Operation Scheherazade
by Sinbad
Chapter 4
The next morning Ricky woke with the dawn and climbed out of bed bright and refreshed. Immediately he remembered where he was and wandered quietly around the lodge in his bare feet, discovering rooms off the main room, until his father found him crouching in a corner watching a family of scorpions, tiny almost transparent young on the back of their shiny dark brown mother with her venomous tail. Roger had woken reluctantly and with considerable disorientation, and rebuilt his conception of place slowly. Once he got out of bed and saw Ricky's bed empty, he went looking for him and found him with bare feet just inches away from a female scorpion protecting her young. He might be forgiven for being a little sharp with the boy as he called him back into the main room of the lodge.
There was nothing to eat but they had some water left in the bottles Roger had bought the previous day. They drank the last of this and climbed back into the car and continued their journey. Ricky sat in the front next to his Dad and looked forward to the journey through the desert. Roger pondered idly on the reliability of these vehicles, thankful that they were so reliable. If his car had failed to start what would they have done? He shuddered at the thought.
As they approached Amman and home Roger noticed there was a lot of traffic on the road and was mildly surprised. As he got closer into town he became alarmed to see people rushing around in panic and families on the road with what looked like all their possessions on a cart. But he was nevertheless unprepared when pulling up outside the house to be met by his wife Shirley running up to the car.
“It's happening, Roger! It's war!”
“Damn, it can't be. They wouldn't be so stupid? Yes they would, wouldn't they. Oh, Shirley, what are we going to do?”
“The Embassy have been on the phone. We're being evacuated from the military airfield at ten o'clock tonight. They're sending a plane with Red Cross markings for us and it can't use the commercial airport because the Israelis bombed the runway this morning. You could hear it all over the city. I wish you'd been here, we were so frightened.”
“Okay. How much can we take?”
“One suitcase each. Nothing more.”
“Okay. Lets get started. Ricky, you go with your mother and pack a suitcase with your things. I have to go to the office.”
“Roger!”
He stopped in his tracks.
“What do you think I've been doing since I got the phone call? I've packed for you and for me, and Ricky only has to choose his books and toys.”
“Sorry darling, I'm not up to speed yet. Thank you. Okay, Ricky, you heard what Mummy said, go with her and pack your things.”
Ricky got out of the car and followed his mother up the steps to the house. Roger drove off to the British Council offices. Shirley supervised her son's packing and at the same time prepared an evening meal. She struggled a little with this, the stress of the occasion adding to the problems she had finding things in the kitchen. Normally the cook-housekeeper would have taken care of the meal but she'd sent him home to his own family and now she had to find her way around his kitchen. Eventually she made an omelette for herself and Ricky, and made a sandwich for her husband so that he could eat on the go if necessary.
It was dusk before Roger arrived back home after clearing his desk at work. Daphne had not been in the office so he hadn't been able to ask her about the banknote, and he wasn't sure if he could trust anyone else, after all he didn't know why the King had chosen such an unusual way of passing a message, so he still didn't know what the writing meant. He hoped there would be someone in London who could read it.
He and Shirley sat together in their living room on the sofa, running over last minute checklists together. Ricky sat on the balcony of his bedroom and looked out over the city, his home for the last three years. He had known he was going to have to leave this place and his friends sometime soon, because the little school that taught in English didn't teach boys beyond the age of thirteen. But he hadn't expected to be leaving so soon and with so little notice. Surveying the view, he noted that the two boys who lived next door were sitting on their verandah doing their homework as usual. Ricky wondered about the enormous amount of homework they seemed to have. They were at the local high school and Ricky could have gone there but he'd have been taught in Arabic, so he'd have suffered a setback in his education while he learned the language. So his parents had put him down for a place at a boarding school in England. But he would have loved to be able to speak Arabic and he thought of it as an opportunity missed.
Amman is built on a series of hills, Ricky's home on Djebel el-Webdeh, and across the valley Djebel Amman where the city centre is and the markets. Djebel Hussein where the King's palace and also the British Embassy residence were, and other Djebels further on. Ricky could look across to Djebel Amman, and the beginning of the slope into the valley between, where small boys had made a makeshift dirt slide. He had joined their game, sliding down it on a sheet of corrugated cardboard. He had a great time, but had to wash his hair afterwards to get the grit out. His view down the road to the rows of little shops converted from garages was partially obscured by the group of tall pine trees that Ricky loved to climb, getting sticky pine resin on his hands and clothes. The realisation that he might never see these places again drew tears to his eyes and he wiped them away with his forearm.
The dusk turned to dark and Ricky's view began to sparkle with streetlights across the valley. Shirley joined him on his balcony, and after standing beside his chair for a moment with a hand on his shoulder she broke the silence.
“It's nearly time to go. You ready?”
“I guess. Do we have to go, Mummy?”
“Yes darling, but we may be able to come back when it's over. Would you like that?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Come on, then, I've put your anorak for you to carry. We don't know how cold it'll be in the aeroplane or at the end of the journey.”
“Where are we going?”
“Well, we're going home – to England, I expect. We'll go and see Granny. The people at the Embassy want us to be safe so they're sending us home till it's safe here again.”
Reminded of the Ambassador's son who was an acquaintance of Ricky's, he asked: “Is Roland coming with us?”
“I don't know, dear. I expect so. Probably all your school friends, all your British school friends anyway.”
Ricky was ambivalent about seeing Roland. When they'd first met, there had been an awkward exchange in which it gradually became clear that they moved in very different social circles. Roland was down to attend Eton and assumed Ricky would be going there too. In fact Ricky's new school was to be a minor public school in Hertfordshire. After their relative positions in society was established, the two boys had got on reasonably well, finding they had interests in common. But Ricky always felt a little awkward at the Ambassador's residence.
He was a little detached as he was being bundled into the car, imagining what it was going to be like in an aeroplane with all his friends. Off with the fairies, his father complained.
The military airfield was about a half hour drive out of the city and it was made a little longer because Roger took a detour to pick up Ali, one of the Council drivers. Ali would drive the Land Rover back to town and look after it until their return.
They arrived at the airbase and explained their business there to the checkpoint guard, who allowed them onto the base and directed them to the makeshift departure lounge. They tumbled out of the big vehicle and stood at the roadside with their luggage waving goodbye to Ali and their car. Then they went indoors, Roger carrying two suitcases and Shirley one. And immediately Ricky saw people he knew and went to talk to them. Shirley watched where he went and smiled her relief that he had found friends and appeared happy. She noticed that so far there was no sign of the Suttons, Ricky's friend Chris and his parents. And neither was the Ambassador and his family there. She wondered idly if they would be coming with the rest, or if they had separate arrangements.
They waited. It was nearly midnight and the children had all become fractious when finally a ridiculously young-looking man in air force uniform arrived and called them through to customs control – which turned out to be a desk in a corridor that they all filed past, showing their passports before continuing along the passage to the door at the end, which led to the tarmac outside. They had to march across the wide expanse of runway to the Hercules troop transport plane in camouflage colours and with the big red cross hastily painted on the side and on the wings.
The whole tail end of the aeroplane had been hinged downwards to form a ramp, and the forlorn stream of families carrying their own suitcases struggled up the ramp into the cavernous interior of the Hercules. There was no separate hold for luggage, they stacked it where they could. There were no upholstered seats, just a double row of steel benches along each side of the plane. There was no level floor, just metal grids covering pipework visible beneath it. And there was just one lavatory near the back. The big space inside the plane gradually filled up until there was no more space on the benches. People began sitting on their suitcases in the central aisle, in the gaps between the benches and anywhere they could find floor space. Ricky squealed with delight when he caught sight of Chris, holding his father's hand, coming up the ramp ahead of his mother. They waved to each other. Eventually the people stopped coming and the plane was packed full of passengers. The ramp rose up to meet the tail of the plane and they were shut in. A door in the front of the hold opened and the pilot, or possibly his co-pilot, came into the hold.
Tall, slim, blond, twinkly blue eyes and a sharp Air Force uniform, he surveyed the sorry picture and made a decision. These people were stressed and needed cheering up.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Evac Airways. We hope you enjoy your flight. For your convenience, life jackets are stowed in the overhead lockers, and emergency exits are above the wings. Should the plane ditch in the sea, please put on a life jacket following the instructions printed on the front. If you are travelling with a child or someone behaving like a child, please put your own life jacket on before helping the child into one. If you are travelling with more than one child, pick your favourite child and start there. I am Captain Treves and I will be your host for this flight. We regret that meals will not be served on board, and the in-flight movie has been cancelled. We are due to fly to Larnaca and the journey should take around ninety minutes. If you can last that long without using the toilet that would help since the capacity of the system is limited and you probably can't reach it without stepping on someone. The toilet is available should you need it, however. If you are taken ill or some other emergency occurs, please bring it to the attention of our air steward, the lovely Andrew, here.”
He pointed to the very young airman who sat in the corner with a clipboard and a beetroot blush spreading up his face. The passengers smiled at his embarrassment and the Captain noted the relaxation of the atmosphere and returned to his cabin, pleased with his success.
The four big turbo-prop engines roared and the plane began to taxi along the runway. With no windows, the passengers inside just looked at each other. Ricky sat between his parents. His elation at seeing Chris on the plane evaporated quickly as the reality of the situation took hold in his mind, and very quickly his happiness turned to misery and tears ran down his face. He was leaving the life he knew and loved, and entering a new life, one he knew nothing about.