![]() Drops of sweat have collected in her ears and everything sounds muffled, a bit like the whirring of a fan. It is enough to make Roberto lower his arm with the same measured slowness. One of the hostage takers turns his head away from watching the locals to stare at Roberto and shakes his sharpened, one–and–a–half–foot–long panga. “Why can’t they at least pull over into the shade?” He falls silent and lifts his hand very slowly toward the lower rim of his sunglasses. Roberto, Iben’s immediate boss, looks at his fellow hostages. ![]() Dense clusters of huts are scattered all over the dusty plain. ![]() The Nubians have constructed their grayish brown huts from a framework of torn-off branches spread with cow dung. The car stands on a mud surface, still ridged with tracks made after the last rains, now baked as hard as stoneware by the sun. It smells and looks like a filthy cattle pen. Sweat pours down his cheeks and into the corners of his mouth. Roberto’s English accent is usually perfect, but now, for the first time, you can hear that he is Italian. ![]() “I mean, what are we waiting for? Why don’t they just drive on through the crowd?” Burned–out cars block the road ahead, but it ought to be possible to reverse and outflank them by driving right through the flimsy small shacks. The truck with the four aid workers and two of the hostage takers on the tailgate has been stopped for an hour or more. Normally he would never say such a harsh thing. “Don’t they ever think about anything except killing each other?” Roberto asks. ![]()
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