161 4 Walls and bridges (or in the direction they thought Turkey was). The argument degenerated into name calling, and we started hitting and elbowing each other like complete idiots, in a dinghy that was just a little dot in the middle of nowhere, while Hussein Ali was crying and saying, What’s going on? I’m doing my job of throwing out the water and you’re hitting each other? Row. Please, just row. I think it was then that the boat appeared. Or rather, not the boat, the ship. A very big ship, a ferry or something like that. I saw it coming up behind Hussein Ali as he spoke. It passed very, very close to us. How close? Do you see the florist’s shop outside the window? The distance from here to there. As close as that? As close as from here to there. These high waves were different from normal waves. They got mixed up with the others, and the dinghy made a strange movement, like a horse stung by a bee. And Liaqat couldn’t hold on. I felt his fingers slide over my shoulder. He didn’t scream, he didn’t have time. The dinghy had suddenly tossed him out. Let me get this right. Liaqat fell into the water? Yes. And what did the rest of you do? We looked for him as best we could, hoping to see him in among the waves, and we shouted. But he’d disappeared. When the waves from the ship – which didn’t stop: maybe it saw us, maybe not, we couldn’t tell – anyway, when the waves subsided, we kept rowing and calling Liaqat’s name. And rowing. And calling. Turning in circles around the spot where we’d been, or so we thought, though in all probability we’d already moved a long way from there. Nothing. Liaqat had been taken by the darkness. At that point, I’m not really sure what happened: it may have been the exhaustion, it may have been to degenerate into – versna a florist – blómasali to subside – róast in all probability – að öllum líkindum exhaustion – örmögnun
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