The Walking Dead

Doubt crept now into the mind of Omar Hussein. Eleven days before he had been told by his son, Ibrahim, of a journey to Sana'a, the principal city of Yemen, to visit cousins from the family of Omar's beloved and missed wife. Now, his brother who had a sharp mind that was not dulled with age, as his own was, declared with certainty that the boy had lied to his father and sisters and had travelled to Riyadh, then caught an aeroplane to Europe.

'I shall telephone him,' Omar Hussein said, attempting a decisive response.

In the living room of that prosperous home were the fruits of his labours: a wide-screen television with cinema-standard speakers, video and D\TD attachments, electric fans that purred softly to shift the day's heat, and a state-of-the-art cordless phone. He picked it up from its cradle, punched into its gargantuan memory, waited and listened, then asked. An answer, in Sana'a, was given him. His lips pursed. 'They have not seen him. They have not been told to expect him.'

'I can only tell you what I saw, brother.'

Again, Omar Hussein delved into the memory of his telephone, and rang his son's personal mobile. He was told that its owner was unavailable and was requested to leave a recorded message. The days of the last week had flown past with stock checks at the shop and with representatives calling on him to sell new models. A father realized now how long it had been since he had spoken to a son, and how there had been no phone calls. He led his brother up the wide stairs of the villa.

He found the door to his son's bedroom locked, put his shoulder to it and could not break it open. He felt tears of frustration welling. But his brother was stronger, fitter, and crashed his weight into the door. It swung open, and his brother half fell through it. Omar came past him, steadied him, and looked round the room.

It was so tidy. The room was that of a twenty-one-year-old boy and normally shoes, clothes, books for studying and magazines littered the floor. Everything had been left so neat. He saw the two photographs on the wall, the glass of the frames gleaming, of his elder sons, both dead. The loss of them was a misery of which he rarely spoke but always felt. There was a vase of flowers on a table under the photographs, but the water had been sucked out in the room's heat and the blooms had withered. His son's mobile phone was on the bedside table, switched off. Now Omar Hussein believed what his brother, who had the eyesight of a hunting Lariner falcon, had told him — and he understood. The weight of it crushed him.

'What should I do?'

'To protect him, and to safeguard your daughters and yourself, there is only one choice open to you.'

'1b,11 me.'

'It is just possible that he can be intercepted and stopped…I think more of you and of your daughters. Times, Omar, have changed. They are no longer martyrs, they are terrorists. When his name is released and when the television shows what he has done, you will be hounded by the police, by every agency. You will be seen — . because you reported nothing and because you are from Asir Province, which they say is a 'hotbed' of terrorism — as an accomplice to an atrocity. The families of those who flew into the Towers, and most of them were from Asir, are now disgraced, ruined. You may endure it, you probably can, but do you wish that on your daughters? I think you know what you should do.'

Omar Hussein, his head hung, said, 'If I did nothing my wife, if she were able, would curse me.'

An hour after his brother had left the villa, and in response to Omar Hussein's telephone call to the Ministry of the Interior police, whose compound was around the walls of the Ottoman fort in Jizan, an unmarked Chevrolet car drove up to his front door.

Two men of the mabaheth sipped coffee with a frightened father and took notes of what he said concerning a missing son who was far away and lost.

* * *

'A nice little runner, Miss.'