Beginning One:
The key jerked us out of sleep. Rap rap rap rap rap. Then deeper. Thwack thwack thwack thwack thwack. “Yalla. Goomee. Eat.” Quickly. Get up. Breakfast. The beginning was no different to any other day. But we all knew the end would be.
Peeling my eyes open, my body started to register what day it was. The dread bubbled in my belly and quickly rose, pushing a little "Oh" from my lips as it fizzed and burned around my heart like poison. If it wasn't for the poison I'd be empty inside.
I looked over at Sasha, she was sitting, knees up, arms draped over the front of them with her head hanging between her legs. It’s the position you sit in when you think you’re going to be sick. I know how she feels.
Kate is right next to me, close enough to touch. I glance over my shoulder and she is laying straight as a plank, eyes focused on the fluorescent light above our heads. It looks like a black light – one of those dark UV tubes that make your teeth glow at a trance club in Amsterdam – but it’s actually a standard old white tube. Covered in flies. They’re still, settled, but before long, as we start to move and a little air circulates in the room, they’ll become active. There must be hundreds of them. Enough to completely cover a metre long tube. When they start buzzing around the room for the day, you can see that the tube is covered in fly shit.
Kate isn’t a morning person; she’s still laying here next to me, staring straight up. I’d go beyond saying Anna isn’t a morning person. She’s actually frightening in the morning. I’ve seen her bare her teeth, wolf like, and that’s just because Sasha told her she missed a patch when she was cleaning the floor.
Beginning Two:
The black fabric was the softest thing about today. I just held it for a while. It was cool too. A little sea of cool in the thick humidity of a middle eastern summer morning.
Standing with the abaya held to my body and feeling the slippery waves of rayon move and settle around me has a calming effect. My eyes are open, but by all appearances, nobody is home. On court day, the further you can get away from the truth, the safer you are. It’s like your own personal defence team steps in to fight the system. Suppress the nervous synapses that threaten to derail an already shaky defence built by a very expensive lawyer. We all deal with another day in the Shariah court differently, but there’s one emotion that’s as strong as the handcuffs that link us like a chain gang for the journey – it’s the sheer terror at what new evidence will unfold.
Beginning Three:
The girls at the Emirates first class check in counter had been on duty since midnight. It was 6am and they had two hours left in their shift and would soon start seeing passengers for EK 005 departing at 7:30am. Checking in the east bound Singapore flights was usually a breeze – mostly Western expats going home to Australia, and often, Emirates pilots and their families. They reapplied layers of pink lipstick within the sharp confines of red lipliner, they gossiped in Arabic about a colleague they suspected of moonlighting as a prostitute, they readjusted their shaylas, wrapping the black veils loosely around rich black hair, and they dismissed a lecherous Bahraini wanting to check in. His ticket was for Riyadh and it was economy. All in all, it was just another winter’s day in Dubai and the temperature was a gorgeous 21 degrees Celsius at 6am. The sky was wearing its perennial shade of smoky blue. And the palm trees lining the forecourt just outside the automatic doors were heavy with bunches of ripening caramel coloured dates.
Then two police women escorted a blonde girl in handcuffs through the automatic doors.
