Escape Under the Forever Sky (4 page)

Okay, now I'll sit up. Here we go, Lucy, on three
.

One. Two. Three
.

I sat up slowly because moving hurt so much. It felt like there were a hundred ice picks stabbing my head. Plus, my contact lenses were glued to my eyeballs, and my ribs and right hip were throbbing. What was wrong with my hip? I lifted up my T-shirt. There wasn't
much light, but I could see a huge bruise, purple and swollen. It must have happened when the man with the nasty teeth jammed me with his knee.

I could still feel that dirty rag smothering my face. It was hard to breathe again. I yanked up my knees and buried my eyes in my kneecaps, hugging my legs as hard as I could.
Mom, where are you? Please, please, please, come get me. Daddy, help me, please
. . .

I cried and cried until my sobs squeezed out some of my fear, leaving behind a numb, empty void.
Let me just curl up into a ball and die
.

Okay, Lucy, somehow you're going to deal with this. Three deep breaths and then you'll figure out what to do next
.

One. Two. Three
.

I tried to focus on what a scientist would do in a dangerous, unfamiliar situation. What would Jane, Dian, and Biruté do?
Hey, Dian Fossey was kidnapped too, and she survived
. I refused to think about the fact that a few years later she was murdered.
Completely different circumstances, totally unrelated
.

I'm sure every police officer in Ethiopia is looking for me right now. They're probably almost here already. I bet my mother called the president of the United States, who called the prime minister of
Ethiopia and told him to find me or else. My parents will do whatever they have to do to get me back. They will pay any ransom, gather an army, and never stop until they find me
.

But what could I do in the meantime? What did Leakey's Angels do when they first got to the bush, deep in the heart of nowhere? They made hypotheses. They observed. They considered the facts.

Then they took action.

I crisscrossed my legs and exhaled. First, I'd note my surroundings: I was sitting on a straw mat that was covered by a brown wool blanket. The room had one small opening near the ceiling and one door. There was one wooden crate with one kerosene lamp on top of it. Since the lamp made the only light in the room, it had to be nighttime. I checked my watch: 10:13
PM
. And fourteen seconds, fifteen seconds, sixteen seconds, seventeen seconds.
Stop
. The kerosene lamp probably also meant there was no electricity here, wherever here was. It was hot even though it was night, so here was probably somewhere at a lower altitude than Addis.
Great, that narrows it down to about fifty percent of the country
.

The only other thing in the room was a bucket.

Next, I observed myself. I was wearing a black T-shirt and green cotton pants, underwear, a hair elastic, and my watch, with its two time zones and compass. My sandals were gone. I was sweating, and my ribs and my right hip hurt. My contact lenses felt like sandpaper, but I couldn't take them out because I'd be completely blind without them.

I have to pee
.

Oh no, I seriously have to pee. What am I going to do? No way, not the bucket. Ugh. I can't believe I have to pee in that bucket. There's no toilet paper either
.

It's amazing what you can do with your hands tied together if you're lucky enough to be wearing pants with an elastic waistband. One small victory for Lucy.

What's going on? Why did they kidnap me? Who are they?
I thought maybe it was because of Mom's job. Or maybe it was just about ransom. The kidnappers might have thought my family was really rich because we're American, even though we're not because both my parents have government jobs. But I guess compared with most Ethiopians, we are rich.
Who knows?

I should have known better. After my giant stupidity at the market, I should have known better.

I
T WAS MY
idea to cut last-period study hall—I couldn't stand the agony of waiting one second more. Racing the two blocks from school, Tana, Teddy, and I just managed to catch the bus before it pulled away from the stop. It was painted the usual ketchup red and mustard yellow with the lion of Judah, the national symbol of Ethiopia, emblazoned on the side, rearing on its hind legs and pawing the air. I was so excited I practically high-fived it. This was my first time on any kind of Ethiopian public transportation.

We gave the driver the two-birr fare (about twenty-five cents) and smushed our way through the packed aisle to crowd around a pole halfway back. We were in
our school uniforms, but somehow Tana looked like the next teen movie queen in her plaid jumper while I looked like Raggedy Ann in mine. And Teddy—well, with his long eyelashes and the way his smile flashes against his dark skin, he looks hot no matter what he wears. But I knew that thinking of Teddy that way was bad for our friendship, so I tried to stop myself whenever it happened (which I had to admit was a lot).

“What did you tell your mother?” Tana asked me.

“That I was going to your house after school,” I said. “What about you?”

“That I was going to your house.” She smiled.

“I told the matron I was going to the
mercato
.” Teddy boards at school, since his home is in Guge, a small village near the lake region in the south.

“You told her the truth?”

“Why not? She asked me to bring her some prayer candles.”

I rolled my eyes. “How come boys here get to do whatever they want, and girls can't do anything? I bet you can stay out all night in your village and no one cares.”

“I guess so,” he said, his shoulders tensing. He looked away from us out the window.

It's hard to get Teddy to talk about his village. Partly because he doesn't feel the need to share every detail of his life the way I do, but also because it's painful for him. Both of Teddy's brothers had died. He hasn't told us why, but it's not hard to guess—half a million Ethiopian kids die every year from disease and bad nutrition, and it's even worse for the poorest families, like Teddy's. Before he came to Addis, Teddy had to walk six kilometers to the next village to go to school—and he felt lucky, because most of his friends didn't go to school at all. But a better education wasn't the only reason his parents were so desperate for Teddy to get his scholarship. They wanted him to be someplace where he could get good medical care and enough food to eat, so they wouldn't lose the only son they had left.

So all we know about Teddy's village is that there are
tukuls
(the mud huts people live in), a few shops, the church, and an Internet café. Oh, and a foosball table. Right in the middle of the street.

I felt bad about bringing up the subject of home. I
started to apologize, but Tana interrupted me.

“Lucy, if you think it is bad to be a girl here, just imagine what it is like to be a woman. Men are in charge of everything! It is that way with my parents, with their friends, with everyone I know. And it never changes. When I grow up, they will all expect me to behave a certain way just because that is how it has always been. I
hate
it.”

I was shocked. Cool, controlled Tana was really worked up.

“Is it because your family's Muslim?” I asked her. “What she says is true for everyone,” Teddy said. “It is the same in my village, and we are all Christians.”

Tana took a deep breath. “That is why next year I am going to ask my parents to send me to high school in London, with my cousins who live there.”

“Tana! You can't leave!”

Before Tana could answer, the driver made an announcement over the loudspeaker in Amharic. Then he repeated it in English: “Attention, passengers. There are many pickpockets riding the buses in Addis Ababa. Please protect your belongings.”

My hands shot to the front pocket of my messenger bag, which was slung across my right shoulder. Tana and Teddy laughed.

“Ferenji!”
they said at the same time.
Ferenji
means “foreigner.”

“What do you mean?”

“You just showed the pickpockets exactly where you keep your wallet,” Teddy said.

“Okay, I officially feel stupid,” I said.

Just then the bus stopped at the market, and Teddy put his arm around me, guiding me toward the door.

“Don't worry,” he said. “We will not let anything bad happen to the ambassador's daughter. After all, we do not want to start an international incident.”

I didn't respond. I was too busy concentrating on keeping my face normal and trying to ignore the tiny electric shocks that started racing through my body the second he touched me.

They say the
mercato
in Addis Ababa is the largest outdoor market in Africa. I don't know if that's true, but it's pretty huge. Nothing I had heard, none of the pictures I had seen, prepared me for the real thing. People competed with cars, trucks, and donkeys for
space on the packed streets. Endless alleyways were crammed with stalls offering everything under the sun: hubcaps, firewood, luggage, fabric, flower-print mattresses, stuffed animals, shoes, backpacks, plastic water jugs, nail polish, and tons of electronics. Weirdest of all were the rows of white plastic mannequins with rainbow-sherbet hair. I stopped to look at a display of brightly colored bundles of straw. “For weaving baskets,” Tana explained.

Old women sat on orange blankets on the ground, selling the two-foot-long wicks used to make prayer candles. We passed a boy sewing “national clothes,” the traditional toga-style wraps made from Ethiopian
shemas
, his needle moving so lightning fast that his hand was a blur. A flatbed truck passed us with a man perched on top of a huge covered load, an oil drum—
an oil drum
—balanced on his head. And the sound of the place! Afternoon prayers blared over loudspeakers from the Christian church nearby, not even coming close to drowning out the noise from the crowds of shoppers and merchants hawking their wares. Curry from the spice market flavored the air. I had never been so happy.

As we wandered around the stalls, I noticed there were no prices on anything.

“Is this one of those markets where you bargain for stuff?” I asked.

Teddy looked confused. “You have never been to a market before?”

I shook my head. “No, I have. I used to go with my father in Morocco. He let me try to buy things a couple of times, but I was pathetic at it,” I admitted. “I always felt so weird about negotiating. I never knew what to say.”

Teddy and Tana exchanged a look, surprised, I think, that something that came so naturally to them was so foreign to me. I guess it would be as if they'd come to America and I'd found out they didn't know how to use a credit card.

“Bargaining is like a game,” Teddy explained. “It is not so difficult if you understand the rules and much more fun than your way of shopping.”

“We will show you,” Tana said. “Tewodros,” she ordered, using Teddy's full name, “go and buy me a basket, please.”

Tana handed Teddy some money and waved her
hand in the direction of the basket stalls. “We will let the boy do the work,” she whispered to me. “They will give him a better price.”

“As you wish, Weizero Tana,” Teddy joked, adding a respectful bow.

“And make sure it is an old one!” Tana called after him. “They are much better quality than the new ones,” she explained.

“How can you tell if they're old?” I asked.

“The colors are not so bright, and the stitches are smaller and more even. Shhh. Watch Teddy now.”

There was a row of identical basket stalls, and Teddy casually approached the first one. It was tiny, the walls and floor stuffed with stacks of colorful baskets of every variety, from huge platters with domed lids to small bowls and jewelry boxes.

Ignoring the proprietor, Teddy picked up a small basket. The proprietor said something to him in Amharic, and with a scornful shrug of his shoulders Teddy put the basket down and walked away without a word. He winked at us.

“What's going on?” I asked Tana.

“The man asked him for one hundred sixty birr.
Teddy wants to show him that such a price is not even worth considering,” she said as Teddy approached the next stall.

“Now he is telling the owner that the first man offered to sell him a basket for one hundred sixty birr, and he is asking if he can do better. Ah, you see, the owner says he will sell him the basket for one hundred twenty-five birr.” Teddy walked away again, ignoring the owner, who followed him, calling,
“Ishi! Ishi!”
and some other stuff I didn't understand.

This went on several more times. I watched, fascinated, as the price dropped from stall to stall. Tana kept translating for me. “He says, ‘This is not machine made. It is handmade. Look at the quality!' and ‘Please, I have a family to feed. You know this is a very good price, the best I can do.' ”