28
The salty breeze from the Red Sea rolled in over the city slums of Al Hudaydah and mixed with the stench of decaying garbage, feces, and death. Ahmed’s nostrils twitched, and he filled his lungs, hunger cramps seizing his abdomen. He clamped his throat shut, trying to force the contents of his stomach to stay down.
Sometimes it worked, but other times…
He threw up violently. The brown gruel landed in sticky heaps on the floor. Apart from the red phlegm, it had a mostly solid consistency. He noticed a few leaves and partially digested insects, which his mother insisted he should pick out of the vomit and swallow back down. But most of it was just mud.
Still breathing heavily, Ahmed climbed over his sleeping sister. He hated her sunken eyes and bony arms. She had been pretty once, but now she looked like a skeleton draped in a drying skin suit.
Each step sent sharp jolts into his joints. The pain was always worse after sleeping. But since he threw up, he had to go out and scavenge again.
The street glowed in the afternoon sun, burning his soles as he stumbled toward the shore. It was a different pain – one that felt better than his empty stomach. Staying inside was the preferred way of spending the day, but a few unlucky ones like himself dug through the dumpsters in the scorching heat.
Beyond the dirt-brown buildings of the city, the sea stretched into the horizon in a glittering deep-blue haze. His throat always dried up at the sight of the massive expanse of water. It was a cruel joke by the creator of the universe to put an ocean of undrinkable liquid right next to such parched lands.
Time and time again, Ahmed tripped over his own feet, which hung loosely at the end of his shins. He didn’t like the docks because that’s where people died the most, but it was the best place to find fish rinse and other scraps of food left behind by the boaters.
Ahmed’s father had been a fisherman, but he had been drafted into the army and not returned since. His mother promised that he was still alive, but Ahmed had long since stopped believing. And his father’s boat had been stolen by the crazed refugees, trying to cross the gulf into Africa.
Dizzy with exhaustion, Ahmed finally reached the concrete pier. The seagulls screamed at him from above. They’d grown wary of landing ever since people started poaching them. Plastic and paper in various colors lay strewn over the ground, bringing some color to the gray. Nobody had the strength to care about the trash anymore.
A sickly smell of rot made him gag. He’d still not gotten used to it. He closed his eyes as he passed the human carcass tucked into the gutter.
Other people wandered around the city dump, digging through the filth for scraps to eat. Ahmed took a deep breath and stuck his hands into a pile of old shopping bags. A shadow flashed by, elongated by the setting sun.
Ahmed turned around.
A black horse trotted along the beach. The rider was a woman dressed in a flowing black robe with her head covered by a niqāb. A small slit revealed her violet eyes.
Ahmed had seen her once before when he was so hungry that he had to bite into his own skin to relieve the pain in his stomach. At first, he’d thought she was a figment of his imagination – a hallucination conjured by his deteriorating mind. But then he had heard others talking about her too. Some said she was a devil – only around to mock the dying. Others said she was a symbol of hope – an angel sent to watch over those who suffered the most. She never answered when people cried out to her for help, and always galloped away if someone tried to approach her. But she was a beacon of beauty in a world where beauty had long since died.
In Ahmed’s eyes, she was neither of good nor evil. She was just there, much like the aching hollow inside his stomach. He dropped the bag and stumbled toward her, desperation taking control of his body. He wanted to ask her for help, but he was too tired to talk.
He fell to his knees at the hooves of the horse, expecting her to ride off. Instead, she looked at him – her eyes emotionless.
“Come,” she whispered.
Ahmed’s eyes shot up. Perhaps it was just the waves lapping at the beach, and his mind playing tricks on him. Gaping, he stared at her. Then he started crawling toward her.
Her arm moved, and from underneath the folds of the robe, she pulled out a balance scale of silver. She held it up to the sun and indeed over the city itself. Ahmed’s body finally gave in, and he fell face down into the gutter.
The last thing he heard before the world went black was the woman’s voice. “A quart of wheat for a penny, and three quarts of barley for a penny…”