Dora and Saraya

As borders, the walls were useless. Through the left wall Dora could clearly hear words, footsteps, toilet flushing, even nail scratching against skin. She threw off the sheets, unable to return to sleep. The time on the bedside clock was 3am. The couple in 17B on the right was at it again. It had been the same every night since she checked in two days ago. The woman was moaning and panting, the man was grunting like a turtle, and beneath them the bed was creaking in reaction to each stroke, each bottomless plunge. She had seen the couple at breakfast, both were short and slight of build, and she had marveled that so much noise could come from such small people. Dora tried to cover her ears with the pillow, but it was futile. The moans and screams only grew louder. She listened, unable to stop herself reacting first with shock, then embarrassment as the moans turned to screams, then slight arousal, followed by envy. She is faking it, she thought. Last night she had concluded what she came to do in Nigeria. Back in Washington, when she was planning the trip, she had thought she would stay at least two weeks, to look up old friends, and maybe visit her parents in the village. But now suddenly she wanted to go back. Tomorrow she would call the airline and change her departure date from two weeks away to one day. The woman moaned louder. Definitely faking. She had to endure this for one more night, and it would be over. She turned on the radio and listened to Chet Baker till she fell asleep again.

An hour later she was awake again. This time it was coming from the room directly across from hers. A thin, wailing cry that rose and fell, so deeply sorrowful it made Dora sit up and hold her pillow to her chest. She imagined the wail in the dim, airless corridor outside, dragging itself against the floor and walls, scratching at doors and turning door handles. Now the wailing ceased, and just when she began to think she had imagined it, or dreamed it, it began again. Deep, breath-pulling sobs, as if the person was trying to muffle the cry, but was unable to. It wrenched itself out of the crier’s mouth, thin and ragged and ugly. I just hope it is not the girl, she thought as she got up and went to the bathroom. She had met them at Heathrow where they were waiting for their connection to Abuja. It was the girl’s shy, curious stare that had made her smile at them, and the man had asked her if she was going to Nigeria. Father and daughter it turned out.

“I am returning for the first time in twenty years,” the man said, shaking his head, as if wondering where all that time had gone. They sat side by side on the uncomfortable airport benches. Terminal 3, Heathrow. She watched travelers pass and re-pass, dragging their carry-ons, their eyes constantly flitting from their boarding passes to the overhead screens.

“Have you been to Nigeria before?” Dora asked the girl. She was pretty in an unusual way, her eyes looked out of her eyes as if she was seeing the world for the first time. No, she shook her head. And in that curious way that bonds are formed during travel, they became traveling companions. She left her bag with them when she went to the bathroom. The man left them together when he went to stretch his legs. Her name was Saraya. Her father was Markus.

“You are gonna like it,” Dora assured her. When they landed they had shared the same taxi, and it was Dora who had suggested this hotel to them. They wanted to do some shopping before passing on to wherever they were passing on to.

Now the girl was wailing at 6am.

When she came back from the bathroom Dora sat on the bed and looked at herself in the mirror across the room. What next, the image asked her, the...