The Hadjii - excerpt.

Qasim, Footna’s husband stammered. The pale woman with the others was a grilling in his groin and his friend – another slippery man as dark as the effulgent of his desire – sleuthed with Qasim. A lewd joke between them terrorized the tent-walls. Qasim’s guttural toothy humor made Lina ill.

It had only been two nights since these two had ambushed her as she withdrew to rest, thinking the main tent/her bedroom-space, empty. But they were rollicking there in lascivious humor, belly-up with coffee and sugar and told her to sit with them.

‘What do you think? She is worthy of four camels?’

‘Noo!’ A long noise like a horn tunneled through Qasim’s nose. ‘No! Three camels!’

There was an indistinguishable muttering between the rogues and their laughter overwhelmed their haggling.

‘Three camels is a good price! She is yours!’

Qasim’s friend bent towards her, his back arching to consummate his prize.

Qasim shouted at her: ‘You can go with him tonight! You are now his woman!’

Desperately searching for a loose clue to subvert their plan, Lina laughed with them.

‘Ha! You don’t want this man? It is a good price!’

All the air in Lina’s lungs slowed to a paste. She silenced her gag and stood up to leave, pretending indignation.

‘I am definitely a six camel woman!’

The ridiculous jibbing hit her back as she turned away. Then anger: ‘Woman. Where are you going?! I did not say you could leave!’

Hardly twitching, Lina felt the Goddess Medusa, her hundred writhing snakes spitting vile- curses at the nauseating man, rise in her gut. Her back became a quivering wall of poison and she walked out.

This night with the family present ,Qasim is unrelieved from her ire; she has tagged him a fool and even in vaudeville neon he will not get her attention; her blood percolated diabolic pollution.

She watched him belittle his wife Footna with a caustic remark. He yelled – ‘bent’ – woman, and pushed his rowdy sons away. She gathered them up, scowling, and he screamed again.

He had a boastful rift over his beak-like nose that pulled his eye-brows into a predominant black ridge; his long face made a harsh mask of a braggart. Lina denied his grin which tried to include her in his violence.

‘She needs to look after my sons better. I don’t want their trouble.’

His lean body was clothed in black and though tall, he had the slouch of a wolf seeking prey.

The stare of Rhaalee scoured at his face scratching at his arrogance, and for once she didn’t embrace her son-in-law’s conceit.

Abu Hamed grabbed the coffee-pot and challenged everyone to their sixth cup. Jovial, kind and good man, denying any trifling discord to the celebrations for his precious son.

Inescapable tension drew Qasim to drag a sleeping-mat over to Lina’s nightly nest after the rest of the family retired.

Footna whined and taunted at her husband’s decision not to join her; she implored him to come to their tent but he pulled his bedding close to the fire-pit.

In all-of-her-clothes Lina crawled under her rugs, avoiding removing her head-scarf for fear of inviting his interest. Her socks made clogs of her feet fearing the erotic chance of her ankles and feet. She retreated into her covers like a turtle.

Exuding untouchability, her ancient shell claiming defiance, she sprayed her surroundings psychically, ready to scream.

She waited. Waited for the lunge into her back, her hips, her thighs; for the fight for her will.

Qasim turned and grunted and she contracted tightly, but then silence and a light misty rain feathered the moistening goat-hairs of the tent.

Through the gaps came tiny scraps of moon-light.

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abuse, bedouin, book, desert, dreams, east, memories, middle, religions and soul