Once again, I thank Lucy for publishing another of my works. This was originally published in 2009 by Six Sentences, which challenges writers to tell a story in only six sentences. It is a wonderful exercise in being concise. I had written the story in another, much longer form a few years before that. I think that one was published somewhere, but I am not certain. This story is based on actual events. While I was in Egypt in 1989, I happened to meet an assistant agricultural attaché for Sudan. She relayed this story to me as having actually happened in Sudan. The witness to the event was not an oil worker though. That was my invention. When I wrote this version years later, I was in a hurry and couldn’t recall whether it happened in Sudan or Somalia, so I arbitrarily chose Somalia. The overall theme of the story remains the same in any event.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 