“Go to El Malla? You mean walk all the way to El Malla?”

“Yes, Moussa Khaliffa.”

The man rubbed his hands over his knotted, salt bleached hair. He picked at the dried-up pus at the corner of his eye and scratched his whiskers. He pulled faces and snorted and spat onto the black rock where numerous small plugs of dried spit formed an uneven pattern. Moussa Khaliffa was thinking.

Oby sat very quietly, waiting for Moussa Khaliffa to finish thinking. His wife had already slipped away to prepare food.

“It’s a long journey to El Malla, boy. It’s two countries distant. You’d have to chase the Great White River. It’s over on the other side of the mountains. It scrambles down the Western drop of the hills and goes on through the Zuda. It’s all desert there. Then it doubles back. So you have to chase North, then West, then North again. There’s no shelter from the sun in the Zuda, boy. Then there’s the marsh. It’s only damp now, but in two months, when the mountain rivers start to flow, it swallows up the marsh for a hundred kilometres. What then? Swim? Can you swim, boy? Then there are the dunes, miles and miles and miles of dunes. Only camels and men get through the dunes, not boys alone. No, boy, you cannot go there. No. No.”

“But, I have to find my father.” Oby looked up into Moussa Khaliffa's face for the first time. Moussa Khaliffa lowered his gaze shaking his head.

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