Authors: Bella Forrest
M
y throat was so
tight with terror, I couldn’t even scream.
“Help,” I choked, staring in the direction my sister and Hassan had disappeared. I staggered toward the bonfire. “Help!”
Yusuf was already racing over along with a dozen other men. “Who was screaming? What happened?” he asked, panic in his eyes.
“My sister! Hassan! Someone just took them!” I pointed with a trembling hand. I began racing forward.
“Who?” Yusuf shouted.
“I don’t know! They went in that direction!”
“Someone get a truck!” Yusuf bellowed.
Even as I continued running, several trucks started up and growled, and then one approached behind me. I leapt into the passenger’s seat as it was moving to find Fariss in the driver’s seat.
“Faster!” I urged.
I kept scanning the area, but I could see nothing but empty desert. I couldn’t hear even the faintest scream.
“Lalia!” I screamed out until my lungs felt bruised. We continued to race forward in the truck along with several others who had joined us. We drove further and further into the desert. When Fariss began slowing, I turned on him.
“Why are you stopping?”
“We need to contact the police,” he said.
“But they’ll come too late! Keep going!”
I was close to shoving him out of the truck and taking the wheel myself when my grandfather called out to my right. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of another truck next to Yusuf, both looking as terrified as I felt.
“What exactly did you see?” my grandfather demanded.
“We don’t have time to talk! We need to find them!”
“We need to call the police,” Yusuf said, leaping from the van and walking over to me. He gripped my shoulders through the window. “What happened exactly?”
“My sister… She needed to use the toilet. I wasn’t feeling well. Hassan waited outside for her. Once she finished, they both started walking toward me. Then someone… s-something just crashed into them and dragged them off. They disappeared so fast, I didn’t even have time to scream.”
I felt crazy even as I replayed the vision in my mind. It was like someone had sped by on a motorcycle, the fastest to ever be invented, and kidnapped them. But I’d heard no sound. And who the hell would want to kidnap Hassan or my sister?
Tears spilled from my eyes.
Where has my sister been taken?
She has asthma. What if she has an attack?
I turned back to Fariss. “Please! Keep going!”
The blood drained from Yusuf’s face. “We need to contact the police right away. They can send helicopters. In the meantime, four trucks should continue searching.” He turned to my grandfather. “Samir, return immediately to the city. Contact the police as soon as you can get a signal. River, you should go with him.”
“No. I can’t. I’m staying to search.”
He didn’t try to convince me otherwise and I was grateful for it. He got in the car that I was in, and my grandfather hurried back to the other one and headed back.
Keep Dafne safe, Grandpa.
We remained with the other four cars who’d accompanied us out here.
I brushed away the tears furiously and fixed my gaze straight ahead.
We fell into tense silence as the four trucks, their headlights on full blast, roared over the sand dunes. I lost track of how much time we traveled—it must’ve been hours. But we still had not spotted even the slightest clue as to where Lalia and Hassan were. Finally, our vehicle pulled to a stop again.
“We’re going to run out of fuel if we don’t return,” Fariss said, eyeing the gauge.
“Then you return and we’ll continue in one of the others,” I said, already opening the door and stepping out.
To my horror, none of the other vehicles had much fuel left either. And we had to keep enough for the journey back.
I would have continued barefoot with my flashlight if it meant finding my sister, but Yusuf pulled me back in the vehicle.
“We need to return, River,” he said, his voice weak. “We simply can’t go any further or we’ll all be stuck out here. We have to rally the police.”
My stomach clenched as the vehicles began roaring in the opposite direction, back toward the camp, away from my sister.
I could barely see as my eyes blurred again. I wasn’t even aware of my migraine anymore. The agony in my chest had crushed it into insignificance.
“The army?” Fariss said abruptly, pointing toward our right. I wiped my eyes and stared out of the window to see a cluster of tanks.
“Stop the car!” I said instantly.
I recognized those tanks. They looked like the same ones we’d seen the day before near the restaurant.
“Wait here for me,” I said.
“What? River, where—”
I didn’t give Yusuf a chance to finish his question. I slammed the car door shut and began racing full speed toward the tanks.
The harsh grains of sand had now seeped into my shoes and were grating against the soles of my feet, but I barely felt the pain. My eyes were fixed on the dark machines.
As I reached the first one, there was nobody in sight. I banged against one of the walls and shouted.
“Open up! Please! It’s an emergency!”
Silence.
I moved to the next one and banged again.
“Please!” I cried, even as my voice cracked.
My heart lifted as several hatches clicked open at once. Four men raised their heads out and looked down at me.
“Please! I need your help! My sister and a young man just went missing. We are camping some miles away, and someone just came by and took them. Have you seen anything at all?”
A man with short cropped hair and a scar across his right cheek climbed out and dropped down on the ground, the three other men following after him. He approached me, looking down at me seriously.
“Tell me, what exactly did you see?”
I took a deep breath and tried to steady my nerves to best express what had happened.
I repeated the incident and once again felt crazy as I recalled the speed of whomever it was who’d taken them.
They were silent as I finished, but the glances they exchanged with each other made me believe that they knew something.
“So have you seen anything?” I asked, daring to raise my hopes. “Do you have any idea at all what happened?”
There was a long pause. Then the man with the scar cleared his throat and said, “I’m sorry. We can’t help.”
My heart sank into my stomach. From the way he’d listened, and the look in their eyes, I was certain that they knew something.
“Sir, you may not be able to help, but please, tell me what you know. It’s my sister… my little—” My voice broke. “Why are you all here in the first place?” I managed. “What are you waiting for?”
The men began backing away. “I’m sorry,” the man repeated.
I lurched forward and grabbed the man’s arm. “Please!”
He brushed me off and Yusuf—who’d followed after me—grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
“River, these men don’t know anything. The best thing we can do now is return and give a full account to the police.”
I looked back at the men closing their hatches. They knew more than they were letting on. I just knew it.
Still, they were refusing to speak to me anymore and Yusuf was tugging me back toward the car. I had no choice but to retreat, so we sped back across the desert toward the city. We didn’t even stop at camp as we reached it—we passed right by.
About two hours into the journey, we were afraid that we might run out of fuel completely—we’d done a lot of extra driving that had not been planned for. But by some mercy we managed to arrive at the borders of the city and reach a fuel station before the engine became completely empty.
Fariss got out of the car with Yusuf to refuel. When they returned, we headed straight for the nearest police station.
We hurried into the reception area that was filled with a surprisingly large crowd of people.
“I have an emergency!” Yusuf shouted in Arabic, cutting through the noise.
A policewoman approached. “What is it?” she asked.
“A seventeen-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl went missing in the desert late last night. Has a man called Samir Haik arrived here?”
Recognition spread across her face. “Yes, come with me. You are witnesses?”
Yusuf gestured to me. “She is a witness.”
She led me and Yusuf along a winding corridor. We reached an office and stepped inside. There we found my grandfather and Dafne seated in front of a desk. My sister’s eyes were bloodshot, and she looked terrified. My grandfather looked relieved to see us.
The woman took a seat behind the desk next to a policeman who was already sitting there.
“We have a witness,” she said, pointing to me.
“Well? What can you tell us?” the policeman asked.
I could understand Arabic, but I couldn’t speak it as well. I wasn’t about to take chances on his English though, so I recounted the whole incident again in Arabic as well as I could.
“Have search parties been sent out already?” I asked.
The policeman and my grandfather nodded. “But anything more we can add to this case will help, of course,” the policeman replied.
“Have they sent helicopters?” Yusuf asked.
“They’re on their way,” the policewoman replied.
“Are you aware of a group of Americans in the desert with tanks? Do they have permission to be there? What are they doing?” I asked.
The policeman and woman eyed each other, then shrugged. “We are not aware of them. But I will verify their authorization to be here.”
We remained sitting in that office throughout the early hours of the morning. Officers came in and out, and we listened to reports of progress. I held my hands clasped together, praying every time a speaker crackled or an officer came in that they would have found them.
But 11am came around and they still hadn’t located either Lalia or Hassan.
“At least now that it’s daytime, we can see more easily,” the policeman said, rubbing his eyes wearily.
I looked toward my grandfather and Dafne. She had fallen asleep against his chest.
“Let’s return home for a short rest,” my grandfather said. “Sitting here any longer is not going to help. We’ve told the police all we know. We can return again this afternoon.”
Although I knew what he was saying made sense, leaving the police station felt like yet another step away from my sister. Still, Yusuf and I agreed and we headed to the car. Fariss drove us back to my grandfather’s home.
There was no way I could sleep no matter how tired I was. Clearly neither could Yusuf. He retreated into the living room and began making phone calls—presumably to his wife and relatives.
My grandfather carried Dafne upstairs to her bedroom. I found myself standing in the hallway with Fariss, who looked exhausted.
I still couldn’t get those strange American soldiers out of my mind. What were they doing in that part of the desert, so close to where my sister and Hassan had disappeared? I just knew that they had some clue about what had happened. I couldn’t shake the feeling.
Fariss was about to return to the car, presumably to drive home for a sleep, but something made me call out and stop him.
“Fariss, would you do something for me?”
“What would that be, Miss Giovanni?”
“I need you to take me back to that area where we saw those tanks,” I said.
He looked nervously at me and I was sure that he was about to refuse.
“Please,” I begged before he could object. “I will talk to my grandfather and convince him to let us go.”
He rubbed his forehead. “All right, I will take you there. But I really need to sleep, otherwise I’m sure I will crash before we ever reach the desert.”
“Okay,” I said. I understood he must’ve been exhausted, but I couldn’t help but feel frustrated all the same. “How much time do you need?”
“Give me four hours.”
“Then can you sleep in one of the spare rooms here? Traveling back to your home will just waste time.”
“Okay,” he said.
I took him up the stairs and showed him one of the spare bedrooms. I met my grandfather on the staircase on my way back down to the ground floor.
“Fariss is sleeping in one of the bedrooms,” I said. “He agreed to take me back to the desert, to where we saw those tanks.”
My grandfather stared at me. “I don’t understand what good returning there will do. Yusuf said that you already asked them and they had no idea about the situation.”
“I just don’t believe them,” I said. “I want to return there with Fariss to watch them for a few hours. Perhaps overnight.”
“I don’t like the idea of you two going alone. If you insist on going, I’ll come with you.”
“No, Grandpa. You should stay. Dafne needs someone from her family here. If you want to send another person with me, then ask Bashira if she will come.”
He sighed, then nodded. “Let’s ask Bashira.”
We headed to the kitchen where she was seated, looking pale and sipping from a cup of tea. We explained the plan and she agreed with little hesitation. So it was decided. Once Fariss finished sleeping, we would head back to the desert.
The next four hours were possibly the hardest of my life. They felt like an eternity. I tried to find things to do around the house—like search for a flashlight to pack in my travel backpack and take a shower—but nothing made the time pass any more quickly. My grandfather suggested calling my mother, but I refused. I kept telling myself that we would find Lalia soon. That there was no need to worry my mother. We’d tell her the story once Lalia was safe at home again. I had to keep thinking like this, otherwise I would sink into a pit of despair. I had to stay strong. We all had to.
Finally the staircase creaked and Fariss descended it. He looked refreshed. He looked from me to my grandfather. “Will you be coming, sir?” he asked.
My grandfather shook his head. “Bashira and River will be going with you.”
“Very well,” he said.
In the meantime, Bashira had been preparing lots of food and water to take with us in case something happened and we got stuck out in the desert longer than we had expected. I wanted to stay at least the whole night in the desert, camp out in the car and keep an eye on the Americans to see what they were doing—assuming they were even still there.