Who Fears Death Read Online Free Page B

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    Najeeba saw no Nuru men or women dead or alive. The village had been an easy conquest, off guard, vulnerable, unaware, in denial. Stupid , she thought. Women moaned in the street. Men wept before their homes. Children walked about confused. The heat was stifling, radiating from the sun and the burning houses and scooters and people. By sundown, there would be a fresh exodus east.
    Najeeba softly said her husband’s name when she got to their house. Then she wet herself. The urine burned and ran down her bruised legs. Half of the house was on fire. Their garden was destroyed. Their scooter was on fire. But there was Idris, her husband, sitting on the ground with his head in his hands.
    “Idris,” Najeeba softly said again. I’m seeing a ghost, she thought. The wind will blow and he will blow away with it. There was no blood running down his face. And though the knees of his blue pants were crusted with sand and the armpits of his blue caftan were dark with sweat, he was intact. This was him, not his ghost. Najeeba wanted to say “Ani is merciful,” but the goddess wasn’t. Not at all. For, though her husband was spared, Ani had killed Najeeba and left her still alive.
    When he saw her, Idris shouted with joy. They ran into each other’s arms and held each other for several minutes. Idris smelled of sweat, anxiety, fear, and doom. She dared not wonder what she smelled like.
    “I’m a man, but all I could do was hide like a child,” he said into her ear. He kissed her neck. She closed her eyes, wishing Ani would strike her dead right there.
    “It was what was best,” Najeeba whispered.
    Then he held her back and Najeeba knew. “Wife,” he said, looking down at her open garments. Her pubic hair was exposed, her bruised thighs, her belly. “Cover yourself!” he said pulling the bottom part of her dress closed. His eyes grew moist. “C-c-cover yourself, O! ” The look on his face grew more pained and he held his side. He stepped back. He looked at Najeeba again, squinting, and then he shook his head as if trying to ward something off. “No.”
    Najeeba just stood there as her husband stepped away, his hands held before him. “No,” he repeated. His eyes spilled tears but his face hardened.
    His face was blank as he watched Najeeba go into the burning house. Inside, Najeeba ignored the heat and the sounds of the house cracking, popping, and dying. She methodically gathered a few things, some money she’d hidden away, a pot, their capture station, a hand game her sister had given her years ago, a photo of her husband smiling, and a cloth sack of salt. Salt was good to have when going into the desert. The only picture she had of her deceased parents was burning.
    Najeeba wasn’t going to live for much longer. To herself, she became the Alusi that her father said had always lived in her; the desert spirit who loved to wander off to distant places. Once in her village, she had hoped her husband was alive. When she found him, she hoped he would be different. But she was an Okeke. What business did she have being hopeful?
    She could survive in the desert. Her yearly retreats with the women and her Salt Road journeys with her father and brothers had taught her how. She knew how to use her capture station to pull condensation from the sky for drinking water. She knew how to trap foxes and hares. She knew where to find tortoise, lizard, and snake eggs. She knew which cacti were edible. And because she was already dead, she wasn’t afraid.
    Najeeba walked and walked, searching for a place to let her body die. A week from now , she thought, as she set up camp. Tomorrow , she thought as she trudged along. When she first realized she was pregnant, death was no longer an option. But in her mind, she remained an Alusi, controlling and maintaining her body as one controls a computer. She traveled east, away from the Nuru cities, toward the wastelands where the Okeke lived in exile. At night when she lay down in her