Post by Kenneth Franklyn (@kenfrank)

Chapter 3:

When the bus disappeared, the desert swallowed the sound.

I sat on my bag by the roadside, my legs dangling over the edge of the tarmac. No headlights. No engines. Nothing but wind dragging sand across the asphalt like a broom. Hours passed. The sky turned black and full of stars I’d never seen so clearly in Nigeria.

By midnight, my body gave out. My throat was dry, my stomach gnawed at itself, and my eyes burned from sand and lack of sleep. I dragged my bag off the road and lay down behind a low dune. I told myself I’d rest for ten minutes.
I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, the sand found them. Every time I tried to breathe deeply, it scratched my throat.

Then I heard it.

Hooves. Soft, deliberate, cutting through the silence like a whisper.

I lay still and opened my eyes a slit. Three camels circled me, slow and deliberate, kicking up small clouds of dust that glowed faintly in the moonlight. On each camel sat a man. Their faces were hidden behind turbans and cloth masks, only their eyes showing—narrow, sharp, watching. At their sides hung machetes that caught the moonlight with every shift.

My heart dropped into my stomach.
_It is finished,_ I thought. _This is how it ends. Alone on a road no one knows I’m on._

They didn’t speak. They just circled, the camels breathing hard, their shadows long and distorted on the sand. My hands shook. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t shout. There was nowhere to run to.

Finally, one camel stopped. It knelt with a groan, folding its legs under it like a building collapsing in slow motion. The man on top swung down, light and silent for someone carrying a blade.

He pulled the cloth from his face.

I sat up fast.

It was him—the passenger who’d gotten off two stops before me. The one who’d been speaking Fulfulde with the driver, the one who’d glanced at me like he knew I didn’t understand.

He crouched in front of me. His eyes were kind, not cruel. He spoke in broken Pidgin, mixing in Hausa when he couldn’t find the words.

“No bus for Agadez,” he said. “Two weeks. Maybe more. Fight for the road. You cannot stay here. You die.”

I stared at him. My mouth was too dry to answer.

“Come with us,” he said. “Stay with us. When the road opens, we will bring you back. Safe.”

I looked past him at the other two men on their camels. They hadn’t moved. Waiting.

I had no choice. If I stayed, I’d die of thirst or hunger before morning. If I went with them, at least I’d live to regret it.

“Okay,” I whispered.

They helped me onto the camel behind the man who’d spoken. The animal rose under me with a lurch that nearly threw me off. The other two fell in behind us, and we moved out into the desert.

We trekked for five to six hours. No road, no lights, just stars and the steady rhythm of camel feet on sand. My legs ached. My mouth tasted like dust. I drifted in and out of consciousness, holding onto the man in front of me to stay upright.

Then, just as the sky began to turn grey, I saw it.

Smoke.
Huts made of mud and cloth.
A fire pit with a pot boiling.
Children running barefoot between tents.
A small village that didn’t exist on any map I’d seen.

The man in front of me turned his head slightly.

“This is home,” he said. “For now.”

And what I saw next made me forget, for a moment, that I was lost at all.

0 likes · 0 comments · 0 shares