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They walked quickly, the fat man waving his gun behind them and shouting for them to hurry up. The boy walked beside Isaiah, swinging his axe at anything they passed, an old tin can, a brick that split when he hit it, the windshield of an abandoned car, a dog, which swerved out of the way, then backed off snarling. The boy laughed. Ibrahim was talking quickly, asking questions. Where were they going? Why were they being taken? He had money. He would show them where it was. The man laughed at this. Beside him, Elizabeth sobbed softly. Isaiah looked up at Papa and saw his lips moving in prayer. He tried to pray too, but none of the familiar words would come to him.
They turned on to the main street. Isaiah saw more men and boys with guns. Some of them were shouting to each other in strange accents. Some were leaning against the buildings, drinking beer and watching as a small crowd formed around a fire in front of the car repair shop that belonged to Ibrahim's cousin, Ahmed. Dense black smoke rose straight up in the motionless air, filled with the acrid stench of burning rubber. As they approached, a boy ran out from the shop and threw two tires on to the fire, before disappearing back inside. Several other boys were standing around the burning tires, smoking cigarettes, kalashnikovs dangling carelessly from their shoulders.
The man shouted for them to stop. Isaiah felt Elizabeth's hand grip his and squeeze hard. He felt the heat of the fire on his face. The tires were thrown haphazardly in a circle and mixed in with them were a few burnt rags. The thick black smoke made it hard to see into the flames, but at the edge of the circle closest to him, Isaiah caught sight of a shoe.
The boy who had brought the tires out from the shop reappeared. With him were an old man and a young woman. Isaiah recognized the man. He sold water and Coca Cola from a cart that he pushed up and down the street. Once, when Isaiah was very small, he had got lost and the old man had let him sit in the shade of the big umbrella of his cart until his mother came for him. He had given him a Coke. He did not recognize the woman. She wore a bright red dress. The boy nudged her with his gun. She moved forward a little and stopped. The boy shouted at her. Still she didn't move. He shouted again. She stood rigid, eyes fixed on the ground. Suddenly, Isaiah felt himself pushed from behind. He almost fell, as the fat man shoved past him and strode up to the woman, pistol in hand. He put the pistol under the woman's chin. The woman was shaking violently now. The shouting of the boys died down. Only the crackling of the flames broke the silence. Still holding the pistol under her chin, the fat man opened his fleshy lips in a broad grin. A gold tooth glinted in the sun. Then he leaned forward, grabbed the woman's face and kissed her on the mouth. Still grinning, he moved his grip to her arm and pulled her forwards. The woman was slim, not heavy. He pushed her into the fire.
The woman's dress caught fire first, even before she fell on the tires. She screamed, and Isaiah turned his face to Elizabeth's breast. The boys' shouting began again, but the screams rose above it. Isaiah felt them in his bones, as he buried his head into his sisters heaving chest.
Isaiah's eyes were closed tight when he felt his sister torn from his grasp. He saw nothing. Later his memories were of his father's fingers tightening on his shoulder, digging into the flesh. It hurt. It was as if the screams of his sister clawed at him, trying to clamber back into his arms. Then the screams stopped. Still he could not open his eyes, even as he felt the first heavy drops of rain on his cheeks.
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