C4 antho - Chamber Four

Helping Hands ~217~
the International Rescue Committee. She e-mailed him
and he responded. She only paid him $450.
Malmoud’s face looked like an eggplant, his teeth flashing
yellow in his wide mouth, his tongue a vibrant pink, his
gray eyes radiating anger. He wore nothing except a pair of
faded camouflage cut-offs.
They passed by small huts made of grass, “thuckles” they
called them. They passed by houses of rusted green and yellow
sheet metal. They passed by huts made of dried mud,
sagging tin roofs stretched overhead, huts made of rotting,
brown wood, chicken-wire fences strung up alongside the
dirt path that wound through the center of the village.
There was no electricity, no running water, no telephones.
Brian told Betsy that some of these people had satellite
phones but so far she hadn’t seen any.
The sky was a blue dome over their heads, cloudless,
stretching endlessly, as large as the world itself.
She was struck by the silence of this place, the emptiness.
A bi-plane buzzed in the sky, somewhere in the distance.
Betsy stopped, made a visor with her hand, looked
into the sun.
Malmoud pulled at her once more, muttered something
in his strange language, nodded his head toward the canvas
IRC tent. He let go of her hand and Betsy felt his perspiration
cooling in her palm. He side-stepped behind her, put a hand
on the small of her back, and using the tips of his needle-thin
fingers, gave her a light push.
Betsy looked down. The dirt in front of the tent had been
kicked up, trampled, as if a hundred people had passed
through the tent’s entrance that morning.
“You, go,” he said, his tongue struggling over the sharp
angles of English consonants. “Look inside.”