Not Child's Play - Dave Muller

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asked politely. Unhappy with their slow progress, Cyclops shouts abuse and strikes them on their backs and shoulders with the butt of his AK-47. Diverting his attention back to us, he shouts, ‘Vamush, vamush!’ pointing south along the beach. Tammy clutches my arm while Seth burrows further into Sandy’s lap, clutching The Chatty Parrot in front of him like a shield.

      Most of us have fantasised about how we will react given the chance to play a story’s anti-hero. There’s always someone who rises from a position of weakness to take bold, courageous action, saving those they love, righting wrongs or, in cases of grandiose licence, saving the entire planet. We are primed to believe that courage and good will win. We seldom question such simplistic thinking or really believe we will ever be placed in any of these situations. For Sandy and me, that moment has arrived.

      What are our options? Attack? Defiance? Try to reason with the boys? Try to escape? Try to conjure up some clever diversion that will disarm them and allow us to slip away? It feels as though I’m standing on the edge of an unimaginable reality where time and the imperative to do something momentous prods at me. But my brain has become detached and adrift as if the cables tying it to the anchor of normal life have snapped. All I can do is smile at Cyclops. I have no other defence or weapon. The priority is to protect the children and Sandy and survive. The only way to do this is to neutralise these youngsters with a smile and reassure Tammy and Seth with a nonchalant grin and hug, pretending this is just another unexpected and exciting diversion to our holiday. Something we can, and must, take in our stride. It’s nothing at all to worry about.

      Cyclops keeps rushing at us, shouting all the more insistently and gesturing south. Clearly he’s indicating he wants us to go with them; something we are extremely reluctant to do. I beam back at him and shrug my shoulders quizzically. He seems exasperated by my response and turns his wrath on the old couple, who have now tied a good portion of our belongings into two large bundles they are trying to lift onto their heads.

      Meanwhile, the boy soldiers have taken turns rummaging through Arwen’s cabin, emerging with their pockets stuffed. Cyclops realises he is losing out on the spoils and clambers aboard. A few minutes later he leaps down from the deck. One of the grenades hanging from his belt catches on the aft guardrail netting and dangles there like an incongruous fruit. Irritated, he turns and plucks it from the netting, clipping it back onto his belt.

      By now Cyclops is close to hysteria and my inane smile does not help matters. He instructs two of the boys to walk south with the overburdened couple. There’s going to be no escape. No waking from a bad dream. No option but to walk away from Arwen and leave her to her fate. Snapping out of my paralysis, I realise we’d better take some action. I whisper to Sandy, ‘See if you can climb aboard and get some water and our hats, but for goodness sake, move slowly – don’t do anything suspicious and back off if he shows any annoyance.’

      I mime to Cyclops that we need drinking water and hats. Cyclops moves to stop Sandy, but I make more drinking gestures while pointing to the children. He lets her go. While she fills two plastic bottles with water, Cyclops continues his tirade, shouting, ‘Vamush, vamush!’ while making increasingly aggressive herding motions. ‘You’d better hurry!’ I yell to Sandy. ‘He’s becoming dangerously agitated.’

      In the cabin, Sandy quickly scribbles across the chart a message that in any other circumstances would sound ridiculously melodramatic: ‘Help, we have been taken south.’ There’s just time to fill two one-litre plastic bottles and snatch up a hat for each of us, as well as her small binoculars that, for some reason, have been left on the chart table. Outside, Cyclops continues to pace, making menacing prodding gestures with his rifle. To appease him I pick up Seth’s book, The Chatty Parrot, tuck it under my arm, take Tammy and Seth by their hands, and begin walking south. A minute later Sandy emerges from the cockpit and catches up with us.

      It’s mid-morning when we begin to walk. I try to resist the temptation to look back at Arwen. The truth will be too real, too painful. I don’t want to accept that a dream I’ve been working towards for 26 years has ended and we are walking into a future that is frightening and unknown. Whatever happens from this moment onwards, our lives will never be the same.

      Ten minutes later my resolve breaks, and like Lots wife, I succumb. Arwen lies with her deck canted towards us. She is still intact and complete, and even at that distance I can see the warm, varnished woodwork of her cockpit. The sun reflects off the polished stainless steel of her winches and rigging. The searing pain of anguish and failure burn in me as I consider the torment our parents, Stephen and friends will feel once they hear this news.

      Chapter Four

      Cyclops forces us along at a furious pace. Whenever we lag, he points to his big gold watch and then at the sun. Obviously, we have to get somewhere before sunset.

      Sandy and I walk together, occasionally holding hands to reassure each other, saying little. Our initial shock is slowly being overtaken by a chill, reasoned fear we are too terrified to articulate. In those few words we do share, we agree that, for the moment, there’s no option but to play along and, for the sake of the children, try to maintain a nonchalant air. It’s just a walk along a beautiful beach, like we often take back home.

      At first the children run around, more excited to chase the many scuttling crabs exposed in the receding fans of backwash, than scared by our gun-toting captors. As with all children, their parents’ advice to conserve energy is ignored, and we do not have the heart to deny them this carefree act of freedom.

      However, it’s not long before they tire and wedge themselves between us, placing their hands in ours. Occasionally they lift their feet, turning this into play as we are forced to swing them skywards. They shriek with glee while we try to feign joy in this familiar family game, but in reality the beach is comfortless, stretching before us, an unbroken strip of shimmering hot sand.

      We walk non-stop for three hours until we come to a grove of fir-like casuarina trees. These offer some shelter from the sun, which is nearly overhead. While the other two captives are ordered to collect water from a shallow seepage behind the trees, we flop down in the relief of the shade, too exhausted to care about the prickly seed pods littering the sand. The old man and woman return carrying a plastic jug of murky water. After the boys have drunk their fill they offer the jug to us. I take this as an encouraging sign that they intend us no harm, at least for the time being. The two bottles Sandy had fetched from Arwen are nearly empty, with just a reserve left for an emergency. We drink deeply and refill our bottles. The water is fresh, with a not unpleasant earthy taste.

      While we drink, Cyclops stands over us, talking loudly to his companions, gloating and wringing his hands in obvious satisfaction over this prize he has captured. The old couple sit alongside us, fear in their eyes. They don’t understand English so Sandy softly asks in Zulu, ‘Who are the boys?’

      ‘Renamo,’ they whisper.

      So much for the assurance from the Instituto Nacional do Turismo in Maputo that the area around the islands and near Vilanculos is ‘secure’.

      My knowledge of Renamo is vague. I know South Africa previously supported Renamo, considering them a right-wing organisation that would act as a bulwark against the communist/ socialist influence of its northern neighbours. But this changed six years earlier, in 1984, when South Africa and Mozambique signed a nonaggression pact known as the Nkomati Accord. In this agreement, the apartheid government withdrew their support of Renamo and, in turn, the Frelimo-controlled government in Mozambique ceased providing a safe haven for the banned African National Congress. Neither side took the accord seriously, and a few years later South Africa was embarrassed internationally when a raid on a Renamo camp exposed documents implicating South Africa in ongoing support. In an attempt to regain some international credibility, South Africa had withdrawn all support, and not much was heard in the local news about Renamo other than the occasional horror story concerning atrocities they’d committed: a train ambushed and the passengers shot while fleeing; trucks attacked, ransacked and set alight, the drivers killed. I also knew that the American CIA had recently labelled Renamo a terrorist organisation, second only to the notorious Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in terms of committing acts of exceptional

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