18°42’02.8”N 12°55’00.9”E

  Bilma Department, Niger

  21.05.2024 – 15.30 +01.00

  “Rest, sister. I might explore the town tonight with the Banadiq. I will let you know, and you can join the bar crawl if you want,” Qadir said to me. He was typing excitedly on his phone, already arranging his little distraction for the night.

  “I doubt it, but let me know where you go in any case,” I said. Then I headed right away for my bed.

  At the beginning, the breeze had been at just the right temperature. The soft mattress contrasted with the car seats and the cheap bed I had slept in last night in Waw al Kabir. The luxury enveloped me and lulled me into a deep sleep immediately. There was no point in unpacking. This was a temporary detour before we continued south.

  Minutes or maybe hours away, my eyes opened, almost contrary to all my instincts. My body ached from exhaustion, and the sun’s natural light was gone. The moon’s soft light cast long shadows inside the suite; a direct indication of how late it must have been.

  “You won’t let me sleep. Won’t you?” I said. I sighed, almost in surrender. Like a reverse of a lullaby, a melody that I could feel at the tips of my fingers but not really hear, it pulled me to stand up. Once again, the Calling needed me to see something.

  I left the bed and looked at the balcony door, half-ajar, inviting the moon’s light and the midnight breeze inside, while also prompting me to step out of the room. Slowly, still drowsy, I stepped out and rubbed my eyes. My hands felt numb, almost uncertain themselves about the benefit of being awake. I was too. But once I faced the view, a new kind of lucidity found me. The skyline of the early evening revealed tall buildings made of stone and glass – not quite the skyscrapers of Tripoli, but still impressive for an oasis town like Bilma. The moon, a waxing gibbous nearing a full moon, illuminated the south-east sky.

  A sturdy table, built fixed into the balcony, was placed at the center of it, near the railing designed to stop a fall, and two chairs were tucked to its side. The Calling had a purpose, and for a moment of blind belief, I obeyed. I climbed onto the table, in a foolish attempt to get closer to the sky, I thought. Maybe it was about the moon’s light that it had awakened me.

  It was not. The Calling pulled my attention to the ground next to the balcony. A Baobab tree was right next to me, its branches reaching up. My feet stood as steady as I could command them to be, at the edge of the table, right at the height of the stone railing. Maybe just three more steps to reach the void.

  “How mangled I would be if I were to fall through it,” I said, unsure if the Calling made me say it, or if I begged the Calling to reconsider. It did not.

  I made one tiny step forward, still on the table, now closer to the edge, my eyes fixed on the tree. What if I fell? Could I stop the fall by grabbing onto the Upside Down root-like branches?

  “No, I could not,” I said again. It was not a threat; it was a reminder. I remained as still as I could, waiting for the Calling’s next command. The cold evening breeze blew through my night gown, while my eyes were enthralled by the Baobab’s trunk. Its branches spawned from what looked like a hollow cave, deep inside its core.

  Its hollow trunk echoed something like a prayer. I thought that if I fell to my death just at the right angle, I would dive right into its caverns. And as that thought lingered, the Calling nudged me to step forward. My left foot first, and then the right foot, simply dangling beyond the edge of the balcony.

  My head rang. One more step, but I could not take it. Half a minute, and then two minutes. I wondered if someone, somewhere, could see a woman undecided at the edge of a balcony, with only the moon to guide her. My head rang at a higher pitch, and my hands turned numb. No matter what someone thought, I was not undecided. I did not want to step forward. And it was not a waxing moon guiding me. It was a Curse forcing me to.

  “No,” I said, looking at the Baobab below. Its hollow trunk and its branches. And what looked like budding flowers. “No.”

  Maybe I was in a dream, like when the Calling found me, like when it decided to pull me away from my family, my home, my own choices.

  The lucidity became drowsiness again. My head stopped ringing. I did not know what that meant, but I stepped off the table as quickly as I could, back into the safety of the balcony.

  I needed to sleep.

  ? ? ?

  In the morning, I had a full breakfast in my room, on the balcony.

  The maids of the hotel had done their best to prepare a luxurious meal of hausa koko, a kind of millet porridge, bissap and ginger juice, as well as an assortment of typical French pastries, accompanied by mango and pineapple slices. Qadir did not hold back on the expenses. I appreciated that he wanted to care for us, but I also feared we would soon run out of our budget.

  I looked at the baobabs’ sky-reaching branches next to me, and I thought the receptionist was right. There was something about eating breakfast just above such magnificent trees. Their branches spread like an upside-down root system, and I could imagine them choking the air around the hotel, draining it of the gases needed for them to grow taller. My admiration was quickly replaced by the memories of last night. Dream-like as they were, I was certain they were real. I looked at the table in front of me, where I stood.

  I decided that what happened last night was a test by my Calling. Something I could not comprehend, and I did not need to. Whatever it was, it had since subsided, and I had not fallen to the Baobab.

  I let my gaze wander away at the skyline of the city, until my phone started vibrating.

  It had been a while since I had it connected to a stable enough WiFi, and after turning it on an hour ago, it had been going non-stop with updates and notifications. I started on the porridge, as I checked my phone again to make sure none of these were a text by Qadir.

  Some news caught my eye: something about the Spanish Colonies in Antarctica, politicians in Madrid calling for international solidarity, and even some representatives from the African Union were making statements about sending relief packages. I tapped on the article; something about thousands dying. But as much as I could read, nothing specified details. The Spanish Colonies were isolationist, so no clear details were released, besides the count of dead.

  “The world gets crazier every day,” I said, deciding to scroll past the news and focus on the breakfast.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Before I could read more, my phone rang, showing Qadir’s number. I left my spoon in the porridge. I picked it up.

  “Hello, Miss, uhm. We are sorry to wake you,” a man said, almost too afraid to address me.

  “Who is this? Where is Qadir?”

  “Walid, miss. I am from the convoy, your driver. We – uh – found your brother, he was in some kind of, uh, situation. He is okay, but he is in the hospital.”

  I sprang up from the chair, unsure how to act for a brief moment.

  “Miss? Are you there?” Walid asked, snapping me into motion. I headed inside, forgetting all about breakfast. I put the phone on speaker as I reached for my bags.

  “What happened? Is he okay?” I shouted at the phone.

  “Yes, yes, he is okay now. Well, he is quite hurt, but we thought we should call you. He is in the hospital three streets down from the hotel. A car is coming for you.”

  His voice was worried, and that made me tense.

  ? ? ?

  I was right outside his door in less than fifteen minutes, but it seemed like a day had passed. I did not understand how he could have possibly ended up in the hospital. Being in a foreign city and country made it a whole lot more difficult to plan what my next steps could be. Was it an accident? Did someone attack him? Why would anyone? And what were we supposed to do now?

  I decided that asking myself questions would not help.

  “You,” I said, pointing at one of the three men standing outside his room. They were watching me pace in the waiting room, and Walid kept his head low as I addressed one of his men. “You said you were with him last night. All night?”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “How the fuck did you let anything happen?”

  “Miss, he went off on his own outside the bar. We tried to follow, but we lost him.”

  “The Five Guns lost an eighteen-year-old?” I could feel my right hand shaking, almost begging me to strangle the man.

  “And we also found him, madame. He had gotten into serious trouble, out of the blue. His injuries…”

  “And I am very grateful that you found him alive,” I tried to tame my anger. It was clear that they knew nothing. Worst of all, I knew how my brother was capable of being a pain like that, and lashing out at the Banadiq would not help me manage them better. “All of you get the fuck out.”

  All three of them started moving. “Walid, you stay,” I said, changing my mind. He nodded, and the other two let me be with him.

  Oh Qadir. What kind of trouble had he gotten himself into? I had to speak with him.

  I was walking in circles for long enough when a doctor finally exited his room.

  “What the hell happened?” I demanded answers from him. The only one that mattered at this stage. He cast a strict look as if he was almost scolding me for my rude language. He stepped beside me, trying to address Walid.

  “How does she dare…”

  “Answer the Miss’s question,” Walid interrupted, and it was the first time I had heard his voice go so low. The doctor, understanding the real dynamics in the room, turned to me, clearly unwilling.

  “We do not know. He was brought in the middle of the night. He has extensive injuries and probably a concussion. Probably a fight.”

  “Can I see him?”

  The doctor looked at Walid behind me first and then at me.

  “Of course, Miss. Keep in mind, he is on a lot of painkillers right now. Don’t put any stress on him.”

  The doctor opened the door behind him, and I tried to hold myself from gasping. One of his legs was in a cast, his chest was covered in gauze, the same as his left hand. His head was wrapped in some kind of plastic wrap, and his eyes looked black as if he had been hit.

  “Qadir?” I asked as I approached. Walid stayed outside with the doctor. We were alone in the room.

  “Sis,” he said, and you could hear he was in pain.

  “What… what happened to you? Did you get in a fight?” I asked him.

  He looked right at me.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “You think so?” I said, and he flinched at the hint of anger in my voice.

  “I… do not remember. I don’t remember anything.”

  “Okay. The doctor said you are very badly hurt and need some time to heal.”

  We both sat in silence.

  “What about your Calling? N’Djamena?” he asked.

  “I…” I paused. There was nothing to say about it. Part of me hoped that my Calling would take over now and suggest a course of action and make the decision for me. It did not. “I think that is not important right now.”

  “I am sorry, sister,” he said, and I could see his eyes filling up with tears.

  I approached him.

  “Don’t be.” I pulled a handkerchief from his nightstand. “Whoever did this to you, that’s the one who should be sorry. They messed with the wrong family.”

  He laughed a bit and then visibly ached.

  “Khalida Ashour. What are you planning to do?”

  “Where are your clothes?”

  He nodded towards the wardrobe in the room. “I asked them to leave them untouched,” he said.

  I opened the wardrobe and found clothes reeking of blood and mud. Designer jeans, his expensive long-sleeved button-down shirt, with buttons missing and stained with blood. and a scarf, its fabric torn apart in the middle. No shoes, which he probably lost.

  “Good,” I responded. I carefully passed the handkerchief through all the clothes. I was sure almost all of it belonged to my brother. But that did not matter, as I only needed the rest of that almost which would be foreign.

  The handkerchief had turned a shade of dark, rotten red by the end. I squished it tightly in my hands and closed my eyes.

  I recalled the training with my mother.

  Every living thing has a Nabd.

  Immediately, I heard my brother’s pulse, lying on the hospital bed. His pulse was worryingly weak, but I had enough of a sample to listen to it clearly. I tried to zone it out completely, sending it as far as possible to the back of my mind. His heart rhythmically danced in the background of my earshot – and then, I picked it up. It was like an illusion of a sound, only a fraction of what my brother’s pulse sounded like. That one percent of his assailant’s blood was indeed there and was like a homing beacon for me.

  I smiled. I had not done this in a while: listening to the Nabd not to guard, but to hunt. There was something sweet to it. I closed the wardrobe, knowing I had a next move to make.

  “Khalida, please, no. It must have been a stupid robber or something,” my brother protested, but after listening to my little brother’s weakened Nabd, there was nothing he could say to change my mind.

  I carefully wrapped and placed the handkerchief in my pocket.

  “You,” I said, and petted his head with my right hand, tainted black by the mud and blood from his clothes. “Don’t worry about a thing.”