the checkpoint, Sora watched with greater interest.

Built to carry fifty people comfortably, it was jammed with more than a hundred refugees. Whole families descended onto the ground, a lot of them from the Far East. Once the soldiers had looked at their papers, the people rushed to the pitiful open-air market to purchase water and round loaves bread. The bread was pretty good. She’d eaten a loaf herself for lunch.

She would have given anything to be able to understand the chatter of the refugees. If she had anyone to looked European or American, however, she wouldn’t have risked approaching them. It was better not to know what she was going into beforehand. She might lose her courage if she knew what lay ahead.

And she’d pretty much burned her bridges behind her by steeling the jeep and sneaking off into the middle of the night. So there was no going back to Anaiza.