Chapter 8

This time of year in Goma, you can set your clock to the weather. I swear it runs more punctual than the Catholic church bell in town. By three o’clock, like clockwork, the clouds begin their slow advance, piling up on the horizon in great white towers. They’re playful at first, puffed up like cauliflower heads, drifting in on a blue sky that still pretends nothing’s about to happen.

By four o’clock, though, the playfulness is gone. The air grows heavy — thick enough you can almost chew it — and the whole sky sours to black and bruised-grey. The sun disappears as if someone’s drawn a curtain across the stage, and the city below dims to a strange, uneasy twilight. People hurry, motorbikes weave faster, and the goats bleat nervously on the roadside. Even the children, usually immune to reason, scatter for shelter.

By five o’clock, the heavens finally give in. The first drops hit like warning shots, fat and cold, splattering the dust into mud. Then the storm comes with its full arsenal, hammering the ground as if the sky has turned into a firing squad. Sheets of rain so thick they blur the world into streaks of grey. The tin roofs rattle like drums. Thunder follows, not so much a sound as a force that grabs your chest and shakes you with its fury.

And then — just as quickly as it came — by six o’clock, it’s over. The clouds retreat, smug and spent, peeling back toward the mountains. What they leave behind is their one mercy: the sunset. The sky, scrubbed clean by the storm, bursts open in wild colours — orange bleeding into red, red softening into pink, yellow streaks chasing violet shadows. For a few minutes, the whole world glows as if painted by some reckless artist, and the streets, steaming with fresh rain, shimmer under that impossible light.

That’s Goma for you. Predictable in its chaos.

I felt like the weather. Moody. Restless. Unpredictable. Why exactly, I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe it was that smug run-in with Faisal bin Hamad Al-Mannai, his words slick with entitlement, as if the whole world — people included — were possessions waiting to be claimed. Or maybe it was Nisreen herself. The thought of her giving in, folding her wings and returning to him like a bird to a gilded cage ... it clawed at me. Not likely, I told myself. Not her. She had too much fire for that. But one never knows. Even the strongest hearts can falter when faced with the easy comfort of old ties, even poisonous ones.

The sky above Goma mirrored the turmoil inside me. By three o’clock, the clouds had begun their climb, swelling white against the blue. By four, the light was gone, smothered in thick black, the kind of darkness that makes you doubt the day ever had a sun. My chest tightened with the same heavy pressure in the air, waiting for the inevitable. And when five came, the sky broke open with fury, just as my own thoughts did whenever I pictured Nisreen slipping out of my reach. Rain lashed down in sheets, merciless and unrelenting, like artillery pounding the ground. I could almost feel the thunder echo in my bones.

But then, as always, came the calm. The storm retreated at six, dragging the bruised clouds back into the mountains, leaving behind a sky that bled every colour God ever dreamed of — orange, red, pink, purple, all blazing in defiance of the darkness that came before. That sunset reminded me of her. Nisreen. Fierce, radiant, untouchable. She was that impossible light that storms could never smother for long.

And still, beneath all that beauty lingered my unease: would she shine beside me — or slip back into a world where men like Faisal kept her brilliance locked away?

Nisreen had not dined with me tonight. She’d claimed she was tired, that a slight headache kept her from joining. Maybe it was true, maybe not. Either way, she had vanished behind her door, the latch closing softly but firmly, as if she needed a world without me for the evening.

I ate alone. The food tasted like cardboard — Ricky chattered on about heading to the watering hole, but I waved him off. The thought of beer and laughter felt wrong tonight, hollow. Instead, I returned to my steel-walled container, the hum of the generator filling the silence. Laying on my bunk, half propped up against the cold metal, my eyes drifted to the corner. There it was: the battered old guitar one of the pilots before me had left behind, scarred and worn like it had been through its own kind of war.

I reached for it almost absently. The strings were rusted, the wood dull, but when I strummed, the sound surprised me. Rough, yes, but alive. I began to tune it, my fingers moving without much thought, and before I knew it the guitar was humming like a companion I hadn’t realised I needed.

As my hands worked, my mind wandered. “Little Eden.” My refuge back on the Springbokvlakte. A place where the world’s turmoil couldn’t reach me. And with it came Linda. Her faded smile returned first, delicate as a ghost. Then the laughter — light, quick, bubbling from the patio in the late afternoon sun. I saw her red hair blaze again, her green eyes flashing mischief. She was all motion — her hands darting and fluttering, telling stories faster than her words could keep up. God, I’d loved that.

But then came the crash. My chest tightened as the images unreeled — uninvited, unstoppable. The Extra 300 looping clean and sharp, Linda inverted, flying with that easy grace she was born with. Then the sudden betrayal — the wings folding like paper, tearing free, the fuselage flopping helplessly. A rag-doll against the sky. The vertical plunge. The fireball. Gone in an instant. Fate had ripped her from me without warning, and in that moment it had ripped out my heart too.

I thought it had stayed gone. I thought there’d be nothing left but scar tissue. But now — Nisreen. Another pilot. Another fire. She had crept in where I swore no one could, tugging on strings I thought were severed. And yet she was still half a stranger, half untouchable, carrying with her a world so far from mine. And the thought of her surrendering to that bastard Faisal, returning to Doha and her gilded cage, made something deep inside me twist until it hurt.

Through it all, my fingers kept strumming. I barely realised I was playing at all, yet the rhythm came, the chords shaped themselves, and words rose up unbidden. Linda’s face blurred, replaced by Nisreen’s. Her eyes, her smile, her stubbornness. The impossible dream. And suddenly, the song was there — slipping out of me like it had always been waiting:

“Your world was so different from mine don’t you see?

We just couldn’t be close though we tried.

We both reached for heavens but ours weren’t the same.

That’s what happens when two worlds collide.”

“Your world was made up of things sweet and good.

My world could never fit in, wish it could.

Two hearts lie in shambles and oh how they’ve cried.

That’s what happens when two worlds collide.”

“Your world was made up of things sweet and good.

What’s happening with Nisreen?

The day was utterly a climax and an anti-climax rolled into one, tugging at me in ways I couldn’t untangle. My mind was a storm, and my heart kept shifting between elation and fury. First, Dolf had let me fly Tookie-Tookie — his beloved Tucano. At first, I thought of her as just another machine to master, another aircraft to bend to my will. In a moment of girlish whim, I even called her Tookie-Tookie. How little did I understood then.

The moment I took her into my hands, I felt it — she wasn’t some docile bird to tame. No. She was sleek, fierce, restless. A tiger, a lynx. Agile and deadly. And I loved her for it.