Sands of Redemption

19

Georgia was half-asleep in her cot when she heard her door squeak. Snapping open her eyes, she watched, frozen, as a dark figure placed something on the ground with a scrape. He left, the door closing behind him.

Georgia's stomach clenched at the smell of food. She hadn't realised how hungry she was until that moment. Climbing to her feet, she picked up the bowl, careful not to accidentally knock it over in the gloom. Giving it a cautious sniff, she poked a finger inside. It was warm and moist, maybe some kind of stew.

Moving over to her partially boarded window, she used the afternoon's streams of waning light to see more closely. She was right. It looked like it was made up of rice, or maybe lentils, and potato and some other soggy vegetables she couldn't identify. Sitting back down, she carved a trough through it with her spoon.

When she was done she sat on the floor against the wall, still hungry, knees to her chin, contemplating the faint outline of her empty bucket silently mocking her at the foot of her cot. From next door came muffled conversation. Trying to keep her mind off how much she was busting to pee, she took a moment to try and listen to what they were talking about, but the sting in her bladder was too much. With a groan of despair, she rose to her feet. Picking up the bucket, she moved it as far away as she could from her water bucket.

After subjecting herself to the task, much to her mortification and dismay, she snapped on the lid and dropped back into her cot.

She couldn't wrap her mind around it: Rana's brother—a terrorist. Thinking of Hana and Habib and what she knew of the rest of Rana's family, she found it hard to believe that one member could have turned out so rotten. She remembered Rana saying that he had been studying Civil Engineering in Saudi Arabia. It must have been from a much more reactionary perspective than usual, Georgia thought wryly.

Georgia tried to picture it. It would have been an ideal place for a malleable mind to be turned: wealthy, elitist, fanatical. Rabi would have seen how well an Islamic state had turned out and marvelled, especially when compared with his own country.

As the streams of afternoon light dwindled outside her window, Georgia imagined him wandering the streets of the large, rich holy city that was Mecca, feeling intimidated and unworthy, perhaps despising himself for failing the course his family had struggled so hard to pay for. Hearing the call to prayer, he might have entered one of the nearby Mosques, pressed his forehead to the floor and felt the power of God encompass and fill him up, stealing all his woes away.

Perhaps he stayed back to continue with his prayer, and an Imam, observing his piety and misery, took him under his wing and told him what a great man he was, that Allah had laid out great things for him if only he would listen and have faith. She imagined his dark eyes glowing with self-satisfaction, his self-esteem lifting to new heights, his beaming gaze turning back home where he was sure to take charge and make some much needed changes ...

She constructed it all in her mind like a story. What else could she do while trapped in her little cell? And it was a cell. She was a prisoner. A hostage. She still hadn't fully absorbed it. Only a week ago she was in the middle of her lessons, happy, safe, her future open and free.

Georgia rubbed at her eyes. She had to stop dwelling on him. Thinking about him made her think of Rana and she didn't want to think about what he might have done to his own sister, and respectively, what he might be planning to do with Georgia.

Instead, Georgia spent the rest of the evening talking with Aashif and the others. She learnt that Aashif had been an employee of some importance at ANPC. He was a father of two and, fortunately, had not brought his family with him, his stay in the city only short. He was a nice man, very well educated, and easy to talk to, always trying to keep cheerful and light-hearted so he wouldn't put Georgia on edge.