1. Prologue

One night. Two lives.

In the hushed corridors of an empty office, despair seeps through the cracks as one soul grapples with the weight of failure and the haunting echoes of harsh words. While the other heads home to pot roast. 

On the Road to Jericho: A Novel

Copyright Sansu Rising, 2024. All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. While inspired by real life, people and events, it is an imaginative and creative work and is not intended as an accurate portrayal of real people or events..

To my beloved homeland, South Africa,
who still cries beneath its endless blue dome of African skies. 

To Egypt, who beguiled a young romantic
with your history and mystery, your chaos and your bustle. 

To Palestine, where a part of my heart is forever given to
your rocky hills, rugged deserts and lush wadis. 

And to America, who continues to break my heart. 

You have shaped me every bit as much as the times I have lived in and the people in my life.

To Walt & Luke

For my being my “knights in shining armor”, my rock, and my safe harbor.

Time and again, you have given me hope, when I thought hope was lost.

Part One — Haven, USA — 2017

Prologue

She stumbles to the bathroom, grateful that it's late and that no-one else is in the office, slides down the wall, and crumples into a heap of sobbing despair. Sobs wrack her body. Her voice keens in a low wail. An abyss opens up beneath her and she is falling, falling, falling. 

It has happened again. 

Her nightmare has become real. 

She is haunted. She can do nothing right. 

She is doomed. She can never get it right. 

Terror squeezes her so hard she can’t breathe. Her voice, her body breaks on the agonizing pain of everything gone, everything shattered. Despair and hopelessness flood her. Fetal like she wraps her arms around her knees, head bowed, while her body continues to heave with wave after wave of misery that eviscerates her. 

She is a failure. Her future is gone. 

Gone. 

Gone. 

His words were a bomb, the shock wave destroying everything in its path. Her life. Her future. Who she is. 

After a black eternity the sobs subside. Eventually, body aching from the cold hard tiles, she rises. She wills herself to the sink, wills herself to turn on the tap, wills herself to cup her hands and raise cold water to her face. Her face in the mirror is one of utter wretchedness. Blotched, puffy, red, swollen. Eyes vacant, haunted. This is who she is now. This familiar stranger. The outcast. 

His words had flayed her, tearing through her flesh to her bone. And he just sat there, keeping his distance, while his words whipped her with calm, deliberate purpose. Then he left her to bleed out, or crawl home, he didn’t care. 

Home. 

How is she to get home? How is she to look them in the eye and tell them what she has doomed them to? 

Better not to go home. Better she never makes it home. Better for it to end forever today. 

But her son, her darling son. How can she leave him? Never see his sweet, darling face again? Never feel his warm soft body snuggled into hers again?

Noooooo.

An animal wail pierces the empty silence of the bathroom. 

He will be waiting with her husband for her at home now. They will wonder why she is so late, oblivious to how in an hour everything they know—safety, home, security—has been taken away from them. 

By her. 

No. 

By him. 

Clinging to the image of her son’s face, she cups her hands and splashes water on her face again. The cold water is the only thing that pierces the heavy blanket of hopelessness and despair that shrouds her now. The water is so cold her hands start to ache. 

Eventually its bracing coldness brings her back to two feet standing on the floor in the women’s bathroom on the second floor of the office, a ghostlike face staring back at her from the mirror. Black eyes. White gaunt face. Long dark hair disheveled. 

Hands shaking, she pulls out her hair tie, clumsily smooths what she can, pulls her hair back with painful tightness, and lets shaky hands re-tie her hair of their own accord. 

What next? 

Car keys. 

Where are her car keys?

Oh, right. Handbag. 

Where is her handbag? 

Her brain can’t think.

Handbag? Where is her handbag? 

Oh, desk. Maybe? 

She takes one look in the mirror again, the stranger’s face that is hers now. This is who she is now. This abject failure. 

No, it’s too painful to look. She turns away from herself. 

Her feet find their way to her office for her. All the lights are off in the hallways, the only illumination is from the street lights outside. She blindly passes the banks of dark empty cubicles and black vacant monitors. In the row of blank, bland, featureless offices against one wall, hers is the one that stands out, with its paintings from South Africa and the Middle East, pictures made by her son, and degree certificates on the walls; the warm red Bedouin carpet on the floor; the family photos on top of the filing cabinet; and in the deep window sill, green pothos vines trailing through the select ornaments from her travels around the world. 

But she doesn’t see any of that now. Her handbag is on top of her desk. Mindlessly she picks it up, then finds her feet walking her back down the corridor to the stairs. Her body is acting without her, doing what her brain cannot do. Her brain is…elsewhere. Vacated to another plane of bleakness. Only some last lingering tendril of consciousness is aware of her body moving her to her car, unlocking it, getting in, turning the ignition. The drive home though the black winter night. 

She crosses a bridge. Should she…? It would be so easy…

No. She has to hold her son. At least one last time. 

The physical need of her body to feel his sweet hugs pulls her home, while a voice damns her for robbing him of his future. 

When she opens the door, home greets her. Warm, light, safe. She hears noises in the kitchen. Feet find their way there. There they both are. Her light. Her life. Her safety. Her home. Then she finds herself wrapped in arms. Wrapped in warm, loving arms, held closely, held safely. 

She can’t leave them. 

Not just yet. 

He looks across the huge walnut conference table at her, disgust filling him. He’d expected defensiveness, push back even. He’d actually been looking forward to puncturing her smug arrogance and insufferable insolence. But she’d just crumbled into this pathetic mess. It’s a good thing he’s knocked her off her perch if this is all there is underneath that shell. 

But it is done. She’ll fall into line now, or lose her job, and she knows it. 

He picks up his papers, refusing to look at the mess she is across the table, turns on his heel and leaves. He leaves Richard and the HR woman to make their own way out. They’ve played their role: to observe and verify, if asked, that he’s done everything according to the book. 

And he has. 

It’s past the end of the working day and the office has already emptied out. As he walks by her office on his way to his own, he feels the disgust rise again. It screams her arrogance, “Look at me, international, MBA, I’m better than you all.” God, she really does stick out like a sore thumb. How on earth Mike thought she would be a good hire is a mystery to him. She’s incapable of fitting in, toeing the line, doing what she’s told. 

Well, he fixed that today. 

He puts his papers down in the office, picks up his keys. As he walks past the row of empty offices and cubicles once more he checks to make sure everyone is observing correct safety protocols, monitors off, laptops locked up. Good. He can’t abide lackadaisical standards and pounces with grim satisfaction whenever he finds breaches. There’s too much at stake. They’re the backbone of the economy and a terrorist target, their security defenses are only as strong as the weakest link. So yes, he has to be merciless in his policing of standards, it’s just part of the job. 

As he settles into the car, he feels a momentary twinge of regret. Her misery had been so palpable. Clearly she’s intelligent and passionate. His mind goes to an image of a wild young horse being broken to saddle. He feels some sadness to see her spirit so broken. Then he squares his shoulders, and admonishes himself. This is no time to go soft. It was past time for someone to put her in her place. Richard clearly doesn’t have the spine, or it wouldn’t have gotten to this point. And Mike has more important things to deal with than petty personnel problems. As the director, it is his responsibility to deal with her. And honestly, she’s lucky he didn’t just outright fire her. That would have been his preference, but HR had said it needed to be documented and she needed to be given a chance to show she could turn things around. Even if she can’t, the important thing is that she’s given the chance. She should be grateful she has been. 

He turns the key, and pulls out of the parking lot. The dark winter night matches his mood. 

It’s only once he’s half-way home that he feels himself relaxing and his thoughts turning towards home. He wonders what his wife has made for dinner tonight and what his daughter has done at school today. He’s looking forward to the father-daughter school dance that is coming up, and he feels a soft warm glow as he thinks of his lovely, gracious teenager. Demure, even-keeled, intelligent, well-educated: she is sixteen but has the poise and grace of a mature woman. There is nothing he wouldn’t do for her. He’s putty in her hands, and she knows it. But she is never emotionally manipulative. When she twirled in her dance dress last night in the living room, showing it off, he had beamed with pride. His beautiful daughter, the belle of the ball. 

“How was your day?” his wife asks as he walks into the kitchen, looking over her shoulder from the stove at him. He walks up behind her, wraps his arms around her waist and nuzzles her neck. He adores her smell, the feel of her body, warm, tender, soft. 

“Good,” he murmurs. “Finally took care of something—you remember that woman I mentioned, Eleanor, the one who’s been such a nightmare?” His wife nods, stirring the pot in front of her. “Got it sorted at last, thank goodness. Things should be better going forward.” He pulls back, looks into the pot. “But enough about work. What’s for supper? Smells delicious.” 

“Pot roast.” She turns and gives him a quick kiss. “I’m glad. I know you’ve been very stressed lately. Go tell Rosie you’re home, she’s got something to tell you. And then supper’s ready. Go get out of your suit and we’ll eat,” and she squeezes his hand affectionately as he turns away. 

“Hi Dad,” Rosie looks up from her homework, beaming at him, as he walks into her bedroom. “Got an A+ in math today.” 

That’s his daughter! He walks over and gives her a hug. “I’m so proud of you,” he tousles her curls affectionately. “Mamma says dinner in five. I’m just going to change.” 

Over supper he looks at his wife and daughter, soaking them in. So different from that woman. Well, things should start turning around now, as he gets the project, and her, firmly under his control. 

He tucks into the pot roast with relish. He’s hungry, and his wife really is a wonderful cook.

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