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All to no avail.
It took less than a minute to be bundled into a vehicle and Maggie fought each second of it even as she was driven away.
‘What do you want?’ she asked as the hand was removed from her mouth, but there was no answer.
The vehicle came to a halt and she was dragged out. Maggie thought she had already tasted fear, but that was nothing compared to how the sand stung as it whipped at her cheeks and the wind took her breath away as she cried out at the lights from a helicopter.
‘Yalla! Yalla!’a man urged loudly, and Maggie knew they were being told to hurry.
‘Please...’ she begged, not just because she was being kidnapped, but because surely it was way too windy to fly. Nothing she said or did made a difference; Maggie knew she was outnumbered and knew somehow that it was better to save her energy than to fight.
And still she refused to cry.
Careful what you wish for!
Just a few hours ago, Maggie had silently bemoaned the fact she was not deeper in the desert, and now she watched as it spread like a never-ending ocean beneath them.
It was not the first time Maggie had been wrenched from her bed.
Memories were stirring and she tried to stuff them down, but as they grew stronger she gave in, for there was strange comfort to be had in remembering those days.
As she looked through childhood memories with adult eyes, she found she could make sense of things. Time had given her perspective; what had happened to her made far more sense now than it ever had when she had been living through it.
The memories came thick and fast now. The drenching light and her bedroom full of strangers had, in fact, been the first responders when her mother had taken a serious turn for the worse.
Erin had called for an ambulance and, Maggie realised now, she must have told them she had a child sleeping in the flat.
It had felt like an invasion at the time—being lifted from her bed and carried to an ambulance.
She had held her mother’s hand throughout the journey and told her she loved her over and over. At the hospital she had been led to a small room to wait and it had been there she had been told that her mother was dead.
Thatwas fear, Maggie told herself as she stared out into the dark night.
She could deal with this.
And there had to be a logical explanation.
She remembered being driven through the night some time after her mother had died.
Again, she had been awoken, seemingly in the middle of the night.
Now, though, she recalled arriving at yet another new temporary accommodation. A couple had been eating their dinner. It had been the middle of winter and dark, but perhaps not the middle of the night as she had thought then.
There had been a more logical explanation then and therehadto be one now.
Maggie simply could not fathom what it was.
‘What do you want from me?’ she asked one of the men, but either he did not understand or simply chose not to answer.
The helicopter was circling and she could feel them hover and then be lifted by a gust of wind. She could see the tension on the features of the men as the pilot fought to land them in the storm.
There was a complex beneath, the white of a large tent with a collection of smaller ones dotted around the main one, like surf on the ocean. And the sand moved in waves beneath them, not unlike the sea itself. Finally they landed and Maggie breathed a sigh of relief.
She was hauled from the helicopter and a large hand pushed her head down as she was dragged through the sands.
The air was cold, the sand stung her cheeks, and then she was pushed, or did she simply stumble?
Maggie pulled herself up to her knees, anticipating being hauled back to her feet and determined to do it herself.
