CHAPTER ONE—A PIECE OF CAKE
“Piece of cake,” said Ralph as he punched a bony fist in the air and threw a half-full garbage bag over his shoulder. “We snuck into Syria.” He broke into a shuffling jog toward the van for Aleppo, which sat at the end of a very long parking lot.
Doug sped ahead. “I’m a dunce to go along on this crazy trip, even to steer clear of my conniving kids. And mark my words, it won’t be a piece of cake, because you always get into arguments about religion.”
Doug’s posh British accent was as thick as syrup, which he considered license to say anything and get away with it. “Aleppo isn’t going to be as easy as Mr. Mustafa said,” he added stuffily, “even with the so-called safety guarantee. And you don’t have to run for a bus in this part of the world. They never leave until the next one shows up.”
“Unless a bomb goes off.”
“Then we really don’t want to hurry.”
At eighty years old, Ralph was unable to keep more than a foot ahead of speed-walking Doug, who was a mere whippersnapper at seventy-nine.
Doug sniffed. “I do so enjoy watching you carry your stuff around in a garbage bag. You can be an embarrassing sort of chap to travel with.”
Ralph gasped, trotting to keep up with Doug. “No decent packs in Antioch. And you bad- mouthed the one with the nice camera compartment in Baku. Could have been a souvenir of the disaster in The World Is Not Enough. Surely you remember that James Bond movie?”
“I do not,” Doug said, snorting. “Real Brits don’t watch that James Bond claptrap.”
Doug’s stiff upper lip dissolved in a sneeze as he sped into the edge of a whirlwind swirling across the Syrian side of the Bab-al-Hawa border crossing. Their Columbia travel togs flapped like loose sails in a gale, making them look like stick figures on the back of a soccer mom’s van, tall Doug and stumpy Ralph.
The dust devil churned bags of paper and plastic into a whirligig of grime, making Doug duck and weave, buffeted by the wind. He walked hunched over with the top of his huge orange pack high over a white mop of hair, his mournful brown eyes tearing as the dust cut visibility to inches. The parking lot of little white Ladas and Toyotas had disappeared in the choking dust, the kind they hadn’t seen since day thirty-seven of forty-four days by camel from Zagora, Morocco to Timbuktu.
Ralph rasped, holding onto his hat as he spat blindly. “The Marine will lead us free of this pestilence.”
“If you’d keep your mouth shut, you wouldn’t have a problem, ever,” snapped Doug, wiping his face with a grimy sleeve. “And you’re not a Marine.” Doug was calm and carrying on, though his huge backpack was being whiplashed by the mini tornado as they dodged around cars in the endless parking lot. “You’re a dope, telling that chap in Yerevan you were a Marine. He only admired your pathetic crew cut to sell you a rug. And now you’re a Marine?” Doug laughed. “You have a delusion of physical fitness or old-timer’s disease. Eh, you’re probably just sliding toward senility.” A gust tossed Doug and his pack sharply sideways, but Doug swiveled right back on course.
“Okay,” said Ralph, taking a deep breath. “The Marine has led us clear of the twister.” He pivoted a few degrees to the left, on a straight shot for the van to Aleppo.
Ralph took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. “Buses always make me run.” He whipped off the baseball cap with Arizona written across it and wiped his forehead below a scraggly white crew cut in the process of disappearing. “If we don’t catch the next bus, we’ll have to walk miles and miles.” Ralph puffed, rubbing his face in a smear on the yellow sleeve. “And don’t give me any crap. I paid the baksheesh to the border guard, and as usual you didn’t spend a cent.”
“You’re on assignment. You can expense it. Anyway, it’s your turn to gift a fiver to the cause.”
“Me? You’re a royal cheapskate!” He glared at Doug. “From now on we’re splitting everything half and half.”
Doug and Ralph were in a partnership of penny pinchery to stretch the dollar further than it had ever been stretched before. Ralph was a travel writer and self-proclaimed expert in theology while Doug was a globetrotter dedicated to outwitting his grasping children. It’d be easy to imagine them standing under the wobbly gunpoint of a mugger, holding their chins in their hands like Jack Benny, deciding between their money and their lives.
Doug swept along in a speed walk. “The so-called Marine crew cut is nigh nonexistent. But I assume that’s why you wear the silly baseball cap. Though at your age, baldness is hardly premature.”
Ralph considered Doug’s diction his only redeeming quality, which Doug took as an admission of British superiority over the uncultured American dialect, which had obviously emerged from the ill breeding of former colonists.
At Doug’s glare, Ralph said, “I know you’d rather walk to Aleppo. But when you walk I have to run to keep up. Kids these days have no respect for their elders, driving the wisest in the clan to exhaustion.”
“You poor old codger,” said Doug. “I’m not convinced you’re actually older than I am. You probably just look older because you’re out of shape. Otherwise you wouldn’t have to run to keep up.”
They were yards away when the front door of the van opened, and the driver emerged in a grubby white robe split to his armpits. Ralph ran furiously as the driver started to close the sliding door of the minibus, pulling ahead of Doug at the last second. The driver jumped out of the way as Ralph pivoted and jumped, agile as an old goat, landing inside the jam-packed van.
Cracked black vinyl covered ancient bench seats topped by tube like roll bars. The two front benches were full, black-clad ladies of ample girth filling the front seat while the second bench contained a skinny woman smushed by two vast figures in full-length black niqabs.
Heads turned and eyes peeked through narrow black slits as Ralph scrambled inside. A rainbow of tassels was thumb-tacked to the ceiling of the van and green plastic grapes garnished the dash where two Barbie dolls were propped. The dolls wore headscarves and full-length black robes with only their wee faces visible.
Seven males were crammed into the two back benches. Three wore luxurious beards while the other four were beardless—a plump young man, two teenagers, and a glowingly cute kid about twelve years old with a cherubic face as smooth as a baby’s butt.
The plump young man’s clean-shaven face glistened above a grape-colored scarf with a matching white-and-purple-checked turban that complemented his lavender robe. He smirked at Ralph and patted his lap as Doug swung in behind Ralph.
“This van is too full already,” said Ralph. “I know the border guard said it’s not safe to stand while the bus is driving and you must have a seat, but I’m not sitting on that guy’s lap.”
Doug looked at the black-costumed women, whispering at Ralph, “You still have the safety guarantee, don’t you? You didn’t forget that.”
“For Christ’s sake, of course I have the safety guarantee. I’m not completely senile.” “Just checking in case you forgot something, again,” said Doug as he surveyed the crowd. “Assuming the border guard was right, which lap do you prefer? Otherwise we’ll have to wait for the next minibus. And what happens if someone checks our passports properly this time? They might notice we’ve been to Israel and deport us.”
The bus driver slammed the sliding door against their skinny butts, forcing them inside. “If we waited for the next bus, we’d get decent seats,” said Ralph. “This one won’t leave until, like you said, the next one shows up, which could be any second. I’d rather wait than have to sit on that guy’s lap. Or maybe the border guard was bullshitting us, because I can’t remember a single country in this part of the world where folks don’t do standing room only.”
“On the other hand,” said Ralph, “Assad’s goons will march us to the border at gunpoint if they find out we’ve been to Israel.”
The bus driver opened his door and climbed languidly behind the wheel. Doug’s eyes glazed over. “You sit on that nice gentleman’s lap. You’ve always been good with gay guys, like the one in Borneo who had the hots for you.” Doug chuckled. “I suspect he was legally blind.”
The women were frozen in their turned-around positions. They had pulled their eye slits wide open to watch, while the men sat and stared. The chubby chap with the purple scarf had a goofy smile splashed across his face, patting his lap again as he flipped the scarf over his shoulder.
“I don’t see a single person whose lap I’d sit on for two seconds, much less an hour,” said Ralph.
“We should be able to shuffle these guys around,” said Doug. “Maybe the guy in the back, the one who looks like a skinny old farmer, would let one of the kids sit on his lap. He looks like a harmless fuck,” Doug said, enunciating the most regal “fuck” ever.
“Everyone smells like a dusty puppy, except …” Ralph turned. “One of the ladies up front must have really sloshed on the perfume. Her, I think.” He pointed at the skinny figure who was fingering her eye slit even wider.
The bus driver started the engine and turned around, motioning for Doug and Ralph to take seats.
Doug directed. “I’ll sit on the farmer’s lap. You take the nice chap with the scarf.” “These guys look like the usual suspects,” said Ralph. “Even the kids look dangerous.
Well, except the little kid with the red beret and the bright blue eyes. He’d get a million likes on Facebook. I’m not so sure about the farmer and the guy next to him looks real dangerous. Let’s stack these kids up and make some butt room.”
Doug bowed to the cute kid with the red beret. “My good man, do you think you might sit on that gentleman’s lap?”
Doug pantomimed the kid moving to sit on the lap of the man who looked like a farmer. The farmer stared at Doug without a clue what was going on while Doug nodded and smiled enthusiastically, like anything he said was a done deal.
“And that skinny boy over there, you.” Doug pointed and then beckoned at a teenager with a fuzzy beard, blue turban, and cool sunglasses. “Come on over here.” He pointed at a spot on the closest bench. “Hold the child on your lap, and I’ll scrunch into your space. Okay? Okay.”
Doug held his head high, eyebrows arched over wrinkled cheeks, willing immediate obedience.
The really cute kid stared at Doug in disbelief as the teenager with the blue turban jumped up and said, “Okay, my ass, walking in here like you own the joint, bossing folks around. You must be ugly Americans.”
Doug yelled, “I’m not a bloody American.” Ralph stuttered, “Your English is very good…”
“Isn’t everyone’s English very good?” asked the kid, pushing mirrored sunglasses down on his nose, looking around the van.
Half solemnly shook their heads, saying, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” overlapping like a whisper of adders. Three women tittered, shushed by a harridan in black who sat in the front passenger seat.
The slender lady who’d fingered her eye slit wider practically ripped it open, peering at Ralph while the passengers started talking at once. The cute kid said, “He thinks I’m cute. What a moron.”
The skinny farmer on the back bench picked up a bowl and placed it on his lap, bewildered as he said, “What say? What say?” apparently exhausting his English.
“You’d better know I’m dangerous,” came from the back bencher with the leather jacket. The older stubby man with a henna beard said, “Welcome to Syria, gentlemen. We don’t wish to be unfriendly.” He smiled. “At least we don’t wish to be unfriendly yet.”
The pause was ominous as the man adjusted his sinuous gold-and-beige turban and briskly rubbed his hands. His deeply lined face was ringed by a firecracker-red beard and seemed genial as he yelled at the driver. “Get going. The next bus is coming up behind us.”
He turned to Ralph. “My name is Fahd. I’m from Gilgit. We must take a seat.”
