Free A Foreign Affair by Stella Russell

their tyres – that Mohammad at the back is a crack shot. Hah! – I’ve just shattered their windscreen,’ my defender yelled in my ear, ‘They’re losing speed and veering all over the place now...! Now we’ll only be in real trouble if they get one of the camels in al -asaab - ’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘I think in English you say fatlick.’
    ‘Do you mean fetlock?’
    ‘Yes, fetlock, and thank you for helping to improve my English – for us there is always the danger of mixing up vowel sounds – Arabic vowel sounds are not fixed you know,’ he panted hotly in my ear, while firing off another volley of shots.
    ‘What’s so vital about the fetlock?’ Making myself heard almost involved kissing him.
    ‘Every Arab knows that the fetlock is the Achilles heel of the camel,’ he murmured, his lips brushing my ear caused me to shiver with delight, ‘no camel will move if just one of its fetlocks is injured.’
    ‘Interesting! Another thing – I’ve always wondered, how long can they keep going on the contents of their hump? –‘
    Some may question how my saviour and I managed to have such a long and informative exchange about our respective languages and the finer points of camel-care while we were fleeing at top camel speed, fighting for our lives and dodging bullets. The answer is, I don’t know; with the benefit of hindsight I can only suggest that the chemistry between us was so immediately active we just couldn’t help sparing the time and energy to get to know each other better, however dangerous our situation.
    ‘Look, we’ve lost them!...’ With the Brummie blinded by a shattered windscreen the old red pick-up had gone careering off crazily in the direction of a sheer stone hillside, with one surviving baldy in the back, screaming in lonely terror at the inevitable. On impact with that black stone wall, the vehicle burst into a large ball of fire in a billowing cloud of black smoke. I dared to peer behind us for the first time. How had our convoy fared in the affray? At a glance, in that dim dawn light, unexpectedly well. Aziz was liberally spattered in blood, but still upright on his mount and grinning with relief. Although I couldn’t make out what, if anything, had become of the third rider, I did catch a glimpse of silver in the moonlight: my wheelie case.

 
    Chapter Eight
     
    Half a mile away to our left, between the jagged summits of more black mountains, the sky was lightening like a fading bruise.
    We stopped at a white-washed mini mosque furnished with a solitary tap and a battered tin cup on a chain. I gathered from my mysterious companion that it was the kind of place wealthy Yemenis of yore, frankincense traders for the most part, used to build for the salvation of their souls and the comfort of thirsty travellers. A nice idea of course, but a tad archaic if one was trying, as I assumed the Yemenis must be, to jump-start one’s economy. Automatic and coin-, or perhaps token-, operated dispensers of chilled water at regular intervals along every highway would do a better job of providing vital refreshment and badly needed employment, I thought. After all, they’d have to be maintained and kept topped up with fresh water and emptied of their earnings...
    It was time to assess the damage done and rest the camels a while. It was also time I got a good look at the crack-shot in whose cosily cradling arms I’d been luxuriating for the past half hour or so. Without an adequate idea of what I can only call the grace of this man’s being, the remainder of my story will make little sense. With such an understanding, the received tabloid version of my sojourn in Yemen takes on a very different hue.
    Tall, taller than me by more than half a foot and far taller than anyone else I’d seen in Yemen, he was broad of shoulder and mighty of neck. If I’m deliberately choosing to render this portrait in terms bordering on the mythical that’s because he was something of a colossus astride that