Kid II

Eating his timman (arabic dish made with rice), Chris was aware of his eyes aching badly, 'I cried alot last night' he thought consolingly, but he knew he was lying to himself, the real reason was the damn game, with nothing to do but play, he's played almost non stop for the past 3 days, stopping only to eat, sleep to go. He felt tired and useless, and depressed.

He should be missing his parents, he should be scared at least, instead he just wants to get past the monster in the second stage.

When he hears the crying again, he pauses and listens, a child, close to his age or younger-he thinks, crying and yelling continuosly, Chris can't understand arabic so he doesn't know what the child is crying about. 'maybe they're torturing him, maybe his daddy isn't paying the ransom', but it doens't sound like that sort of a cry, it's sad and desperate, that child wants something.

A woman tries to console him, Chris knows that because he can understand the tones she usee; begging, shouting, hitting, more begging, but he keeps crying, untill he eats or tires out and sleeps.

Ofcourse there is the kidnapper (or father?) who comes home and yells at the child, always the same "LAA" , or "WAKHAAR!" , the only two arabic words he picked up since his coming here, 'what do they mean?' he wonders.

Chris finishes his timman, pauses, this child isn't going to stop crying, no sleep then, he picks up the controller and contonues fighting the monster in the second level.

Day four, Chris is deeply involved in the game, so when he sees a mass of a person standing next to him out of nowhere, he jumps, hard, later on his solarplexus is sore.

The fright he got, and the implausibility of what he sees make him doubt his sanity for a moment, are my eyes playing tricks on me ?

Here standing before him was the kidnapper, but

not the kidnapper

A third of him ? a mini me of him ?

same clothin same headtowel wrapped around the face, but he's shrunk in size !

Chris closes his eyes, 'deep breath Chris, you're not nuts' He looks again.

Ok, the clothes aren't exactly the same, and he can see from the eyes that isn't the kidnapper because it's just a child's face peering at him from the impossible wrapping of the towel thing.

"Who are you? "

A childish voice speaks shyly

Hi

Chris is thinking, ok, it's a kid, what the hell is he doing here ?

for the first time Chris notices something in the kid's hand, a small napsack with
ninja turtles on the side.

"what's this?" Chris points at the sack, the kid understands and shows him, it's full of games, all ps2, all new, and a controller.

Chris is astounded, a small sigh escapes him, he's both esctatic about the prospect of all these new games and having a partener to play with, yet he knows this is going to be very bad for his eyes.

He looks at the kid, points to himself, "Chris", waits expectantly

The boy looks at him for a second, points at himself, "zayyoodi".

Knowing full well he will not be understood, Chris takes the kid's hand in a loose hand shake and says "OK Zayoodi, let's play some games".