The dogs came howling into the alley, two of them sniffing him out before the bush’s thorns stuck their faces. One of them lifted his leg at it, and then the men filled up the alley, kicking the dogs away.
Hamar watched back through the hole at the mob’s bright feet milling around on the stones. Was that a club by one man’s leg, – or a knife? He stuffed his mother’s old headscarf into his mouth to smother his panting and watched the dark finger of dog pee come at him through the hole. Silently he mashed his shoulders back and forth in the bundle of rags to soak it up, – and lay still.
He was safe. Again.
He fumed silently out of his nostrils until his breathing slowed and then he yanked the wet scarf out of his mouth. He sagged with relief into the old ruts in the rags. The men wouldn’t get him now. No one ever got him once he was in there! He laughed into his hands while the men churned around too worked up to admit defeat, but flummoxed by the dead-end.
“You donkey dung! You motherless stinking ball of camel worms, we’ll get you, you hear!” Bashir said as he kicked at a wall. The men scanned the other buildings and one of them leapt impressively onto a low roof edge to see all around, and then jumped down.
“One of the Phrygean family? Or that lump-headed bunch?” the man asked.
“No. Orphan!” panted Bashir holding his sides., “Skinny! Chaldean! Smart. Nose like a blade. Eyes sunk! Works alone!” He spat.
They all called out what they’d do to him. “Orphan scum make slaves! Think we’ll beat you, wring your neck you-son-of-a-dead-rat? Ha! Better things. Money! We’re going to sell you! You’re going to get us money!“
They laughed about tortures for slaves, then obscene ones for boy slaves, yelled out the special pleasures his price would buy for them all, every man’s haggling skills at work.
Hamar grinned, staring up through the chinks in the thick rubble that made up the roof of his den. He lifted the Dagon luck charm he wore on a cord around his neck and kissed it. Above him the sky in the cracks was still blue and calm, its friendly threads of light speckling his nest, and he lifted an egg from under his sash.
He tapped the end on his elbow, pushed his thumb into the crush, lay his head back to watch the glittery string of liquid reach his tongue. As the men’s swears kept on, the golden yolk enlarged down his throat and he drank it in like a pasha, a lord.
“I like your eggs, Bashir. Better than Sameds,” he whispered, wiping his mouth, “but maybe not as big as Rashid’s.”
Living rough for years had given the boy the wits of a scarab, the speed of a wasp, and the stolen tunic of a careless melon-seller, – a tunic that had always been too big and was now worn out to a pale dirt colour. Scavenging had made his skinny bones strong so that hungry or not he was fit for most things, – Hamar was a market bug that couldn’t be squashed.
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