I lay awake in the pitch black tent. Cold wind and sand flow freely under the gaps in the violently-flapping canvas.
My head aches. The wind makes sleep impossible. For me, that is. Kiddu is snoring blissfully.
I push myself up, slowly, carefully. I have to fumble around feeling for it in the dark, but finally my hand closes on the clay honey jar.
I scoot over to Kiddu’s shadowy form, careful not to knee her. Somehow her snores resound over the howling wind. I triangulate the source of the snoring noise to her head and kneel low. Gingerly, I flutter my fingers out in the air, feeling for her hair.
Then I scrape the honey traces from the pot onto the end of a thick dreadlock. I fold more locks over this one and give them a twist.
She snores a honking snore and twitches in her sleep. I wipe my honey-coated hand on a puffed fold of her bandanna. Then I scoot back to my spot on the ground and lay down, grinning madly to myself. Now we’re even.
For the second night in a row I wake up to the sound of screaming. I have to remind myself that this is to be expected, and that this time the screaming isn’t mine.
“MY HAIR!”
I can see her thrashing around in the dark blue pre-dawn light. She runs outside, wearing only her short dress, yelling and slapping at her head.
I follow her outside, bleary-eyed, slightly worried my prank has gone awry.
She’s furiously scratching her whole head, shaking her hair as if it were afire.
“Why are there ANTS in my GOD DAMNED HAIR?”
I try to maintain a blank face.
She turns to me and points her finger like a lightning bolt.
“DID YOU PUT HONEY IN MY HAIR?”
I finally crack up.
As soon as I do, Kiddu barrels into my midsection with a force so savage that I’m lifted bodily off the ground. I tumble backwards down a slope of loose sand and we roll towards the main camp.
Before I can get up she’s on top of me, straddling my stomach with her rather big legs. She holds one of my arms to the ground and with her free hand she slaps me across the face, hard.
“OW!” I say. “Stop it! I didn’t think there would be ants!”
“THERE ARE!”
“Well … now we’re even!”
“No. No.”
With my free hand I try to push her off but she smacks my arm away. Then she pivots her knee to pin my loose shoulder down—
“You know,” I say. “I can see your underwear.”
She grabs my nose, painfully, then pushes my head flat back against the sand so I can only see straight up. Then she starts twisting my nose. I thrash beneath her, trying not to yell out in pain.
In the periphery of my vision I see several pairs of feet.
Then someone grabs Kiddu by the wrist and jerks her away. She shrieks. Before I can get up, strong hands haul me to my feet and push me in the middle of an assembling crowd.
Through bleary eyes all I can see are a crowd of native men encircling me and Kiddu beside. Somewhere beyond this circle, a woman is screaming.
At first I’m just embarrassed that all of these people apparently saw what just happened. But their expressions make it clear that they have something more serious in mind than making fun of me.
“The Path calls for four witnesses,” says a short native. “Who among us will bear witness to this sin?”
Three men raise their hands and behind the crowd I make out the slender blue-robed arms of three women.
“With the women this makes four and a half witnesses,” says the ringleader. “And it is now well-known that they are no brother and sister. Quickly, bring stones.”
“WHAT?” says Kiddu. She makes to rush into the ring of native men, still in fighting form and spirit. But one of them menaces her with a club and she backs away.
The innermost ring of men pass stones amongst themselves. Some are pebblelike, others are fist-sized with jagged edges.
“You can’t do this!” I say. “We’re with Jaruna!”
“You are prisoners, Akkadian! And four and a half witnesses will now testify that this girl acted shamefully, prostituting herself in front of our camp, and that you lay down beneath her, complicit to that sin. And so Asham has said: you shall purge sin from your midst, before the sun rises. Now go on! Make your peace with Asham, before you perish by his will”
Someone throws a rock. Not too big but not too small. I watch it arc through the air. I don’t know why I don’t think to move, but I don’t. It cracks into my shoulderblade.
I scream and fall over.
Kiddu runs past me and in one crouch-swooping motion she picks up the rock that hit me, turns, and whips it into the crowd. Someone yells out.
“You stupid fucking savages!” she says. “You can’t do this!”
A bigger rock hits her in the back of the head. She crumples.
By now I have gotten to my knees and I move over to her body. Her head is bleeding but she’s alive. I try to cover her as more stones hail down. One of them shatters against my forearm.
Another flies into my back and punches the breath out of my lungs. Pain flares up and down my body.
I gather my breath and yell, as loud as I can, “Stop this! I—I am a prophet of the mujashatriya!”