Up ahead I could see some movement: the two female Sudanese nurses who worked full-time in the hospital. One was starting up a rickety old Jeep that Alan had pointed out to me when I’d first arrived days earlier.
He’d called it the “getaway car.” I thought he was joking.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Think again, Nick.
“Get in!” Alan told me as we reached the Jeep. The nurse in the driver’s seat jumped out to let him take over the wheel.
As I practically hurled myself into the shotgun seat I waited for the two nurses to climb in the back. They didn’t.
Instead they both whispered the same thing to us. “Salaam alaikum.”
I’d already learned what that meant. Peace be with you. But I was confused. “Aren’t they coming with us?” I asked Alan.
“No,” he said, jerking the creaky gearshift out of park. “The Janjaweed don’t want them. They want us. Americans. Foreigners. We’re interfering here.”
With that, he quickly thanked the nurses, telling the two he hoped to see them soon. “Wa alaikum salaam,” he added. And peace upon you.
Then Alan hit the gas like a sledgehammer, plastering me against the back of my seat.
“Hold on tight,” he told me over the rattle and roar of the engine, “because this is going to be one hairy ride.”
A BLAST OF the hot desert air nearly burned my face as we hit the road, or at least what passed for the road in this god-forsaken part of the world. There was no pavement, only a beaten track of dirt that was now flying off our tires as we fishtailed back and forth with Alan doing his damnedest to avoid the occasional citrus tree that had managed to survive the wretched heat and droughtlike conditions here.
Did I mention we had our headlights off? Welcome to the Ray Charles Grand Prix.
“How we doing?” Alan shouted at the top of his voice. “Do they see us? Can you see them?”